ShuRugal

yep, like Shagrat said, we're back to page one...

It's starting to sound like you're talking about a single-pilot system now. Keep thinking along those lines and you're going well for designing something that would be ideal for providing a squad-sized element organic heavy weapons support. Wouldn't care for it against armor, especially on an open battlefield, but now you're talking about something that would usefully enhance the mission capability of infantry units. That's something I would take downrange, once the survivability kinks had been hammered out.

You aren't proposing any such thing, but several other people have. I am talking to them on that point. I am assuming we are still talking about your 3-4 meter tall design, yes? How much ground clearance does this design include? The problem with operating tanks in mountanous terrain is not that the ground is steep, it's boulders and abrupt increases in terrain height that cause a problem, and a great deal about loose soil as well. A walking platform is going to face these exact same challenges. To get your 3-4 meter tall IFV with those weapon systems, I will assume (unless you say otherwise, of course) that we took a BMP-3 (2.25m) and replaced the track with 1.5m legs. This would give us a maximum step-up height of approximately 0.75 meters, depending on the mechanical limits of the leg and the amount of tourque which can be fed them to lift the weight of the chassis with the upper portion of the leg paralell to the ground. So now we have a walking infnatry support vehicle which can clear obstance slightly less than a meter high, at the expense of speed. Alright, looks good so far. How does it compare against the obstacle clearance of existing tracked systems? Whether it beats existing systems in that area or not, I'm not sure if it matters, because a mortar squad on the opposing slope is going to make pretty short work of it, just like they would any other piece of armor trying to negotiate those environments. Well, if we take the armor out of both sides of that equation, you're talking about a pretty lopsided fight to begin with. That walking IFV hasn't brought any advantage, but it sure looks cool! Now, that T-72... according to this source that cant can climb a 60-percent grade, and negotiate an 850mm obstacle, wait, what? Looks like it can follow you, certainly well enough to elevate the gun far enough to shoot at you. So much for superior mountaineering. Once again, you aren't arguing that, but he is, and his was the argument I was addressing. If you want to talk about MW-style loadout swapping, the reason we don't do that today is not because of the inability to do so, but because there is no need. Unlike in the Battletech universe, we don't have hundreds of different weapon systems suitable for use as the main armament on armored vehicles, we have a relatively small handfull. Pretty much all Western armor relies on the Rheinmetall 120mm smoothbore cannon for MBT armament, with a few holdouts like Britain insisting on having rifled versions. The stryker (which does have modular swap-out ability for its main weapon system) mounts the 105mm model from the same company. I don't have much off-hand info for Soviet systems, but I'd be astonished to find out that they had a dozen different types of cannon in service all at once for the same role.

You keep offering "modularity" as a strong point, but you keep ignoring the counter-point being made that a modular armored vehicle is a complete logistical nightmare. You need a truck (at least) for every piece of specialized loadout you want to carry into the field for your modular system. If you want to give your mech combat, bridgelaying, and minesweeping, then you end up with an entire convoy of vehicles for every piece of armor you are fielding. The biggest reason we design mission-oriented vehicles is not that there is anything inherently difficult about designing a modular armored vehicle, it's that if we're going to go through the trouble of hauling a piece of equipment into the field, it is better to haul it on top of a chassis that can use it. Under the current system, we can bring a bridge layer up to a river under enemy fire, provide covering fire for that bridge layer and immediately move our combat armor across the bridge to take and secure the enemy positions. Under your system, we bring up the guns, shoot at the enemy until they are dead or driven off, go away, come back with a bridge (but no guns, or at least smaller ones) and hope that the enemy hasn't had reinforcements, lay the bridge, go away, come back with the guns to cross the bridge, if the enemy hasn't blown it up.... And even if, by some miracle, you did manage to build an invulnerable modular super-mech that somehow overcame the limitations of being a lumbering gigantic target, an equivitech enemy is just going to take out the convoys carrying all that modular equipment when it's not attached to the mech. So, what your saying is, no soldier was ever killed by a minefield? Sure, if RPGs moved at hollywood speed this would be feasible. The problem is, RPGs move as fast as bullets. Can your walking apartment complex dodge bullets? what, exactly, is small about something 12-14 feet tall? Capability to rotate without lateral movement in its own footprint? tanks already do that. Six to eight feet long? A GAU-8 on an 8-foot footprint? how are you going to mount a weapon system twice the size of a volkswagen on an 8-foot long platform? The GAU-8 also produces ten thousand poundforce recoil. How do you plan to prevent that from knocking your 14x8 platform flat on its back?

