In a techno based society, what is the advantage to having giant bulky robot bodies whose sole purpose is to fire a weapon?
Couldn't the same desired effect have been achieved with machine guns mounted on pivots/tripods?
And why wouldn't you protect the pilot?
A strike squad of terminators could have held off those robot squids.
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They look cool. There is no other reason.
>armored personnel unit
>pilot completely exposed
what a mess
And while I'm at it, are you literally asking for reasoning from the Matrix? Or any sort of thing that doesn't declare itself realistic or being hard sci-fi?
As with a lot of things in softer sci-fi, it's done because it looks cool.
From a practical perspective? Those suits fucking suck. But it made for a cool action scene and got around the 'problem' of using power armour, the lack of a human face to give you empathy with the pilot.
This isn't always a problem, it can be done right (See Pacific Rim, where every Jaeger had its own distinct personality, particularly Gypsy Danger) but for army scenes movies always avoid helmets to avoid completely dehumanising the soldiers and losing a lot of the potential empathy from the audience.
It's why people often end up complaining that when adapting from a book or a manga to a movie, they end up removing the helmets, but it's because of that human factor that's pretty important for the visual storytelling cinema relies on.
Only possible reason would be to have a heavy weapon on a chassis with mobility that is greater than a traditional tire or tread based vehicle .
More stability and a lower profile than an aircraft. But can still rapidly redeploy and reach high points
This only explains reasonably sized mechs. Giant ones are just for fun .
I'm sorry but that scene was just on tv and it makes me really upset with how stupid the design is
>Pacific Rim
>Done right
Really? I hope you weren't serious. Yes, Pacific Rim is cool and all, but logically they had the worst idea ever. They knew there was one entry.
And they had guns.
Put guns around entry.
Done.
Cinematically, it makes sense. No dehumanization, general awesome. But it sounded like you might have been calling it "logical" for a sec.
I really hope I misread.
I was referring to the problem of machines not creating an emotional investment, which is why sci-fi soldier films tend to eschew face covering helmets (for the protagonists at least), citing Pacific Rim as a film where they give the machines a strong sense of personality, although they also rely a lot on cockpit face shots to build that empathy and connection to events for the viewer.
Yeah it also doesn't make sense in universe, either because they already proved they don't need to grapple because they have weapons like that plasma gun on the robot that have the stopping power anyway.
Literally just put the weapon system on the wall they were building.
I think he was talking about cinematically, not in-universe.
Oh thank god you were talking about that.
I have seen far too many people who think Pacific Rim totally makes sense in the real world.
Yeah, I now can see that.
Absolutely true.
Maybe having a person controlled system is harder to hack than a purely digital gun turret system?
Spitballing
I think the point was that by that point humans lacked the materials to have a proper mech.
They might be using the skeletons of those mechs used in the Animatrix without any of the armor covering them since that was all they had.
Have a person control the mounted gun, same amount of firepower with a slight loss of mobility (considering the suits in that movie only moved a few feet).
You'd save a hell of a lot of resources
That one on the right looks dopey as fuck
The thing is (which is what OP mentioned) is that they could have detached the guns, made it more mobile on tripods, and pretty much made it risk-free with good programming.
And then they could have used the mechs as metal for something more important.
I love Pacific Rim, but fuck anyone who tries to justify Jaegers. Even if you somehow managed to justify giant robots over, say, the far more logical solution of millions of guns fixed on the portal, there's the question of why they made robots just large enough to grapple with kaiju rather than way larger ones or ones that are just large enough to mount anti-kaiju weapons.
Matrix was just outright retarded, though. I mean, even by the movies' own internal logic those exo-suits made no sense since we clearly see man-portable weapons can take out sentinels and without relying on dumb robot suits they could just EMP the everliving shit out of robot squids and still be able to shoot their guns. Speaking of which, that's a world where there's sentient AI, life-like virtual reality, anti-gravity, and all kinds of magic, but they haven't invented EMP shielding on their military hardware? You know, shit we have now. At least Pacific Rim was self-aware and stupid. Matrix tried to be smart and ended up being even less logical and consistent.
