Just out of curiosity, anyone interested in doing a semi-serious debate on the pros/cons of mechs with me? I really don't see the advantage of massive scale humanoid robots; exoskeletons/power armor are in a category that I can see being useful, but past a certain point the bipedal form only hinders, rather than helping.

Well, Grif, when you have an Emperor class Warmonger Titan, how the hell is someone going to stop it?
You don't even need to circle around the buildings.
Or the enemy.

Giant railgun tank.
There's a point where bipedals aren't as handy anymore and tanks become usefull.
If you destroy a joint it'll topple to the ground.

I'd love to have some debate, except I can't think of any advantages, so I don't think I'd be very interesting to talk to.

I guess the main thing would be the propaganda/terror factor, more than anything else.
In theory they'd also be more practical for use in very rough terrain than tanks and whatnot. But that depends on the level of sophistication you think realistic.

Yeah but, when you have the technology to build giant bipedals, surely one would be able to make huge gunships too, no?

A gunship ain't as scary and terrorising as a giant walking death-machine that's shooting you with tons o' weapons.

How would you know?

Big old hulking machines aren't as useful as millions of small AI-controlled rockets. Past a certain tech level, large scale or even human scale isn't all that useful. Even now in current times, if you could mount a single missile on one of those quadrotor minicopters and field thousands of the things at once, you could probably overwhelm or outmaneuver modern-day air defenses.
Excuse me if that's not at all true, I'm going by what I've seen in air defense (Phalanx machine guns, flack, SAM, etc).

I think a hexapod or a quadruped would be much better then a bipedal, shooting off one leg wont be as devastating.

Frankly? I think full-blown mechas, as in 3-storie-high ones, are just not gonna happen. The cost/efficiency and the sheer amount of materials and technology required to make one of those would make it simply not worth the effort. I believe that the closer to a mecha we will ever get, and even stretching it quite a lot, would be something closer to what was seen on Lost Planet: A mobile weapons platform, in which a single pilot could fit in a somewhat crowded cockpit, coupled with stubby legs for climbing steep slopes or rubble.


What I do believe might be feasible, though, would be something along the lines of "mechanized infantry", like a larger version of power armor, somewhat bigger than a man but small enough to fit through, say, a set of double doors. Since warfare is becoming more and more urban nowadays, it could be pretty useful to have something with the resistance of a small tank but mobility similar to that of a soldier.

agreed; anything bigger than 5 meters would be a bit impractical, especially in urban combat (VSes in Lost Planet are a good size of mech). Regarding whether bipeds are more useful than quads or more really depends on what you want: I think of bipeds as being more agile at the cost of stability and load capacity, while quads and up can move while firing large recoil weapons and have better stability, but at the cost of weight and the complexity of synchronizing those legs, especially on uneven terrain.

I think that bipeds only become practical in few situations, but are capable of a far wider range of environments when compared to tank lags and quads. If you mounted thrusters on the feet or legs, it'd also be better in space than most other types of legs, excluding thruster pods.

Pretty much everyone has said what I was gonna say.
Huge scale mechas aren't feasible, except for the intimidation factor. If you see a 5 story robot come walking over a hill, raining destruction down on everything, you will ♥♥♥♥ yourself from fright. Until you realize that it's probably not that difficult to take down, and expensive as ♥♥♥♥, so blow it up once and you won't have any real problems.
Powered exoskeletons or something equivalent on the other hand, would be super effective. Get a group of soldiers with robot suits, big guns, and (literal) balls of steel, and you will have one deadly fighting force on your hands.

I can't stop thinking about Iron Man or Space Marines now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7T-6ThKoJ0

Something like this would be feasible, practical and usefull.

biggest problem with large-scale mechs (esp. bipedal) is that they're guaranteed to be worse at moving around than airplanes

and no matter how good your AA is, a tactical nuclear weapon will ruin your day