Big robots and classical-style melee warfare?

[13_CBS]

Big robots are awesome. Hilariously impractical and probably almost physically impossible, but awesome. So is pre-medieval European warfare--watching (historically inaccurate) movies about Greeks and Romans duking it out with other peoples is also awesome (see: Gladiator, 300).

So...how would you go about combining both?

This came about when I was playing Rome: Total War, and was wiping the pathetic Romans off the face of the earth with the unstoppable might of my Seleucid pike phalanxes and cataphracts. I thought, "You know, it'd be kinda cool if we had, like, big mecha pike phalanxes facing off against big mecha maniples and stuff," and I started wondering what kind of changes Earth, as it is right now, would need to make it work.

I'm not looking for changes to modern society and warfare that are necessarily possible--this is just a thought exercise for great justice and awesome.


So here's the goal...

What kind of political, technological, military, and economic changes would modern day earth need in order to convert all major land military conflicts from its current state into one dominated by...

1) Large (20+ feet in height), human-piloted, and preferably bipedal and humanoid vehicles

2) Melee combat, preferably similar to melee combat as it was conducted in Europe, the North African coast, and the Middle East, ca. 500 BCE - 300 AD

As a side note, for engineering issues, feel free to come up with phlebotinum to make stuff work. As I said, the solutions to this "problem", for the sake of this exercise, don't necessarily have to be entirely possible. (Though kudos to you if you make them as reasonable as you can!)

A preliminary list of things that must be changed in order to have big robots with swords beating each other up...


Combat and Technology (engineering issues)

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1) Ranged weaponry, particularly anti-armor weaponry and long-range ballistics, must be made obsolete somehow, or otherwise rendered ineffective against robots, either through some kind of special armor that can only be penetrated by a certain technology or something else.

2) Aircraft must be made obsolete somehow, or otherwise rendered ineffective against robots.

3) Nuclear weapons must be made obsolete somehow.

4) Urban warfare must somehow be made less important, or robots must be engineered so that they can be effective in urban combat.

5) Robots must somehow be more cost-effective than tanks in most or all combat situations.

6) Robots must be somehow logistically easier to maintain than tanks.

7) We need a way to actually make the darn robots work, what with their complex leg machinery and everything.

8) Melee weaponry capable of being wielded by robots must be made so that they're actually more effective against other robots than, say, a missile.

9) Robots must be dexterous enough to wield a melee weapon effectively.

10) Robots will need some kind of effective and efficient power source (kinda falls under the logistics issue).

11) Robots must be designed so that they can be deployed at least as quickly as main battle tanks.

...and that's all I can think of at the moment.

Political

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1) Either political attitudes, public opinion, or nuclear weapons themselves must change so that countries don't just start nuking one another at a certain point in a war.

2) The goals of warfare must changed so that "beat up the other guy's robot army" is in there somewhere. Not necessarily the ultimate goal, but there nonetheless.

...and I can't really think of anything else right now.

Economic

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Current world financial issues aside, I think a lot of the changes will actually be mostly industrial than "economic" per se...

1) Robot-making factories must be built, and probably lots of them.

2) Aircraft and ranged weaponry production facilities must be shut down or at least minimize production.

3) Robot production must be made feasible.

...and I can't think of anything else at the moment.

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?

[Cubey]

Mobile Suit Gundam already half-answered your question 30 years ago.
Minovsky Particles

End result: giant robots are feasible, and long-range weapons (really long, like ballistic missiles) are easy to intercept, while homing systems are jammed easily. Short range shooting weapons are still usable, whether the gun is mobile suit- or human-sized.

How to make ALL ranged weapons completely useless on the battlefield? I have no idea.

[The_JJ]

Well, Dune type speed limit sheilds makes melee justifiable.

But, honestly, if you're going to construct a world as demanded in there, you're just going to open yourself up to more holes. Run it on rule of cool and be done with it. Anime does it, why not you?

On a more serious note, nuclear fusion/antimatter works well for most 'future compact energy' but for a little curveball, throw on some solar, maybe for just one faction, because then they're all shiny black and awesome. Might help explain your urban problem (no sunlight indoors.)

Now, if you do somehow justify cutting out missile (long range) weapons, cutting tanks is quite simple. Every seen a tank manuver? Bipedal bots would have an edge.

