Japanese Politicians Announce Plan to Build Gundams

[Little2Raph]

I don't think legs will be the big weak spot of a humanoid mech, it'll be armor. These mechs are huge, covering all that area with decent armor would weight WAAAAAAAY too much to keep the thing mobile so you'd be stuck with armored car levels of armor, can't even slope it properly (armor angled more than 45° from the path of the projectile deflects some of the force outright and is more effective). A frigging Browning M2 would rip through that. The whole point of a tank is to withstand MG fire so it can move through areas that would be kill zones for infantry. Gundams are on the level of Nazi supertanks (P-1000, for example) of impracticality, there's only so much weight that your engine can move and the more weight that is the more likely it'll break down.

Modern tanks are built extra flat so they can take cover more easily, hiding the more vulnerable (relatively speaking, turrets have like 50% thicker armor) body of your tank behind a hill and only having the turret poke out makes it much harder to spot and kill. Making your system stand vertically is the exact opposite of that.

Also the biggest threat to tanks are urban combat (where infantry can move unseen into the weak areas of a tank and deliver an AT rocket at close range, on an open battlefield the short range of those things and inability to deal with modern MBT front armor makes them significantly less effective) and air strikes (especially helicopters). None of these benefit from a bipedal mech either.

If you want a legged tank then build something like a crab with many legs that can be replaced on the field and stays close to the ground. Plus if it can stay mobile with a few legs destroyed it's more durable than a tank when it comes to hits to the movement system, a tank has only two treads and if one breaks the mobility is heavily impacted. If a HEAT or AP hit to a leg could only destroy that leg and have no real impact on the main body you'd have highly increased durability to side attacks.

As much as I love giant robots, I have to agree with that one guy who said they should be building robots to help clean up after a nuclear disaster. It's not that I think a mech would be impractical (I do) but I'd rather the nations of the world build machines to better our lives, not to destroy them.

That's easier said than done because radiation damages circuits and corrupts memory. Imagine a constant EMP going off. NASA uses really old hardware with huge wires and transistors that require a lot of energy to flip because of the radiation in space.

Pretty much exactly this. However, if they start raising old WW2 battleships and converting them into starships then I will cheer. . .

 

[Zombie_Fish]

...members of the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democratic_Party_(Japan)]...

What? Why can't the UK Liberal Democrat Party be that epic?

that is a terrible idea!
dont you remember what happened last time america had giant robots?
*image snip*
just sayin...

Good point. What we need is the previous time [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3hKkaPgsEs] America had giant robots.

This reply to you may have just been an excuse to post about Megas XLR again.

 

[Shakura Jolithion]

After reading all the responses, I gotta say I thought of another problem: How are you going to find a good enough pilot to manage QWOPing [http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html] these things?

Also, for space combat... yeah, no. I've seen *very* few fictional works that give an idea of what space combat would be like. Think of how ballistic missiles work against units in open fields. Now instead of having just an open field, you have an open 3D space that's full off... nothing but space. And any time something moves, it's going to keep moving. Giant robots are a cool idea in fiction, but impractical and worthless (at least for combat) in reality.


Also, I propose we all start a political party in each of our countries called the Giant Robot Party, and we all run for U.N. If we're lucky, we can replace *all* wars with one on one giant robot combats. Plus, wars will be less expensive when you sell spectator seats! Peace prize, please! D:

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Build Armored Cores. I know, I'm a fan, but still, those things are formidable and don't require technology we don't have. Not to mention sturdier.

 

[johnnyLupine]

If gaming has taught me anything its that building giant bi-pedal tanks never ends well. the only logical conclusion to this news is terrorists with some crazy scheme taking over the base the dammed thing is being built in, resulting in some guy destroying it from the back of a jeep or other military vehical, imagine the money a goverment would have had to of invested in such a project, all down the drain, if unemployment and welfare is bad after this recent economic crisis then imagine what it would be like after a even more money is poured out of the global economy and into a second mech project to replace the first!

terrorists are clearly going to choose softer targets after that and some unfortunate oil tanker is going to have to pay for it, massive ammounts of money is going to need to be put into cleaning up the mess and a crazy ex-president or something is going to have to sword fight a guy who was a child soldier, or something.

 

[John Funk]

I hope this will start a cold war between Japan and America, but instead of building nukes, we build giant robots.

that is a terrible idea!
dont you remember what happened last time america had giant robots?

just sayin...

...members of the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democratic_Party_(Japan)]...

What? Why can't the UK Liberal Democrat Party be that epic?

that is a terrible idea!
dont you remember what happened last time america had giant robots?
*image snip*
just sayin...

Good point. What we need is the previous time [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3hKkaPgsEs] America had giant robots.

This reply to you may have just been an excuse to post about Megas XLR again.

Gentlemen, gentlemen.

If I may.

This is all the (kind of) giant robot America needs.

 

[Loop Stricken]

Wait... Macross is Robotech?

That explains everything!

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

My brother actually raised a potential point that while, as everyone says, this thing would be more or less useless on land, it may have some purpose in space development, which is incidentally where all Gundam series go; while a machine couldn't have the hand articulation a person could, it might still be able to have some interesting uses out in space that couldn't be achieved otherwise. I can still imagine the legs getting in the way, though.

 

[Risingblade]

America must respond to this by building mobile armors. Big Zams for everyone!

 

[saintdane05]

I call the FA-78!

 

[Anthony Ledinh]

Umm, I think Ill leave this here...
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/guntoting-robot-controlled-by-your-smartphone-20120731-23bgp.html

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

This is a fancy term for "Lets give the Electronics/Robotics sector a bigger budget", nothing more, nothing less. Basically what this means is they will develop stuff meant for Gundams but really just improves the quality of technology in the electronics or robotics area so they can remain competitive.

 

[Madara XIII]

WE ARE FUCKED!!!

I'm packing my bags and moving to CANADA


So without further ado I hereby welcome the new Gundam Piloting Overlords

<youtube=ZMTfWsb-jQk>

 

[Lee Kok]

Bring on a Wing Zero and USA will bow to them as 1 is more then enough to destroy them. If there a future need then create 00 Raiser.

 

[Ash Catchum]

Well honestly to those who say that giant mechs would be impractical think about it like this. In Gundam the forerunner of the zaku was used for construction of space colonies and on the lunar surface. That is very practical considering the power requirements in space would probably be less and it wouldn't need much armor against weapons, just radiation shielding and proper sealing against the vacuum. But one thing they have in the series is a minovsky fusion reactor, which is a scaled down hydrogen reactor from how they explain it.It made they manueverability, atitude control, and mobility possible. that would meet the energy requirements, but this is the real world and we either don't have or haven't revealed that type of tech yet. Also the reason why it worked on the show is because the reactor emitted a particle as a by product, the minovksky particle that interfered with electromagnetic radiation. That means every type of precision weapon we have is effectively useless as you cant get any kind of radar lock on the mech: its a walking ECM. Now we also don't have that particle, so yes its impractical in a military sense as of now, but who knows what we will discover in the near future. And this is Japan we're talking bout. I'm sure with all the weird stuff they research they've probably worked hard on defense systems of all kinds that we never hear about.........

 

[Amy Doug]

GO FOR IT!!