You aren't 'arguing' agility, you're saying 'agility' over and over without quantifying what 'agility' will do for a mech. Will you be able to make your walking block of flats 'agile' enough to dodge a 350 m/s RPG? How about a 1750 m/s sabot round? The fact of the matter is that, on a modern battlefield, if you can see it, you can kill it. Your 'tall enough to look over buildings' mech will be visible to (and therefore engageable by) every foot soldier in a three block radius, while it will only be able to see (and therefore engage) the ones the tank commander (or should i say 'building manager'?) will be able to see from his sensors. which is to say: one at a time. Put that behemoth on a battlefield, and it'll start drawing so much attention that the laser rangefinders painting it will start to present the optic sensors with a problem, to say nothing of the incoming APFSDS.

no, that's exactly the point of this thread: what combat role can a mecha play which cannot be better filled by traditional tracked vehicles? "Make it bigger" is terrible advice, considering the profligate availability of man-portable anti-armor weapon systems. Existing armored vehicles already have huge problems with AT-equipped infantry in urban environment, because a man can see a tank in the street much easier than a tank commander can see a man in a building. Making the tank visible from everywhere in the city simultaneously would not alleviate this problem. :doh:

Infantry can go anywhere because they are small and lightweight, tanks cannot because they are large and heavy. Giving the large heavy thing legs won't magically let it fit through a doorway or keep it from bringing down a building with its own weight. What you are describing is called an "Infantry Fighting Vehicle" and we already have them, only they're not 4 meters tall. For the most part, they fall in the same height range as tanks (under 2.5 meters), with notable exceptions like the Bradley pushing closer to 3m, but that vehicle has serious survivability issues. What you are proposing is to take the IFV and make it: Taller (bigger target) Slower (easier to shoot) Less Armored (easier to damage) On top of this, you want to take a system which has a drivetrain with two single-point-of-failure vulnerabilities, and give it six instead. What you are proposing is, in fact, an up-armored walking minivan that i wouldn't trust to survive a collision with a soccer mom, much less enemy fire.

does Thrustmaster provide drivers to use Warthog with a console? Saitek provides x55 drivers on console? NaturalPoint supports TrackIR on consoles? At the bare minimum, you need a HOTAS stick, a keyboard, and a mouse (might be able to omit the mouse if you don't mind loosing the clickable cockpit) to successfully operate DCS as intended. To effectively operate DCS aircraft, you need to add in TrackIR for improved SA. Throwing in a set of rudder pedals never hurts, and is damn near mandatory to fly the P-51, MI-8, or Huey with any degree of effectiveness. The only application that might be effectively employable on a console is Combined Arms. Really not worth developing a whole new codebase to make the sim available to a market that A: is largely uninterested in it (the whole appeal of console gaming is minimum-fuss instant-carnage gaming, after all) and B: won't have the interface capability to fully utilize the design features of the sim.

Fair enough. That still leaves open the question asked by the OP, though: what battlefield niche would a walking tank fill? More specifically, under what conditions does an armored vehicle benefit from legs over tracks or wheels sufficiently to merit the risks of a larger profile, higher power requirements, and lower top speed?

this is what i feel about most of these problems. If we have the technology/power available to brute force our way through the engineering problems, then that power could be much more effectively used on a platform that can make more efficient use of it.

Okay, muscle fibres means no need for a big gearbox to transmit mechanical energy from the engine to the limbs. But that still leaves the problem of the limbs still operating at a mechanical disadvantage: the point which is acted on by the muscle is 1/5 to 1/10 the radius as the load. And on top of this, you have to have an onboard electrical generation system, none of which are 100% efficient (70-90% is the common range for today's systems, depending on application, load, and build quality). The LS3 is an amazing piece of engineering, but just looking at the basic specifications, it is not even remotely efficient: the current prototype has a 400-lb cargo capacity, but at a conservative estimate (can't find published specifications) it weighs at least as much in bare structure and propulsion systems. It also moves breathtaking slowly. Now, that said, as a squad-sized support element, it is already damn close to exactly what is needed for that role. Take that 400 lb cargo capacity, stick a flexible-mount on it for a machine gun or a grenade launcher, some ammo, and use the rest to armor the hydraulics, powerplant, and sensors (yes, the LS3 clearly has hydraulic actuators) and it would be a deadly support gunner. But a tank? It's going to take some serious advances in power systems efficiency for a limbed tank-class vehicle to be practical on the battlefield. 3-4 meters high is not a "reasonable" when existing armor vehicles are all under 2.5 meters in height. If you put a 4-meter tall tank on the battlefield, it is going to draw fire like a magnet, and won't anyone be able to miss. 3-4 meters is also an extremely conservative estimate: If a legged tank is going to move at reasonable speeds, it is going to need a long stride length, which means long legs. I'd be astonished if you could build one less than 5 meters high and have it make more speed than a man running could do. One thing I forgot to consider the first time: ground pressure. some preliminary math indicates that a 6-legged chassis would require roughly 1.5 meter diameter footpads to maintain useful ground pressure ranges. More legs would be smaller, but add complexity and vulnerability. To know how we can make it work, we have to know why it doesn't work yet. The biggest mechanical problem I see is the inherent power disadvantage a legged system operates at. The biggest tactical problems are height (anything taller than a modern tank is not going to be able to find cover on a battlefield, and that's something that can't be engineered around), speed (doesn't matter how wonderfully maneuverable it is if the enemy can outrun it on foot), and reliability (how many legs needed to provide operable ground pressure? how many for redundancy to allow for battle damage?). If these problems can be solved, then we will have successfully designed a practical battle-mech.