That said... go cataphracts!
We don't need no tactics, just enough room to pick up speed. *evil laughter*

[Poison_Fish]

And here I was thinking warstriders from Exalted.

Not that it's based on Earth or anything.

[Trizap]

Mobile Suit Gundam already half-answered your question 30 years ago.
Minovsky Particles

End result: giant robots are feasible, and long-range weapons (really long, like ballistic missiles) are easy to intercept, while homing systems are jammed easily. Short range shooting weapons are still usable, whether the gun is mobile suit- or human-sized.

How to make ALL ranged weapons completely useless on the battlefield? I have no idea.

hmmmmmmm............well, yea I don't think bullets can be made completely useless...........maybe some kind of bulletproof shielding or something kind of force field is invented and people can't figure out how to make lasers for some reason, and that such force fields can only be penetrated by large mecha-sized melee weapons?

hmmmmmmm..............which basically means if you want a setting big robots and classical melee warfare, your going to have to make something that functions both as a NGE AT Field and a Minovsky particle.

[UltraDude]

hmmmmmmm............well, yea I don't think bullets can be made completely useless...........maybe some kind of bulletproof shielding or something kind of force field is invented and people can't figure out how to make lasers for some reason, and that such force fields can only be penetrated by large mecha-sized melee weapons?

hmmmmmmm..............which basically means if you want a setting big robots and classical melee warfare, your going to have to make something that functions both as a NGE AT Field and a Minovsky particle.

Sounds like an AT Field; the melee weapons are able to pierce the barrier because you need to use the field's phlebotinum to pierce it, but for whatever reason the projection range is so limited that you're forced to melee.

Still, shells have one use remaining - Revolver Stakes!

[Trizap]

Sounds like an AT Field; the melee weapons are able to pierce the barrier because you need to use the field's phlebotinum to pierce it, but for whatever reason the projection range is so limited that you're forced to melee.

Still, shells have one use remaining - Revolver Stakes!

maybe if the range is too far, it completely loses it strength, and it requires too much power to be sustained by batteries in the stakes?

[Kalbron]

Regardless of anything else, you won't see the classical bi-pedal 20 foot tall robots fighting. Ever. The square-cubed law makes certain of that.

[Trizap]

Regardless of anything else, you won't see the classical bi-pedal 20 foot tall robots fighting. Ever. The square-cubed law makes certain of that.

*smacks upside head*

quiet, or you will kill another catgirl.

[The_JJ]

It's a legitimate point. We're more or less being asked to justify this via catgirl means.
Look at it this way, if you think up some crazy reason to fufil all of the above components, you're solution will be resting on a bed of similar problems.

This has never stopped anyone.

[KnightDisciple]

Well, it could occur through the same means that keeps non-melee weapons from being used.

That is, exotic particles and fields come into play. Said particles actually reduce the apparent weight of the mobile suit, so that they don't sink into the ground. They're used in "structural integrity fields" that keep it from being as easily damaged. Said particles might also enable easier flight in atmosphere and out.

Plus, exotic alloys can always come into play for structure.

[HamHam]

1) ECM advances beyond the ability of offensive systems to coup. Thus, laser and radar guidance, cruise missles, smart bombs, uavs, and all those other fancy modern toys become useless. Nothing more sophisticated then simple ballistics is possible.

2) The basic design of a giant robot is to place as much power into the hands of a single individual as possible. Thus, society has to be of a form that encourages this. So, basically feudalism.

[Frosty]

Didn't this already happen in Gundam Dynastic Warriors?

[Swordguy]

Check out BattleTech - they've already answered most of your questions for you. They even try to justify as much as possible with real-world science (with the understanding that some things just aren't explainable, and if you can't deal with that you should go play 40K or something).

However, there's one fact that really screws giant robots - their target profile. ANY giant robot inherently has more surface area than a tank. Therefore, for any given weight of armor, no matter how awesome it may be, a tank can mount it thicker (and thus more protective) for the same weight. There's simply no way around it.

For example: Assume a Mech has a surface area of 100 units, and a tank has a surface area of 50 units. If the Mech mounts 10 tons of armor that cover it uniformly to the depth of 2 inches, then the tank mounting 10 tons of armor will have an armor depth of 4 inches. QED, a Mech is inherently less armored than a tank of equal armor mass.

