People who say mechs are useless irl so not understand the point of the mech, instead of being modulalor, think of it as being hypermodular. Yes it is cumbersome and treds and crawling machines are faster and more stable, but there are still benefits to the human form. Having two massive claws that you can pick things up with, including complex tools, now imagine vehicles for the mechs, completely eliminating any worries about crawling vs upright. Now think of the mech suit not as a vehicle itself but as an exoskeleton, except instead of a small exo it is a LARGE exo. See the use yet?
@bitterblossom What if new lighter and stronger materials were a thing, like birds bones, make the mech light but strong. It just seems so silly to me that all we have are boxes that roll around, or boxes that fly, where's the tentacles and bioforms?
but it's still the purview of sci-fi due to impossibility of making suitable materials, or funding them; and one of the biggest issues always comes down to powerplants.
with lighter materials, you still have to somehow armor it well enough for it to reasonably survive the heavy combat situations a mech is intended for - if a cheap little tank can punch holes in you, and is a much smaller target with much lower maintenance and fuel/energy costs, there's no justification to use a mech.
in contemporary warfare, there isn't even a space where mechs would be a viable better option. when tanks and infantry aren't strong enough, we've got drones with specialized missiles, icbm's, bunker-buster missiles, naval artillery...
closest i can think of would be rough, mouintainous and jungled terrain where a mech could just walk and climb over shit,, but then you completely lose out on the capability for stealth and guerrilla warfare; meanwhile, a squad of infantry could sneak through with disposable missiles and laser pointers and shit to call in artillery and drone strikes, and choppers can just skim over the trees and offload supplies and troops...
mechs are cool, but just not practical.
now... fast forward a bunch to a time in which we presumably are actively mining asteroids and dealing with zero-g combat situations, and a mech-like design could arguably be better; it would presumably be environmentally sealed, or controlled remotely as a drone, and the humanoid limbs would allow for navigation of stations and debris fields, for "hands" to brush aside debris that would interfere with a shuttle's ability to move through a cluttered space, etc. and the heavy weight would be less of a mobility concern, assuming at that stage we have decent propellant systems.
as for the firepower provided by mechs....
- drones
- orbital strikes from cheaply launched, disposable satellites
- artillery
- heavy tanks/ tank hunters
- infantry with single-use missile launchers
these are all cheaper alternatives
@bitterblossom All true but what about shock and awe? A mech has attributes that trigger primal fear in man, it's the shape of a person so it freaks people out.
@bitterblossom The only way a mech could work I guess is if it was indestructible with modern weapons, and it has to have yet unknown powerplants to move. And probably yet unknown metals or fibers for the body.
which is more terrifying? big robot? or seeing a tactical nuke evaporate half your hometown and realizing that ANY enemy soldier, drone, etc, could be carrying more of those? or the sight of actual humans carving up trophies and fetishes out of tortured civvies they've captured?
the uncanny valley effect works with dolls and horror situations, and with terminator type robots that look like metal skeletons and shit. big honking metal box witih guns and a plasma sword or whatever is just cool and awe-inspiring and probably just as terrifying as having an enemy tank roll up in front of you and aim its cannon at you. fear, yes, but not horror...
for combat, they just aren't worth the price point
and the standard giant mech is just tactically inefficient even if we could strap power plants in them strong enough to make them function and not be immobile from the weight, or be reduced to ridiculously short activity cycles. not to mention the enormous silhouettes making them an easy target for even big, clumsy weapons.
with combat, i think best we'll see is exoskeletal frames combined with heavier-than-flak armor, effectively power armor suits, for hyper-specialized heavy support troops; and even then, likely only employed as mercs bc nobody else is going to justify the cost of maintenance/etc for that long term. with standing armies, exo-frames without the excess armor, for fast running and stamina, etc, in urban combat zones, will probably become a normal thing for elite troops like the marines or seals or possibly (not likely imo) green berets.
in terms of big machines, streamlined forms like tanks, jet planes, naval ships, etc, are just better and cheaper all around.
industrially though, an exo frame with mini cranes/big claws for hauling pipes, steal beams, sheet plating, etc around a construction site is totally feasible and profitable for a large enough corp, as it would save literal millions in funding and permits for cranes and other heavy equipment that tends to occupy a lot of space for a single specialized role.