>made it more mobile on tripods, and pretty much made it risk-free with good programming
Except as they showed with the infantry and the ammo grunts, being mobile didn't do squat against the swarms of tentacle robo-rape.
Well neither did mechs.
wasn't it kinda explained for the former point in the movie? they scraped the first gen jaegers together in 18 months I think he said. Thats not a lot of time to work on the finer points besides "We need something that will beat the shit out of the kaiju and not get blublood everywhere."
Still looked cool either way. Imax3d Pacific Rim is best spectacle.
While the mechs didn't survive they took down a significantly larger number before getting overwhelmed.
Maybe in planets with low-gravity or some asteroids?
Coulda did the same thing with mounted guns, also better reloading options with fixed gun positions
To be fair, neither did the robots. I saw literally no benefit to them being suits rather than weapon mounts since all they do is stand still and shoot anyway. And at least tripods wouldn't be disabled by their own EMPs. Plus the chicks with the rocket launcher were some of the most effective ones in that entire war scene.
I believe there's an early stage were the cockpits were closed. It's because they didn't want to have a robot vs faceless robot fight. It's the same trope as "Heroes don't wear helmets".
Not really. The moving swarms meant staying in any one place for a prolonged period meant death.
That battle wasn't about benefits, it was using literally everything they had as a last stand against an enemy that had more bodies than they had ammunition. The whole battle reeked of desperation more than strategy.
>heroes don't wear helmets
Factually false because roboute guilliman wears a helmet because its tactically sound
>Speaking of which, that's a world where there's sentient AI, life-like virtual reality, anti-gravity, and all kinds of magic, but they haven't invented EMP shielding on their military hardware?
Makes you wonder why humanity decided to blot out the sun permanently and irrevocably destroy earth rather than detonating nukes in the sky to generate EMPs.
I enjoy how we're getting into a heated debate on the practicalities of robots, mechs, and mounted guns, along with the uses of EMPs.
Congrats OP.
>why they made robots just large enough to grapple with kaiju rather than way larger ones
It's a point rendered moot by the simple fact that giant mecha exist in the PR universe, but to play devil's advocate, this could be due to the Square-Cube Law. Humans built the Jaegers as big as they did because if they built them any bigger, the machines couldn't function. Trying to move that much mass would mean the thing either moves too slowly to fight effectively, or it simply can't move at all because there are no available motors powerful enough to shift that much mass.
Of course, this raises the same points already raised about giant humanoid mecha being the most inefficient method of dealing with the portal and its spawn, but yeah, there ya go.
Well yeah. Still doesn't explain why they wasted all their anti-robot guns on useless mechanics suits rather than easier to build, maintain and EMP proof gun emplacements, though. That's the definition of overspeccing.
That could have been made up to help illustrate the moral of the story: man and machine alike destroyed each other and themselves.
Besides, I like to think that both of those worlds were simulations, with the real world being a much more peaceful one shared by enlightened humans and machines.
At least it's internally consistent and humanity didn't build robots that were disabled by their own weapons that offered seemingly no benefit. In Pacific Rim, the Jaegers work. In Matrix, their mecha don't.
>maintain and EMP proof gun emplacements
I think that's what they tried with the central node in the middle of the city. The ones the Swarm massed around and ripped up.
>Besides, I like to think that both of those worlds were simulations, with the real world being a much more peaceful one shared by enlightened humans and machines.
Oh god, you're one of those people? It was a series that had a good first movie that aged poorly. The second and third had no redeeming features and are universally ridiculed for a reason. You can't fan theory them into making sense. They were ass and didn't even make sense using their own retarded plot concessions.
They nuke them,. hundreds of times. It didn't work. Either the machines have EMP shielding, it exists today, bunkers, or some are immune. Actually, I think it is shown that some machines are outright immune to EMP weapons.
>In Pacific Rim, the Jaegers work.