BattleTech has to jump through a LOT of hoops to make this work (tanks have a lot of arbitrary mass penalties to make them inferior to Mechs - but it's not as inferior as Mech-centric fans would like it to be).

[factotum]

For example: Assume a Mech has a surface area of 100 units, and a tank has a surface area of 50 units. If the Mech mounts 10 tons of armor that cover it uniformly to the depth of 2 inches, then the tank mounting 10 tons of armor will have an armor depth of 4 inches. QED, a Mech is inherently less armored than a tank of equal armor mass.

But presumably the mech would be considerably more manoeuvrable than the tank, and you shouldn't discount that advantage--there are light scout vehicles all over the real world that dump armour in favour of speed, so they can get in and out without any of the enemy's big guns having much chance to hit them. (This was also the principle behind the battlecruiser, of course, where it didn't work so well--however, "fast and manoeuvrable" is a bit of a relative term when you're talking an 800 foot long ship weighing tens of thousands of tons!).

[Swordguy]

But presumably the mech would be considerably more manoeuvrable than the tank, and you shouldn't discount that advantage--there are light scout vehicles all over the real world that dump armour in favour of speed, so they can get in and out without any of the enemy's big guns having much chance to hit them. (This was also the principle behind the battlecruiser, of course, where it didn't work so well--however, "fast and manoeuvrable" is a bit of a relative term when you're talking an 800 foot long ship weighing tens of thousands of tons!).

That was the thought behind BattleTech when it was written - no tank ever jumped up and down on another tank - but developments in warfare since 1984 have proven that theory wrong. What you can see, you can hit. Even if you can't see it, you can make a solid effort at hitting it anyway (with tandem-charge warheads, for example).

Modern targeting systems are simply that good.

And we aren't talking about space-bourne Gundams either (which exhibit delta-v that would snap the pilot's neck like a twig, to say nothing about their observed maneuvers in atmosphere, which would DEFINITLY, beyond a shadow of a doubt, kill the pilot). There's a maximum delta-v that a 20+ ton Mech can exhibit without overtaxing the frictional capacity of the ground it's standing on. And that delta-v is nowhere near enough to dodge missile or gunfire from a modern targeting computer.

Heck, a very large portion of the misses our tanks suffer in combat or exercises are due to human error or poor human reactions. If the computers were allowed to run the whole thing, they'd be FAR more accurate. Having a human hand at the control is (for now) considered to be more important than near-perfect accuracy.


Mechs might have made a LITTLE sense in the future of the 1980's, but they make next to none in the future of the 2000's, which is sad. Besides, you simply have to ignore the armor bit - I just felt remiss in not pointing it out, given the OP's statements.

[Drascin]

And we aren't talking about space-bourne Gundams either (which exhibit delta-v that would snap the pilot's neck like a twig, to say nothing about their observed maneuvers in atmosphere, which would DEFINITLY, beyond a shadow of a doubt, kill the pilot). There's a maximum delta-v that a 20+ ton Mech can exhibit without overtaxing the frictional capacity of the ground it's standing on. And that delta-v is nowhere near enough to dodge missile or gunfire from a modern targeting computer.

Heck, a very large portion of the misses our tanks suffer in combat or exercises are due to human error or poor human reactions. If the computers were allowed to run the whole thing, they'd be FAR more accurate. Having a human hand at the control is (for now) considered to be more important than near-perfect accuracy.

Yeah, but as said, we're probably going with Gundam explanations of "computer tracking systems are so easily fooled/jammed it isn't even funny". You would need humans shooting those shells just by sight anyway, in this particular setting. And that rather makes a lot of difference.

[Deadmeat.GW]

Some advancement that makes targeting systems obsolete would be needed and a new alloy that is light enough and strong enough that the humanoid robot is not too heavy to walk across most surfaces.

On top of this a mostly urbanized environment where being a tall robot that can crouch, climb, jump over a set of stairs and such would be a distinct enough advantage but even then the robot suits would be not much more then one person suits which are say max 15 to 20 feet tall.

