Slayer Anderson
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Winning Peace - Chapter 24
🕑 Added 2024-03-20 11:53:23 +0000 UTC“Okay, so it's been three months since Gundam: Reality was released by the Ministry of Entertainment and Culture. As the title indicates, it's the latest in the nearly two-century spanning list of titles in the titular giant robot franchise originally started in 1979. Now, while the franchise had ventures into AR and simulated VR before, this is its first proper 'full-dive' VR treatment and has faced wide-spread acclaim in most regards. Now, we would be remiss if we did not also mention this is the first post-Short War major Gundam project. Although the original media has long-since passed out of copyright protection, the media's owners have nonetheless made their best attempts at policing the 'canon' of the various universes. As with many licensed mecha-fighting over the years, this title features mechs from many different Gundam timelines and thus, would likely be considered non-canonical on that basis alone.”
The reporter, a woman wearing an avatar skin derivative of Rain Mikamura, from G Gundam, leaned back as she set the stage for her interview. Across from her was a man whose avatar was in a similarly altered skin of McGillis Fareed of Iron Blooded Orphans. Both were seated at a table laden with decorative models and a tumbler of alcohol to one side. Beyond them, the faint conversation of a large gathering could be heard, indications that this was a public venue which had been set aside for their conversation.
“With me today is one of the current highest-ranking players from the last global tournament. The number five, if I recall correctly?” The reporter asked, turning to him from the camera.
The blonde avatar nodded. “That's right. The handle I use in FFFreedom. That's a bit hard to verbalize, so feel free to call me Triple F or TF like most people do. And I know you introduced yourself in the video chat, but...”
“Of course! For the record, I'm Juniper Slytherin. For those just joining us; yes, that's my real name. My great grand-parents were new-age wizarding weirdos and no one since then has wanted to jump through the hoops to change back. Go ahead and make the jokes, I've heard them all.” Giving a dry chuckle, she turned back to the bemused-looking man in a white uniform and clapped her hands eagerly. “Okay, so let's dive right into it, then! The topic that so much of the neo-net has been abuzz with: Are giant robots viable weapons?”
TF chuckled and leaned back as he picked up his drink and took a large draw from it. “Ahh... well, if you want the completely honest answer... it depends.”
Juniper pouted. “You're making it awfully hard to get a spicy headline or caption and we're just out of the gate, TF. C'mon, gimme something juicy!”
The blonde sighed and shook his head and set his glass down to gesticulate with his hands. “Sorry, but what you're asking about is actually really technical. The fact of the matter is that circumstances matter when talking about weapons of war. Audiences tend to look at fictional material as something simple to make unilateral judgments on, when it's usually anything but. I mean, imagine if someone asked you whether or not a sword or a set of bow and arrows was a practical set of weapons?”
Juniper pursed her lips in thought. “Well, if they did it out of the blue, I'd probably say 'no.' Or, at least, I would have fifteen years ago. These days...”
TF wagged a finger at her. “That's my point. Context matters with weapons. Prior to the Short War, even third-world nations had well-stocked armories full of drones with heat sensors and laser-guided weapon pairing for smart munitions. These days, those stockpiles have run dry and whatever's left is almost too valuable to use without spare parts or technical knowledge to repair what isn't already broken. People are grabbing guns that were outdated by my grandfather's time to use down on Earth. When those fail, a machete or knife is better than nothing at all.”
“I... suppose I never thought about it like that,” Juniper admitted.
“There are a lot more considerations that go into whether or not a weapon is actually viable on the battlefield, too. What environment are you fighting in, who are you fighting, what weapons are they using, why are you fighting and what do you hope to achieve, what are your victory conditions... This is the reason a lot of the War on Terror essentially failed even with a string of tactical victories. Hell, the same is true for conflicts like the Vietnam War. Methodology matters just as much in warfare as the weapons you're using, if not more in some situations.”
Juniper nodded slowly, now visibly more invested in the topic. “Okay, so it's less a question of whether or not giant robots, mecha, are viable weapons of war and more a question of under what conditions would they be viable?”
TF grinned as he pointed at her. “Now you're getting it. The big question is whether or not there are any conditions under which mecha could be... if not the best choice in warfare, then at a choice that doesn't actively inhibit your operational goals.”
“So, don't keep us waiting. What circumstances are we looking for?”