This. Conventional weaponry doesn't work against the Kaiju because Word of God said so. It's a world bereft of logic, like a kindergartener with a force field. Only a force-field-eating dog can break the force field. Anything more and NUH UH I'M TELLING MOM!
I think that the "logic" was because they didn't want to nuke them. So, they build Jaegers instead.
They tried nukes when they were out in the ocean. The movie says this. It didn't work because NUH UH.
More like man was completely fucking retarded, and machines couldn't into modern day technology.
Fucking Terminator Salvation is a masterpiece of logic by comparison, because at least the stupid shit in that one boiled down to "why would robots need motorcycles/desks/moats filled with robot fish?" I can see how fucking Terminators and Hunter-Killers would win the war. I don't see how machines that can be that easily disabled would ever beat anyone.
Note that I'm not complaining about illogical stuff like the human batteries that would result in a net loss of energy due to the inefficiency of converting human body heat to electricity. I'm complaining about plot holes that show up as a result of established plot devices in the series. EMPs exist and they kill machine military hardware. They can still be made even post-apocalypse. How the fuck is humanity losing? The only reason they lose that battle is literally because they choose to use technology that is wrecked by their own weapons and then detonating said weapons in the middle of their last defense rather than, say, planting EMP generators at the perimeter and blowing up all the robots before they even got to Zion. Or EMPing the machine mainframe since they apparently know where it is. Or any number of more useful plans than "EMP our own robots".
Submarine Jaegers would have made sense. Mecha logic totally covers giant robot sharks.
>In a techno based society, what is the advantage to having giant bulky robot bodies whose sole purpose is to fire a weapon?
In a simulation of a techno based society
> Couldn't the same desired effect have been achieved with machine guns mounted on pivots/tripods?
It costs as much resources to simulation of a silly mech than a gun on tripod.
> And why wouldn't you protect the pilot?
Pilot isn't really in the mech.
> A strike squad of terminators could have held off those robot squids.
Far simpler would be some kind of mass delete enemy robot command.
Whole point was the refuge was just one more layer of simulation, that's why Neo still had his powers. They never really got out.
On the flipside, what do people thing about the Landmates from Appleseed?
>Race of machines
>In total control of surface world
>Can't find human city
>When they finally find it, flood it with thousands of completely inefficient sentinels that float about in circles doing nothing but shreking the odd guy every now and then
Pretty shit machine race all in all.
If it's done like Fallout, or the Tau, it's simply so that regular soldiers, which are mobile, autonomous, flexible, etc., are able to field more firepower, are more mobile and more durable
If it´s done like your example or Avatar, it's simply rule of cool
Also
>Couldn't the same desired effect have been achieved with machine guns mounted on pivots/tripods
Obviously not, as those are stationary
They are the frame for a machine that was originally armored. But they can't afford the armor and don't really need it since their enemy isn't using guns inside the city. These vehicles are basically forklifts that can still pick up a gun.
And the city still had the GIGANTIC gun turrets available.
IMO the best idea for mechas ever, and likely the best idea for actually building one, IRL.
He is asking why mechs instead of tanks. Tanks are easier to build and have less useless shit like arms and legs. Tanks can be made to carry more weight, travel faster, and carry better guns pound for pound than you could with trying to make mechs with the same level of tech.
>waaah waaah waaah mechs are silly
>on a board about making pretend
Sentinels can burn their way through the hulls of ships in seconds, no amount of plating on that thing would stop them for even a moment. Still, stopping shrapnel would be nice.....
Pacific Rim is literally a Super Robot movie. Realism shouldn't need to enter at any point.
Really? They had working mech skeletons but couldn't uparmor them *at all*?
why does this post make me want to argue?
Its taking everything I have just to bottle it in.
Turkish Army:
2 ATV's disguised as an APC
I once had to give a hostage cocaine.
We were trying to rescue him and he kept muttering like a coward, hiding in the corner pissing himself and yelling "stay back! Stay back!"
This "innocent civilian" later engaged 2 Tali-ban operatives who were trained by the mujajadeen in hand to hand combat and won.
