I cannot answer this question objectively. Mechs are too fucking cool and I want to see them too much.

Definitely rule of cool.

The problem is that they’re unnecessarily complex, and bulky, and don’t really offer any thing more than what you can get with more traditional platforms.

You’re wasting tech and effort on just making them functional, where a traditional platform could be made extremely capable with that same tech.

Take Star Wars walkers. Chop the legs off, install repulsorlift. Suddenly a slow vulnerable platform becomes fast and nimble and even harder to kill.

Boston Dynamics got started making weird leggy robots specifically for terrain that’s too rough for wheels and tank tracks, so if there was somehow a need for a bipedal robot it might end up looking somewhat like a mech.

My guess is that legged ground based war machines are usually going to have 4+ legs for stability, though. Airborne drones are probably going to be way more common.

Personally, I hope we achieve a utopian future where war is obsolete, scarcity is history, and we build giant mecha robots and battle with them as a power sport

Bipedal locomotion has some pretty big drawbacks. Like falling over. You’d be surprised how many people die that way.

Best not build trillion dollar robots that can trip and fall. You become vulnerable to obstacles, Mines, tripwires, and Ewoks.

I could see it personally. Targeting systems, bigger heavier equipment capabilities, nimbleness over odd terrain. The only obvious oversight is that drones exist now and are a much more valid platform, just in larger numbers. The extra power required for all the bs could be better utilized for drone batteries, the weapons could be mounted on vehicles. Seems a bit unnecessary but for maybe a few niche scenarios

It’s your standard superweapon problem. Why put all the money and resources into a single massive weapon that can be destroyed when you could instead make a lot of smaller, more practical stuff for the same price? We don’t make battleship sized tanks, and not just because of the physics problems they’d have trying to move on land. Hell, we don’t make giant battleships for the sea any more either, and that’s the one place where there isn’t a physics problem.

What advantage is there to using a giant robot? What does it do that’s more effective than existing vehicles, drones, weapon platforms etc? Sure, it can walk over terrain that might be hard for some ground vehicles, but we already have shit that can fly. It could have multiple weapons to choose between if it uses them by hand, but we are still paying for those and could instead mount them on cheaper platforms and use them all at once. Other than style points, the only thing I can think of is the utility that comes from having giant hands to pick stuff up. Being a heavily armed combat crane is probably not worth the investment.

I love mecha, but the larger you are, the easier it is for things to find you. this is why tanks try to stay low to the ground.

and walking is a really inefficient mode of transit compared to wheels or treads. and keeping 50+ tons of mecha balanced on two legs while going up hill or on rough terrain would be quite a feat.

so no, barring tremendous advances in point defense (to counter drones and atgms), I don’t see it happening any time soon, and even then it’d have to be in response to some other pressure.

I feel like giant robots are only necessary once you have regular sized robots to deal with, and by then we would have likely found a better, more efficient tool besides “robot but bigger.”

I doubt it. The logistics just doesn’t really work out. You can go over uneven terrain with a tank and you can probably pack a much bigger gun on a tank than on a mech, seeing as you have better support (treads instead of 2-4 feet).

Also, tanks are sturdy with thick armor with minimal weak spots. A mech with legs is an invitation for an attack. Disable one leg and the mech is not longer a threat, and again, limited weight on those legs means limited armor.

Also, I very much doubt you’d have a human sitting on the inside. Why would you? The human takes up space and could just as easily sit remotely and control the mech wirelessly, like how drones are piloted. Or even better, make the mech autonomous. If we have mech technology, we probably have that technology too.

So yea, nah. It’s a rule of cool thing, not an actual realistic thing I would say.

Absolutely. Humanoid robots would be effective because we live in a world suited for humanoids.

If physics was no problem, many things become viable solutions to real world problems. I’d go so far as to say that every world problem is, eventually, a problem of physics.

Mechs as vehicles, absolutely not. It’s much too complicated and fragile, one mild hit and it won’t be able to move.

Small legged robots in large numbers is an other discussion though, and a scarier one.

Depends on the anime mech. Big-O probably wouldn’t be very useful.

I imagine this extends to mechs: humanoid robots belong in the trash

I would point to construction cranes as a case study in favor of mechs. At its core, a crane lifts loads heavier than humans or even teams of humans can manage. But as they are, they’re kinda slow and are finicky, requiring great care and slow operation.

If you had a mech, moving the raw materials up would be no big deal. Although one could argue that outfitting a crane operator with equivalent dexterous control of a crane would enable similar improvements, but in a smaller, stationary footprint.