TF sighed and adjusted himself in his seat, his eyes fixing on the distant middle-ground past Juniper thoughtfully. “There are a few things that mecha have going for them, admittedly. The first and most obvious is that they have a humanoid body plan. That is, a bipedal frame with two legs, two arms, a central torso, one head, and prehensile grasping hands on the end of each arm. With the new advances in man-machine interfaces, that's an especially significant point in their favor.”
“I see where you're going with this,” Juniper nodded. “If the machine they're piloting is already human-shaped, the individual pilots will already be familiar with how they move and function, therefore requiring less training.”
TF nodded and took a drink. “Now, I have to qualify what I say next with the idea that my assertion rests on what size mecha we're talking about. Most types of what we consider 'power armor,' that is mechanically-assisted exo-suits, are automatically a good idea under about four to six meters. That's where viability starts being questionable due to the simple fact that a bipedal figure, even a heavily-armored one, produces a uniquely-targetable silhouette. Under six meters, or about twenty-feet for my fellow UNAS expats, there's still a lot of viable cover in most terrain types and it's not too hard to get camouflage netting or other kinds of scan-disturbing material over them.”
Juniper's eyebrows rose. “So you're an UNAS expatriate? Can I ask-”
FFFreedom cut her off by waving a hand. “Honestly? I'd rather keep things to the topic of the interview. I understand asking questions is part of your job, but let's just say that there are good reasons I'm living Luna-side these days.'
“Of course, of course. I'm sorry for prying,” Juniper grinned awkwardly.
TF waved her off again with his glass. “Anyway, getting back on topic... The real issue of gundams, giant robots in general, is the giant part of the equation. On a normal terrestrial environment, there's just not much cover that a giant robot can hide behind that will meaningfully shield it. Gundams alone are about the same height as a six-story building, to give you some idea of the problem we're facing. Even with sufficiently-tall cover, though, most pre-Short War engagements were performed with stealth vessels controlling large swarms of comparatively cheap and mass-producible drones.”
Juniper nodded, trying to show she was following. “So even if a gundam, or other mecha, were to take cover behind a large building, it's very likely that the enemy could still target them from other angles fairly easily with expendable drones.”
TF wagged a finger at her. “Drones can also provide telemetry data for a larger munition. And speaking from a position of... well, an undisclosed amount of experience, a six-story building provides a lot less protection than you'd think it would against modern ordinance. Anything that would be rated to take down a gundam would tear through a civilian building like it was paper mache.”
Here the blonde man's avatar paused thoughtfully, his mouth half open for a long moment before he began speaking again. “Pre-war construction, at least. I actually filed a freedom of information request with the Stellar Council, or whatever they call it. The actual name slips my mind right now, but apparently everything built after the SC's formation uses beyond military-grade materials and could probably take a hit that would level anything except hardened bunkers back on Earth.”
Juniper grinned. “That was before I got into reporting, but after the Chinese nukes almost impacted during the Short War, there were plans drawn up to make sure that, if someone was successful, the resulting moon-quakes wouldn't destroy virtually everything.”
TF blinked, cocking his head and nodded slowly. “Yeah, yeah... I remember something about a study-” He shook his head, banishing the thought. “Anyway, just for the sake of argument, I'll say that anyone who needs to take out a giant mecha can reasonably expect to be able to shoot around reinforced buildings with smart or loitering munitions if they can't or don't want to shoot through something.”
“I think that's a fair assertion,” Juniper granted.
“Mecha also run into a lot of problems with moving parts, joints and things,” FFFreedom added, “which is only magnified by their size. So to make them viable you have to make sure all of those weak spots can take a high intensity explosive or a suitably-powerful penetrating high-caliber round.”
“I'm beginning to see the problems,” the reporter admitted with a grimace.
“Now, in the interests of full honesty, there are a great many problems that have been alleviated in the past decade and a half. Specifically in the realm of logistics.” FFFreedom paused to take another sip of his drink and swirl it around his mouth before swallowing. “The bigger the war machine, the bigger the parts and the more parts you need. Especially when we're talking about extraplanetary deployment, logistics limitations like that can be seriously limiting, and that's before you'd get into any interchangeability issues between different models. Not all tanks use the same gearbox, after all.”
Juniper took a deep breath. “I'm beginning to feel a little out of my depth.”
TF chuckled, grinning knowingly. “Thankfully, with your fancy nano-fabbers, we don't have to talk about any of that. That's a huge game changer. Any broken part gets pulled, thrown in the machine, it spits out a new one. Hell, I've even seen some speculation on installing one inside a mecha to solve some problems on the go with internal robotic assembly units. I don't think that's actually viable yet, or will be soon, but it bears mentioning as a possibility. Breakthroughs do happen.”