Think the lighter mecha in Mechwarrior or the Heavy Gear battlesuits.
Especially the latter with the rollerblade type movement and the ability to crouch almost while rolling at high speeds (higher speed then the average tank and more manouverable so they have an equal footing to them but they compliment each other actually).

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Yeah, but as said, we're probably going with Gundam explanations of "computer tracking systems are so easily fooled/jammed it isn't even funny". You would need humans shooting those shells just by sight anyway, in this particular setting. And that rather makes a lot of difference.

My thoughts exactly. If we assume that long-range targetting has somehow been rendered useless, you have to aim manually, and that pretty much means short range. Then you add in the forcefields/whatevers that make ordinary projectiles obsolete. Now you have to hit people with weapons that project their own high-powered phlebotinum field gens to cut through defensive fields. You can´t snipe, artillery doesn´t do anything, so you have to get in close. Meelee stuff becomes more attractive now, I think.

The energy requirements for these fields needs to be sufficient that it isn´t cost effective to stick them in a large bullet with a one-shot field that activates just before impact...

Or maybe make the generators big. As in, too large to fit in a projectile weapon. Maybe even too large to fit on an modern tank. You could still build a really big tank (and have an equivalent to Hannibal´s elephants) but a determined (and comparatively agile) mecha could run up to it and rip it up good with it´s sword. Basically, make the field generators such that fitting on anything smaller than a mech is impossible, and putting on a mech puts it on a very survivable frame, as only mechs can actually do stuff like block, parry and dodge attacks.

Mind, this kinda means stuff like javelins and arrows won´t work. The main problem is that if you can put something on an arrowhead, you can put it on a large bullet. And we don´t want that.

Thoughts?

[13_CBS]

@ Swordguy:

I understand all of these engineering problems, I've participated in Big Robot discussions here before.

My question is: how do we get around these problems? As I said, the solutions need not be physically possible, and phlebotinum is allowed.

[Parra]

You could make the setting a post apocalypse style thing. Maybe after the stereotypical Nuclear War.

This could have several ramifications:

This allows you to rewrite the political landscape into anything you wanted. Making smaller countries and changing there governmental style to anything you chose (feudal for example)

Given the worlds drastically reduced populations this reduces the availability of resources (not enough people to farm, mine, work the factories etc), which in turn limits armies size (people are needed for other tasks to maintain the nation). Nations simply cant sustain armies in the thousands. Nor can they produce masses of tanks/choppers/etc, meaning the needed to develop a 'superior' vehicle with which to wage war that didnt need massive numbers to be effective.

Given super advances in alloys, the production of sufficiently advanced ballistics to piece these alloys is not economically viable. Basically it can be done but is too resource intensive. Given the limited resources available the expendable ordnance is discarded in favour of reusable weaponry (i.e. blades). This allows the mechs to operate without a constant supply line.

You could make laser technology simply be ineffective. Maybe the lasers are to big, require to much power or simply that they cant pack a big enough punch fast enough to pierce the super alloys.

People have a constant reminder of the horrors of nuclear war all around them so are either reluctant to use nuclear weapons again (so people have them but refuse to use them) or simply that the all the nuclear weapons were expended/destroyed during the war.

Given the background radiation that saturates the world, it requires people to remain inside protective zones aka domed cities, which due to there overcrowded nature (not to mention risk of damage to the Dome) dont allow mechs into the general population areas.
You could even say this radiation interferes with targeting equipment making long ranged combat ineffective at best (fuzzy one I know)

[Oslecamo]

Blatantly stolen from the Red Eyes manga:

1-Some time ago, the strongest nation of the world created a powerfull system of laser satelites to consolidate their power. Those satelites can shoot anything that flies too high in the sky, including ballistic missiles, high altitude planes, ect, ect.

2-Said super nation falls in chaos from inside.

3-Government colapses, the controls of the satelites are lost/destroyed.

4-Satelites however were programed that, in case they stop receiving orders, simply shoot down anything on Earth that flies too high. Self repair mechanisms and solar panels gives them an infinite life spawn.

5-With bombers, spy satelites, and long range missiles made obsolete, wars are now waged into trench warfare style. If you want to deliver a nuke, you'll have to carry it by hand.

6-In order to bypass the trenches, the military create bypedal machines that can bypass them and take a pounging, while tanks simply get stuck.