The biggest problem with the idea of a walking tank is power. Anything that moves with legs puts the powerplant at a mechanical disadvantage: the engine is on the short end of a lever, and the ground is at the long end. Add to this the fact that a walking vehicle is going to use engine power to support the weight of the vehicle, where a wheeled or tracked vehicle load is borne by its suspension springs. Every vehicle in existence today runs its engine power through a reducing transmission to amplify the torque output at the expense of velocity output. There isn't an armored vehicle in existence that could pull off from a standstill in top gear, but that is exactly what a mech would have to do. A walking design would necessitate a set of reduction gears on the scale of a naval warship to overcome the mechanical disadvantage inherent in a lever-based final drive. In a sense, this is similar to the problem faced by helicopters: A helicopter expends the majority of its engine power simply staying airborne, and as a result is very slow and unmaneuverable in comparison with most fixed wing aircraft. However, the unique ability of a helicopter to maneuver under terrain masking, in tight confines, and in coordination with ground forces in order to provide direct support all provide an impetus to accept the disadvantage of vertical-thrust flight. So, the pertinent question is this: What tactical advantages do walking platforms bring to the field that enable a tank to better complete its mission, considering that for the same power requirements, you could build a tank that can carry several times more weight, move several times faster, and is not subject to being simply ?

what got fixed? All i've noticed is new APU sound.

That is some extremely misleading data. One might as well say "18% of all executable programs on the internet contain malware" and use it as justification for never downloading anything. The torrent protocol is 100% secure: the only person who can tamper with the contents of a torrent download is the person publishing the tracker info (the file that tells your torrent client what to download and who has it). Other clients cannot inject a virus into the data, because all they are providing is a few kilobytes to megabytes of data, pulled at random from their copy of the files being shared. The thing you have to worry about is not getting a virus from torrents downloads, but choosing to download a torrent that was maliciously posted in the first place. Hint: you get these torrents from the same places that try to sell you a bigger penis and video-chat with "local girls". anyway, the point is: downloading a torrent is exactly as safe as downloading any other file from a specific website. Downloading files from Eagle Dynamics is safe, because they're not in the business of distributing malware. Downloading files from your favourite "free" adult entertainment site.... that's where you get the lemons.

Yeah, I use stand-off munitions to take down BMPs, and I go rockets and guns against hard armor and dedicated AAA. The odd of surving a gun battle with a BMP-2 are pretty low.

generally, you should flip the switch labeled "guns + sight", directly in front of the control column.

I find this whole affair extremely disheartening, especially since I have just been forced to adopt the steam install to fix a stability issue I was having (game client on the standalone install would lock up when I tried to log in to MP) and nothing I did to the standalone version could fix it.

stupid question, but are you sure you have it turned all the way down and not all the way up? Turning the tension knob left increases throttle friction on the x52. If i turn the knob all the way to the right (full-loose), mine gets so loose that it will fall under its own weight, so either your x52 has a problem, or you've got the tension knob backwards.

use stick software to map bands to keystrokes for this?

Even better than hover is a coordinated forward flight at 150-200 km/hr IAS.

the hitbox is still going to stop you. Even if you fly in at speed, you are going to end in the water.

This is probably user error. If there is any significant crosswind, then the missile fired from the downwind side, especially in a hover, will require significant corrective aim into the wind in order to intercept the beam. At the same time, the missile on the upwind side will require almost no correction to stabilize in the beam.

yes, it is going to look white/grey rather than shiny metal like in real life. This is because the simulator does not render the mirror-reflective quality that polished metal has in the real world.

i'd be more worried about the fragments of the bomb casing which those 2 metal objects are attached to, since they will be greater both in quantity and mass.

I think the problem you are experiencing is that IRL, a bare polished metal surface has a certain reflective quality, which is not rendered in the simulation. Personally, I'm fine with this: The graphics engine struggles enough without needing to perform raytracing operations on a large number of large, curving surfaces.