“All of this seems rather insurmountable,” Juniper admitted with a grimace, then snorted. “You're probably going to irritate a lot of robot nerds.”
“Well, buckle up. Because I'm about to turn right around and tell you we're probably going to see some kind of mecha in military service within five years,” TF grinned, drained the last of his drink and slammed the glass down dramatically.
“Hah! Now there's the kind of thing I like to hear!” Juniper cheered and clapped her hands as her source poured out another glass. “So, hit me!”
“Okay, so long-time aficionados of this argument will probably ping me if I don't at least mention power and expense as drawbacks before I get into why we'll be using them anyway. So, both are essentially non-factors at this point. Modern compact fusion reactors can be rendered safe enough to put in most military equipment. The UNAS had an experimental aircraft carrier in the works with one of those before everything went down and that's before Dr. Lopez refined them further. With modern q-computers running simulations and nano-fabbers to the rescue again, expenses are basically down to man-hours, insurance, utilities, and that type of thing.”
“Okay, I'm feeling cautiously optimistic,” Juniper admitted eagerly.
“I'm also going to get something else out of the way before we go on,” TF cautioned. “The Stellar Council is already rolling out testbeds of exo-suits for construction on the new colony compounds. These are basically powered armors without the weapons. You can look this up and I'll send Ms. Slytherin a few links to check them out and maybe paste in some footage here-”
TF pointed up in one direction, then blinked and pointed to another.
“-or maybe here?”
Juniper giggled and shook her head. “I'll make sure it gets in during editing, don't worry.”
TF chuckled. “Sorry, always wanted to do that. But, yeah, small mechs are on their way in for construction purposes. I think, now that we've got things under control politically, there's talk of using some for prospecting out in the Belt and a few other exploratory missions.”
Juniper cleared her throat, interjecting into the conversation. “A reminder to everyone in the comments' section that nano-fabbers are not perfect matter converters. Sure, if you feed enough rock through them you'll eventually get enough gold or platinum to tile your bathroom with, but it's still necessary to source large deposits of raw materials to bring more into circulation.”
TF, meanwhile, leaned back and chuckled. “Incipient flame wars over barely-relevant minutia. I suppose there's some comfort to be found in the fact that humanity and the internet never seem to change.”
Juniper sighed and slumped. “My official postings are all on the neo-net legit sites that are being licensed by the Ministries. So anyone who posts on them will have their comments tied to their citizen ID number, but if you find my videos on the old net or the new wild sites, you get all the unregulated free speech you ask for.”
“True that,” TF nodded, sighing. After a moment of quiet commiseration, he stretched and flexed. “Alright, so getting back to the heart of the matter. When we're talking about giant robots, I have a hard time imagining them ever being really viable on planets. Even with the advantages of human-like movement, machines of that size are too obvious a target moving at too slow a speed unless they have flight capability. Stick one in a gravity well and you're asking for a long-range munition or an orbital vessel to wipe it off the map.”
“What about force fields?” Juniper asked, her expression a mix of impish and innocent curiosity.
FFFreedom pulled an ugly face. “Listen, I can't endlessly debate 'what-ifs' for developing technology.” He sighed then, and took a large pull from his glass. “I've seen some electromagnetic chaff, reactive-defense lasers, and other stuff that just wouldn't do any good if you drop a really heavy thing from orbit on a machine like that. If and when we figure out force fields or energy shields, I'll reassess my judgments here.”
“More than fair,” the reporter granted.
“But here's the thing,” TF explained. “Space combat? That changes things. I've seen and taken part in some simulations that put gauss-fired and railgun round engagement ranges at about ten-thousand kilometers. Even dropping something as large as a six-story mech into a battlefield that large? Outside of the heat signature, you're not going to be easily tracking that thing, and lightspeed lag is still problematic even there.”
“So gundams are viable in space combat,” Juniper smiled widely.
“Provisionally,” FFFreedom stipulated, dimming her enthusiasm slightly. “I see giant robots working on the same mechanics and logic as fighters. For them to be viable, you have to be able to equip them with a weapon that can damage something much larger, much more important, and/or much more valuable. If you do that at a decent range, I think you can have gundam-type mechs in void combat.”
“I've seen some objections filed by a few people in terms of tensile strength of joints and the g-forces a human-type frame would be subject to,” Juniper stated, flipping the script. “Just to play devil's advocate, of course. I think giant robots are awesome just as much as the next person.”