At the time, I didn't realize he was going through withdrawals. Some people come here cause its the thrill of their life. They pose as journalists, tourists, businessmen, but all they really want is a piece of the fight.
They are scared shitless, scared out of their mind, but all they can think is, "I'm not going back. I'm not going back to America. I can't deal with their bullshit!"
Actually, jets did the job just fine but then the USAF was hit with the retard ball and subsequently reduced to being the Jaeger's ride.
I don't call taking 6 days and losing 3 cities to be very effective.
>In a techno based society
Happy Hardcore or Drum and Bass?
Sure you're in the right thread?
>Armored Personnel Unit
I must be missing what part of that whole thing is armored.
Second Renaissance show'd that the Bots feared only nukes EMP-effect, the heat, pressurewave or radiation weren't such things to fear. They did affect them, but not as drasticly as humans.
So, nuking quit being option when nuke fallout started to affect humans more than Bots.
It technically cost less money then the Jaegers themselves did.
Definitely cool but those little human arms sticking out will get blown off/ripped off immediately as the most obvious weakpoint
Well in that case, don't get hit. The Landmate's entire gimmick is being mobile. And being able to control the damn thing via normal human motion in as small a frame as possible goes along with that.
It's why I don't bother to run anything robutt related. You always get that one asshole who hates fun.
Watch The Second Renaissance. Those machines used to be covered in armor, sentinels ripped through it in a fraction of a second. It does shit all and Zion doesn't have metal to spare. No point in using it.
As for why the APUs are manned, I assumed it had something to do with the Machines' electronic warfare capabilities. Or maybe even just a general distrust of AIs.
Release your hatred
The Machines from The Matrix CAN be built immune to EMPs, they just rarely bother since by the time of the movies they're basically operating on tyranid logic: your soldiers don't need to be any good when you got more soldiers than the enemy has bullets. They can produce more sentinels per second than the humans can take down with an EMP. From their point of view, it doesn't matter if the humans delay their subjugation by another hour here or there. No sense wasting shield materials.
Are you familiar with the term "suspension of disbelief", or do you just hate everything that passes your personal SoD threshold without understanding why?
People don't seem to realise that their dislike for something doesn't actually make it stupid.
The reason they can't shoot the kaiju with missiles and shit is that they bleed highly radioactive blue all over the place. They need to be punched and grappled into submission to prevent catastrophic environmental damage whenever they take a wound. Ranged jeager weapons are designed to get around that in various fashions (like Gypsy Danger's self-cauterizing plasma gun or Striker Eureka's missiles which are designed to explode in a very specific way INSIDE the target), and those tend to require jeager level power sources to function and be short range enough that just putting them on an immobile cannon on the battlefield would be asking for trouble.
It also lost a huge amount of educated people and specialised infrastructure of the kinds normally found in and near cities.
That's not very efficient.
>>can resist, presumably through engineering, the thermal effects of contact initiation of a thermonuclear device as per Second Renaissance
>>can't design EMP shielding
That seems silly within it's own frame of reference
No, those matrix mechs are pretty fucking dumb
Friend have you ever tried building a kaiju killing gun underwater? It is more complicated than it sounds.
Also do remember that in the beginning it was completely unknown where the buggers where coming from, they just started wandering out of the ocean.
Now add millions dead, three cities nuked and cup of suspension of disbelief and you have a functional justification for something crazy like giant robots.
That said they really should have just built a fucking kill box once they found the rift, fuck the costs. Probably would have been cheaper than all those ruined Mk4s.
>Girlyman
>Hero
The main reasons I can see is a frame to carry weight, and not needing to set up the weapon. The mech would allow for soldiers to carry more ammo and armor more effectively, and have aiming systems with recoil compensation to allow for the weapons on it to be fired rapidly and accurately. Mechs like that would be best thought of a transitional creation of the more traditional power armor, before everything can be miniaturized to allow traditional power armor, or to allow for large caliber weaponry to be used rapidly and effectively.
He saved the imperium by surviving long enough to do so.
The reason he survived so long?
He always wore his helmet.