7-Said robots are agile enough to mean that it's a pain in the ass to effectively aim at them at long distance. Master snipers may be able to land a shot in one of them, but most of the time you'll have to get close to have a chance to hurt them.

8-Similarly, the high speed of the robots makes it hard for the pilot to aim while dodging the enemy fire. New powerfull melee weapons are developed for this kind of warfare.

9-?

10-Profit.

In this scenario, normal infantry with heavy weapons, tanks and basic artillery are still used, but the mechas are the stars of the battlefield, with everything else being suport and/or cannon fodder. An elite group of mechas is capable of curb stomping anything on their way unless they're horribly outnumbered(like 1 to 1000), quickly closing the distance with their wheeled legs and using their giant flaming/laser blades to cut a swath of destruction trough the enemy.

[13_CBS]

Blatantly stolen from the Red Eyes manga:

1-Some time ago, the strongest nation of the world created a powerfull system of laser satelites to consolidate their power. Those satelites can shoot anything that flies too high in the sky, including ballistic missiles, high altitude planes, ect, ect.

2-Said super nation falls in chaos from inside.

3-Government colapses, the controls of the satelites are lost/destroyed.

4-Satelites however were programed that, in case they stop receiving orders, simply shoot down anything on Earth that flies too high. Self repair mechanisms and solar panels gives them an infinite life spawn.

5-With bombers, spy satelites, and long range missiles made obsolete, wars are now waged into trench warfare style. If you want to deliver a nuke, you'll have to carry it by hand.

6-In order to bypass the trenches, the military create bypedal machines that can bypass them and take a pounging, while tanks simply get stuck.

7-Said robots are agile enough to mean that it's a pain in the ass to effectively aim at them at long distance. Master snipers may be able to land a shot in one of them, but most of the time you'll have to get close to have a chance to hurt them.

8-Similarly, the high speed of the robots makes it hard for the pilot to aim while dodging the enemy fire. New powerfull melee weapons are developed for this kind of warfare.

9-?

10-Profit.

In this scenario, normal infantry with heavy weapons, tanks and basic artillery are still used, but the mechas are the stars of the battlefield, with everything else being suport and/or cannon fodder. An elite group of mechas is capable of curb stomping anything on their way unless they're horribly outnumbered(like 1 to 1000), quickly closing the distance with their wheeled legs and using their giant flaming/laser blades to cut a swath of destruction trough the enemy.

Those are excellent ideas for making big robots viable, but what will be necessary to make melee weapons viable?

[Oslecamo]

Those are excellent ideas for making big robots viable, but what will be necessary to make melee weapons viable?

Well that's the part where we really have to handwave it.

Because if we have the technology to build mechas, it really doesn't make much sense that we don't have the technology to build ranged weapons that can blast said mechas into tiny pieces at distance, even if computerized targeting systems can be easily cheated.

Ok, some ideas out of the top of my head:

1-Special fog: Some weapon of massive destruction gone horribly wrong has filled most of the planet with a neverending fog at ground level. It can be easily crossed, but it cannot pierced by any known technology, so while inside it you can only see a few inches in front of you. Ranged weapons become kind useless because you can't pinpoint anything. War becomes a game of cat and mouse where you stumble across the fog with your oversized sword ready to chop the first thing you find. Also shooting blindly is badly advised, because it will give away your position and may hit allies. Spears become suprisingly good.

Alternatively, the fog itself is a weapon deployed before each battle, wich allows a small group of mechas to confront and destroy a much larger regular force.

2-Imba force fields. Thanks to some pletobium, it's possible to create powerfull force fields that allow the robots to laugh at anything shot at them at high speed. However, the force fields don't block slow moving stuff, so if you get close enough, it's possible to stick your spear with an explosive point trough it to blast the other mecha to bits.

[Mattarias, King.]

I like how G Gundam went about it. Instead of war, have one single huge tournament where every country has their own robot and they duke it out until the one left standing wins his country control of the world. More or less. I think that'd solve a lot of problems, really.

[Oslecamo]

I like how G Gundam went about it. Instead of war, have one single huge tournament where every country has their own robot and they duke it out until the one left standing wins his country control of the world. More or less. I think that'd solve a lot of problems, really.

Because then it isn't warfare but an excuse for a series of one on one battles?