TF chuckled and extended a hand, the reporter obligingly bumping fists with him. “I consider that a solved issue, truthfully. It was a concern and an argument for a more geometric and stable shape like fighters generally have, but with the material sciences now available... Well, going back to what I said about new Armstrong constructions being able to take a lot of punishment. These are different kinds of stresses we're talking about, but I think my point still stands.”
“We'll chalk that up to theoretically-viable, then,” Juniper nodded in agreement, then leaned forward. “What about optimal?”
TF gave a long grunt, reaching forward and waggling a hand. “Not really. But, to be perfectly fair, 'optimal' is a bit of a high bar for human beings in general. Warfare itself is pretty suboptimal to begin with. But meeting the question face-to-face, I'm going to refer back to another earlier point I made about pre-war militaries using a lot of drones in their engagement doctrines. Despite that, though, we still put pilots in the air and seamen in and under the water.”
Juniper nodded slowly. “I think I see where you're going with this.”
The blonde man nodded as well. “I don't see Gundams going in alone to combat zones, but as a larger ORBAT? I see some serious viability. Especially as a heavy-weapons platform that doubles as a dedicated drone controller. Something like the Wingman Program that was adapted from the old US pre-UNAS. Or, if you want to stay in-media, the Witch from Mercury series did something like that before it eventually got refined in Battle Beyond Mars a few decades later.”
“You know, I went into this pretty pessimistic about everything, but I have to admit you're getting me pretty fired up now.,” Juniper grinned.
“There's a lot more that I could say on the subject, but it boils down to the idea that mobile suits, Gundam, mecha... whatever you want to call them, they could very well have a place in a space-faring military. Deploying them from ships with a complement of drones to control would put another layer of protection and distance between a mothership or carrier and the battle itself. Considering this would mean putting only one pilot at risk per suit instead of an entire crew, there's a cogent argument to be made here.”
“As long as both the drones and the mechs can carry weapons sufficient to damage an enemy's larger vessels,” Juniper added proudly.
TF drained his glass again with a smile. “Good to know you've been listening, but yeah. Depending on how technology develops, I could maybe see mecha in a few other niche roles as well, but I think that's enough for your video without getting into the weeds of fighter doctrine and screening ships.”
“Probably for the best. Maybe I'll have you on again and we can talk those out too?” Juniper asked with a flirtatious wink. “Any note you'd like to leave our audience on?”
FFFreedom sighed, pursing his lips thoughtfully before nodding and beginning to speak.
“The thing to remember is... giant robots are not an optimal path to develop technologically. But, humans are seldom optimal beings. More to the point, technology isn't solely, or even mostly about warfare or practicality or whatever you want to point to in debunking the usefulness of any given branch of development. In a way, mecha are more about filling a deep and abiding need in the human psyche to outsize problems and situations that so commonly outsize us. Being big enough, in other words, to shape our destiny with our own hands.”
“And on that note of surprisingly deep philosophy, I think we're done!” Juniper cheered.
With each of them waving goodbye, the screen went black briefly before playing an outro tune and displaying other recommended videos.
...
I hung loose in the digital void of cyberspace, finding myself pleasantly surprised.
'Huh, looks like I don't always need to do all the work myself… though I did basically make the game to hype up giant robots. Still, I'll have to try to remember to do something nice for them.'
Turning towards the swirling galaxy of programming and computational power, I looked over the program that had finished compiling and nodded.
'Alright Azathoth, we'll be moving to the next stage now that the solar lifters are in production.'
A pulse of affirmative data was my only reply as I sent acknowledgments to Thonis-Heracleion and her cohorts. It really was nice finally seeing things get off the ground in a real and material way.
~~~
...and it's done! A 3.5k treatise on space warfare and giant robots!
Next chapter will be... literally anything else. This one did some brain frying, but it was so fun I couldn't not do it.
I'll update again in a few days with... probably Nexus Event. Where Your God is also calls to me, so we'll have to see.
Until then, I hope everyone is doing well and thank you again for all the support you've given me. I really can't say enough how much I appreciate it!
Comments
gaouw ganteng
So, what you're saying is that RB-79 Ball is the Ultimate Mobile Suit? That sounds legit.
