The square cube law is not the reader's favor here, sadly.
Mars has a huge battle mech scene, because they can get away with way heavier bot designs at 0.38 g, and thousands of kilometers of inhabited desert on which to stage battles far away from structures that could get obliterated by shrapnel.
Transcript
xXGundamfan0087Xx asked: Killian, according your long life labor skills with mechanics and vast experience on the field of technology, could you agree on the viability of humanoid robots of particularly giant size?
Killian: Ah, gigaweight upright walkers…. A beautiful dream that’s a royal pain in the ass to actually design… In battle mech competitions, gigaheavy walker mechs tend to be quadrupeds or dino-bipeds. Weight goes up exponentially with bot size, and the biggest bot classes often can't get back up after getting knocked down. Going gigaweight on top heavy designs with fiddly balancing like upright walkers just results in unimpressive, short, and expensive slap fights. There are some lighter upright walker competition classes in battle robot competitions, but they’re generally smaller than the average typ. The scale is less impressive, sure, but the fights are MUCH longer, and, in my opinion… waaay more exciting. Honestly, I prefer the good old fashioned tank types. Pete Pounder is my all time champ for Martian Mech Madness. Can’t go wrong with low center of gravity and a big fucking hammer!
39 thoughts on “RttS Reader Questions 35”
Lezzlebit
Okay but the videogames spawned by the cultural impact of this sport have to go so hard though. Games in general in this universe are so interesting to me because they are an ancient art at this point (especially to bug ferrets)… Much to think about…………………
Claire
Wait until i show up with a spinner bot
Stargazer
I love these robot designs! They’re all so cool!
Also ultrakill reference?
Jay Eaton
Honest to god I don’t know what Ultrakill is.
Comito
I see some Rimworld in those smaller robots- specifically scyther mechanoids.
Stray Cat
If the mech fans I know are any indication, they definitely know that the idea of humanoid robots battling it out is pure fantasy. No less than Gundam had to invent a fictional particle to justify how the giant robot battles could happen. So yeah, they’d get it.
Still, this is a fun answer – and I don’t think mech battles as a sport gets explored enough in fiction, so seeing it here is a fun change of pace.
galmetallic
Now I’m just wondering what the Tombstone equivalent for Future Not!Battlebots is. The returning champ with no frills, nothing overly fancy, just maximum efficiency and destructive potential.
aves
I mean, Pete Pounder seems pretty conceptually similar to Tombstone – obviously the big hammer is a different weapon, but it looks pretty no-frills to me lol.
HeadWood
You know I was wondering if your setting would have robot fighting as a sport but thought it would be too violent for it to be relevant. I’m really happy to be surprised. I assume there are at least a couple of AI that enjoy or participate in the sport, are there alens that enjoy it too?
Also is it just mech swordfights and scaled up Robot Wars/NHRL, or is there any almost-military stuff with missiles and cannons like an IRL version of Nebulous, Airships or Highfleet (albiet with much more drone warfare for safety reasons)?
galmetallic
I mean, it’s a thing in real life, so I don’t see why not?
Mango The Captain
I think Killian is my new favorite character by virtue of being a fan of robots with funky shapes (also I totally wish I could watch those robot battles).
gnome_artificer
A weapon to surpass Metal Gear!
The big fuckin’ hammer.
wingedhorror
My first thought was, “Private Iron!” But then I remembered that the Private had an axe on its front, not a hammer. (It also had secret rockets.)
Gosh, now I want to rewatch Spaced.
Fallingfeather
Honestly the fact that giant mech battles exist at all in the future just makes me go “YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!”
Joysweeper
Deathblow the hammer battlebot has never really gone I see!
Apollo235
Peterpuncher, on standby
Please someone know what I’m referencing
SIGSTKFLT
i see that Grant Imahara got reincarnated
Certomistle
Hi Jay! Just a request, but for those of us trying to catch up on some missed pages, it might be good site layout to have a back/forward button at the top of the comics as well as the bottom so that you can flip backwards without spoilers in newer updates. I love your work!
petra
hrrg.h…. metal gear………….
SIGSTKFLT
excuse me, this is Armored Core.
Origamigryphon
PETE POUNDER LIVES!!
bryn
big fucking hammer wins again!!!!!
Squidmerchant
Oh that’s so funny, I’ve had similar thoughts that in any sort of realistic setting, mechs would probably be more of a sports thing than practical. Like sure, humanoid tanks would probably be outperformed by an actual one in any sort of combat scenario, but could you imagine mech rallies? Infinite money.
That said, Killian makes a compelling argument for big fucking hammer.
Darth Biomech
Broke: mechas are useless for military applications!
Woke: engineering, support, and construction mechas!
Varahkas
This might be the most important RttS lore drop yet.
Arcstone
Yeah, this is a pretty age old argument about whether or not real life battlemechs would have been viable.
In the end, yes gundams, chromehounds and armored cores are fucking cool as shit, but theres very little in the ways of good arguments for why you shouldn’t just take that same amount of resources and just build like a fuckton of tanks instead that can split up and cover multiple objectives, don’t require hundreds of years of engineering advancements just to not fall over, can still handle bad terrain because thats what threads are for, if a few of them blow up, the rest can still fight and they’re harder to hit cause they can make better use of terrain elevation for defense, not being the size of skyscrapers.
TLDR: yes, mech are cool, but if your setting is even slightly realistically grounded, then sorry.
Entguarde
is that v2 in there or am i seeing things?
also all hail big hammer
Plasmatic Shrimp
If it actually is I just might lose it but like in the good way.
Vinemaple
*WHEEZE*
Well-played, both of you! xXGundamfan087Xx asking about “Humanoid robots of particularly giant size,” Killian immediately going to “gigaweight upright walkers” and the Martian battlemech competitions…
This is why we love AMAs!
Fallingfeather
I love how this answer, even if the answer is “no on a practical level”, is a very “yes-and” way to answer the question. Working with the asker, not against them, haha.
creetur
Reminds me a little of a robot I saw. Wasn’t for battlebots but some similar competition. It was just a robot that used its whole body as a spinner and yet it was winning. Guess simple can be better at times.
JoB
[ObMathematicianProtest]
The weight increasing with the cube of the size is not “exponentially”! :-3
[/OMP]
I guess that large long-legged humanoids still have problems with coordination, then. If they could jump with any precision … why wield a hammer when you can put almost your entire weight into a flying knee coming down on your opponent?
[imagines a catalog of pointy-underside “battle kneecaps” to select from for your DIY warbot]
TauCeti
Gillian’s error feels in character, as he’s an engineer, not a mathematician, and I’ve seen sloppier terminology among my engineer friends. One of our jokes is that “infinity” is any number larger than you’d reasonably use. This eventually culminated in me saying “this is going to take me an infinite number of weeks to complete…. in this context infinity is two.”
NotOkapi
I’m partial to a drum spinner, but I have to respect the classic Big Fucking Hammer
Enai
All hail the hammer!
Plasmatic Shrimp
We love the big fucking hammer!
Madame Thunderbone
Stop! Hammer time!
JoB
U Can’t Touch This!
(‘Cause it’s electrified.)
Sea_Kerman
SHATTER! represent. Though it’s more of an ice pick than a hammer.