[Nerd-o-rama]

So satellites that kill everything in the air + trench warfare (with trenches big enough to stop tanks) + either Dune- or Evangelion-style shielding that blocks ranged attacks better than melee weapons.

We missing anything here? Because this sounds pretty solid to me, although I might go with the classic Minovsky Jamming thing instead of the satellites because jet fighters with line-of-site missiles are still cool. That leaves in the problem of nukes, but those are ignored half the time in fiction anyway.

[warty goblin]

I really don't know how to make this work, but I'll point out some flaws in other attempts to resolve these problems that I've seen.

Problem: Shutting down long range weaponry.

Solution 1: The Minovsky particle.
This fails because it only shuts down low-frequency EM radiation. This means that you can target something protected by it in a number of ways, such as a 'smart' bomb capable of recognizing the the shape of an enemy vehicle over the visible spectrum, or laser guided weapons, where the laser operates in at least the UV spectrum. Neither of these systems are extant at the moment as far as I know, the first one because it is very hard, and the second because there's no need for it.

Solution 2: Jamming being really, really good.
This is essentially solution 1 with worse technobable, since it still allows the targeting of weaponry using visible light- unless one actually posits cloaking fields. This would certainly be interesting, but would result in a bunch of invisible things running around confusedly and walking into each other. Good if you are going for comedy, less good otherwise. Sans cloaking fields however, a large robot would be easy pickings for infantry squads using laser designators to call in guided rocket strikes from support batteries in the rear.

Solution 3: Space satillite lasers.
This does take care of ICBMs, but leaves close air support completely fine. Close air support is what is really dangerous to most military units, not missiles lobbed from half a world away. Put another way, if I can't fly anything above 10,000 feet, I'll design aircraft that don't fly above 10,000 feet, then attack my 500lbs bombs to that.

Problem: Structural Engineering.
Solution 1: Ultra-light and strong alloys. Concievably this would allow you to make a mech work. The problems with it are two-fold. Firstly it allows the creation of really disturbingly well armored tanks, and secondly it gets us in no way closer to using melee weaponry. Sure you can argue that it's too expensive to design projectiles to piece said alloy, but this in now way suggests that it is cheaper (or even possible) to use a whacking great sword or hammer. Melee weapony, as a rule, has fairly poor penetration capabilities since it simply isn't going very fast- see this page. You can get around this to some extent with blade geometry and density, but fundamentally an AP round travelling 800m/s is going to put holes in stuff more effectively than a big old hammer.

Solution 2: Simply say, in the future this is possible.
AKA don't think about it too much. This works, but is, by construction, fairly braindead.

[Oslecamo]

We missing anything here? Because this sounds pretty solid to me, although I might go with the classic Minovsky Jamming thing instead of the satellites because jet fighters with line-of-site missiles are still cool. That leaves in the problem of nukes, but those are ignored half the time in fiction anyway.

I think we're trying to get as much "rule of cool" free as possible here, and if fighter are available, then mechas simply drop to the second stage again, because air superiority just owns ground forces, even if you have to aim your bombs/missiles/autocannons by hand.

Also the satellites give an excuse for everybody being bashing at each others heads. The diferent nations are trying to gather enough scientists and technology to regain control of said satelities, becoming the unquestionable new lords of the world, if they just can get all the pieces togheter.

warty goblin: When I said my laser death satellites are programmed to shoot down anything too high, I'm not being very picky. The satellites will shoot down anything that is able to fly over the mechas pointy sticky reach.

Yes, this means even trying to build a building too tall will activate the death lazers from the sky. Ditto for the larger warships

You can still design aircfrat to fly so low, but well, bombing missions sudenly become suicide missions, and I dare you to find pilots for them.

[Trizap]

So satellites that kill everything in the air + trench warfare (with trenches big enough to stop tanks) + either Dune- or Evangelion-style shielding that blocks ranged attacks better than melee weapons.

We missing anything here? Because this sounds pretty solid to me, although I might go with the classic Minovsky Jamming thing instead of the satellites because jet fighters with line-of-site missiles are still cool. That leaves in the problem of nukes, but those are ignored half the time in fiction anyway.

nukes are guided missiles aren't they? the Minovsky Jamming thing would on them.