Empty Shelf
Oh definitely. There's a lot to be said for mechs, both on the ground and in space, especially in a story like this where the MC has a multiverse of tech to pull from. My position is more that the chapter's conclusion regarding how viable ground-based mechs would be versus space-based mechs seems backwards. Rather than their uses being extremely limited on the ground, and somewhat limited in space, I'm of the opinion they'd be extremely limited in space, and only somewhat limited on the ground. Of course, that's just like, my opinion, man. :P
Slayer Anderson
That’s fair, though the fact that we’re debating this point does prove there’s significant viability in theory, at the very least.
Empty Shelf
Oops. Mass, my bad. While it's true that you don't really have to worry about resistance or gravity outside the atmosphere, less mass means the same force provides higher acceleration. If you have enough excess capacity to essentially double your mass with largely redundant limbs, you could use that same capacity to double, possibly even quadruple, your weapon load out. If there is an advantage to fielding powered armor in space, it's that using the same weapon system there as you do on the ground drastically simplifies thing like training and logistics. A suitably robust design can, theoretically, be deployed in any environment with only minor modification. Powered armor also provides an advantage at extreme close range, when engaging in metaphorical (or perhaps literal) knife-fighting. The question of how applicable this is depends on what speeds combat occurs at. Ultimately, I think of Mobile Suits the same way I think of helicopters. Versatile and useful in a lot of situations, but there's a reason we also use airplanes.
Slayer Anderson
Counterpoint: Weight isn’t a thing in zero/micro-g. Virtually anything can accelerate as fast as anything else with proper thrust/mass ratios and suitable material strength to take the Gs.
Slayer Anderson
Guns vs Clubs suffers from a hyperbolic logical falacy when using it to make the comparison between mecha and something like aircraft. My point in asserting that humanity make suboptimal choices was that practicalities are often ignored in the face of other considerations.
Ryune
Not quite. A solar lifter pulls material up from a star’s surface to be used in construction.
NinjaOfOrthanc
a machine able to move a star around
Fish man I don’t fish
I did not expect to get some philosophy from here of places but Alr also I can’t wait to see Mecha in action
godUsoland
Thanks for the chapter! Yeah, Gundams aren't optimal, but we'd all like to pilot or build one! Wait till someone builds a Gundam Deathscythe! That would look so cool!
Empty Shelf
Interesting perspective. I will say that one thing that power armor has over other weapon systems is modularity. In theory, you could simply simply attach new weapons and equipment to a mech the same way infantry does which, assuming you're willing to accept the limitations of that approach, makes them a lot more adaptable. You can also use powered armor for a lot of things that other war machines can't, like search-and-rescue, construction, transportation, and pretty much anything else where a 20+ tall human would be useful. Outside of hyper-specialized combat roles, you can use them just about anywhere. Conversely, the biggest problem with power armor, setting aside technological and logistical issues, is the "power" to weight ratio. Artillery, for example, is basically 100% GUN. Tanks and mobile artillery are all about hauling as much GUN as possible, along with enough armor to protect it. Fighters/bombers exchange the armor for speed, but they're fundamentally still an answer to the same question. Mobile Suits asks a different question: "I've built a giant robot, now how do I put a gun on it?" I'd actually argue the opposite of the expert here. I think Mobile Suits/power armor actually have more utility on the ground than in space. While the human shape is optimized for moving around on the ground, even at large scale, it isn't meant for space combat, and that becomes apparent when you start asking questions. "Hey, why do our space-based weapon systems have legs? We could cut the weight down by a third and not affect performance. And why does this thing have arms? Couldn't we simply give it a turret mounting instead, and use the weight we saved to give it a bigger gun? And heck, if we gave this thing some fixed wings it could potentially operate in atmosphere, which would...Dammit, I reinvented the gunship again, didn't I?" Of course, Gundam has battleships and space fighters too. But they're made of paper-mache and armed with pop-guns and water pistols, while the Gundams are powered by bullshit and piloted by genetically-modified literal superhumans. Not arguing against them in-story, by the way, I just think it's a fun debate to have. Especially because in this story, they are, in fact, powered by bullshit and piloted by genetically-modified literal superhumans.
godUsoland
What exactly is a Solar Lifter?
David Hedges
I didn't see your first reply before I made my second reply on my own comment to expand a little on what I was saying. I was just adding to the conversation, not trying to force you to not put mechs into the story. I even said I'm perfectly fine with it in the story, even if it clashs slightly with the original setting. How much it clashes depends on the types of mech, style, and tech used. I don't find mechs grating despite them being unrealisticn, which is strange because I do usually find obviously unrealistic things annoying. I have read a half dozen battletech stories, and battletech had all sorts of 'realism problems'. As for optimization not being the point of human experience, that's true, but I'm not sure how that is a rebuttal to the discussion on the practicallities, or lack thereof, of mechs in a realistic military scenario. Just because people can make suboptimal choices doesn't make said choices any less suboptimal. You can pick guns or clubs to outfit your entire army, just because societies decide to pick clubs doesn't suddenly make guns the wrong choice. It's just that when it comes to military stuff, most societies who choose the suboptimal route don't usually stick around for the long term, or they get tired of the consequences and change their minds later. None of my comments were meant to be a 'I'm dropping or threatening to drop the story' comment. I was just saying that it is hard to engineer/write a scenario where widespread use of mechs in a setting is the realistic practical choice.
A person
Love mecha, even if impractical. Also found it funny that 95% of the chapter was people talking about mecha, but the real game changer is: > solar lifters are in production.'
Phnglui mglw'nafh R'lyeh
"Alright Azathoth, we'll be moving to the next stage now that the solar lifters are in production." If you have matter converters and can take mass from a sun, you can use mechs in war and it will work. Any meme strategy can work if you can field billions of units. You can have slapping robots and you'll drown your adversaries in material.
Zerak
So he is preparing for when he will become hands on with humanity again. The citizenship verified comments, and such changes will change people’s perception. If you went back 40 years and tried to sell the idea of a device that would allows governments and corporations to listen to you and track you, and have patterns for your spending habits, you likely count pay people to use it even with the convenience that cellphones have. So over 10-20 years he can shift public perception specially with the boom of the number of people in the new generation (via tube grown babies). So he can probably phase out a lot of things from the collective psyche, or even how people view government. With shift in thinking her can take a leadership roll for humanity without it being as much a burden or as much typical bureaucratic BS. Specially with how much higher the level of education is. As the biggest ally to a corrupt government is an uneducated, or misled public. It really would be stupid to not have a seat at the big boy table once humans join the wider galactic community. With the increase in human lifespan I can see things shifting to something like the matriarchs for the Asari but different. Maybe something like government being for civilian daily life, while the army is a separate entity, and you have something like a senate that has an open floor where anyone with the right qualifications can join (education or experience, not a popularity contest). Maybe something like the top people in each field (including stuff like gaming or painting) can be representatives and others not representatives would still be able to observe live but they would talk in a separate queue managed by mods and then the important or frequent topics brought to the main discussion chat (everything would be done online due to planetary distance). And voting for everything would be open to the public rather than just voting for your representatives. The more people attending the vote the less weight the representatives vote has as it’s split back to the people there.
Slayer Anderson
Next chapter. But yes, she survived.
Slayer Anderson
Again, I'm not contesting the point. I just think that humans don't always take the optimal path. As far as Gundam being in a different genre, I don't think that's a relevant point to the in-universe discussion of giant mecha. Both are sufficiently Sci-fi that I can only recommend dropping the story if you dislike the inclusion.
Apallo Berryman
So she survived? What happened with the merge?
David Hedges
For example, you use space to negate a bunch of problems the idea of mech on planets have, but you just make a space plane style machine with missles that could do the same job in space that a mech supposedly would, and it would be much less prone to mechanical complications and failure. All that said, I am perfectly willing and content to just ignore that sort of thing if you want to have the humans use Gundams. My only serious concern is that it kinda grates against the more sci-fi style and setting of Mass Effect since they are from a different genre. Kinda like how having an army of ghosts would clash with the setting, although mechs don't clash as harshly with normal space Sci-fi as something like ghosts would.
Slayer Anderson
See the final long paragraph of the interview for a catch-all rebuttal to points like these. I'm not contesting it's a valid argument, just that optimization often isn't the point of the human experience.
David Hedges
The real problem with mechs is that almost anything that makes mechs viable also almost always makes traditional weapon or vehicle designs even nore viable. Of course, there are probably situations where it could realistically be viable with certain sets of sci-fi tech that advantage a humanoid military vehicle over a more traditional military vehicle, but it would have to be an extremely specific and niche situation. Probably so niche and specific that it makes the production of such machines cost inefficient for how rare the use case is, so they won't be made anyways. If you want 'realistic' mechs then go the the 'sports/entertainment' explanation/scenario or have it be something like reusing magic kaijuu parts (claws to swords) that are only useful in a humanoid shape and cannot be replicated or overly modified by humans. Mechs for industry or entertainment are much easier to make realistic in a setting than for serious military use.
