Tank VS Mech

[JTJSniperBee]

i noticed a problem with ground units. some people like tanks others like mechs. but who is superior? why dont you the community tell us? thanks for voting! i like u!

 

[psteiner]

Well, given the level of complexity of a mech and the low profile of a tank, I believe that mechs use more blocks just to move, which could be otherwise used for defensive and offensive systems in tanks. Of course, whoever makes theirs huge should win, but a tank is more block efficient...

 

[JTJSniperBee]

this is for tanks and mechs. please keep it related

 

[AtraUnam]

I'm afraid the answer to you're question is me:

You got that punk?

 

[JTJSniperBee]

I LUV THAT MECH YOU WIN THE NATIONAL MECH COMPTIETION
LOL

I'm afraid the answer to you're question is me:

You got that punk?

 

[Master_Artificer]

this is for tanks and mechs. please keep it related

But his comment is related...

Ideally, a mech and a tank of the same mass when facing off, the tank would win. The much has the disadvantage of being easier to hit, can't take cover (hull down)like tanks can, and their is the whole issue of tripping/falling over. A tank needs to worry about throwing tracks and situational awareness. And urban fighting. Tank duels of today would ideally be on flat terrain that is lightly wooded, and the range in between them would be 3-6 miles apart.

Mechs would hope for cities, due to the advantage of uneven terrain the legs help traverse, and the relative height of the pilot, giving them a good field of view and situational awareness. Unfortunately it is a lot easier to put a few branches/bricks/rubble on a tank than it is to cover a Mech.

Overall, I would say that tanks have an advantage, unless it is some impossible anime mech that can dodge bullets/lasers matrix style. But thanks to the law of inertia, good luck with that.
(While Mechas are cool and all, their is something fundamentally frightening about a low metal beast slithering on tracks, smoking and snorting as the ground quakes under its advance)

 

[jayman38]

Voted tank.

When I played Mechwarrior 4, which has both on the same battlefield, the tanks were severely nerfed and reduced in number in order not to give mech pilots too much trouble.

Tanks are not just a slightly smaller targets. They are significantly smaller targets for the same weight. Think: rolling doom cubes. This carries a number of advantages: acquisition (you might not notice one sneaking up on you in the middle of battle), Your initial strike (always important) is more likely to miss, the larger surface area of a mech requires more space and weight be devoted even to thin armor, a mech will be harder to maintain, to house, and to deploy remotely, and the moving parts tend to have more stress on them, because they tend to be leveraging a significant portion of the weight of the entire machine. Any tech that gives a robot an advantage can be applied to a tank for an even more significant advantage.

Tanks will also tend to be cheaper per unit, so you can field more of them.

Look at the Transformer movies, and you'll see that these giant robots are little more than hulking, slow-moving targets for the military. The movie military had to go take smoke breaks in the middle of battles, so that it wouldn't be over too quickly and so that speeches between explosions could give plot points.

 

[AtraUnam]

Voted tank.

When I played Mechwarrior 4, which has both on the same battlefield, the tanks were severely nerfed and reduced in number in order not to give mech pilots too much trouble.

You should play MW4 mercs campaign on veteran difficulty, the vehicle hp is still nerfed through the floor but damn do you have to be careful with myrmidon ppcs at range and demolishers have brutal alphas.

 

[godmars]

guys..hear me out..how about.. a mech that transforms INTO a tank??!

 

[Comr4de]

vid related

 

[Ixalite]

vid related

WHAT was that Colonel thinking?

While "Massed" units are indeed the best for combat, that does NOT mean shoulder to shoulder! Optimal spacing for massed armor is 50-100 Meters, hull down whenever possible. That is as close together as you EVER want your tanks to get. Additionally, WHERE was the overhead? Recon? Armored units always move with recon Humvees scouting ahead, and support units bringing up the rear.

I didn't see a single actual hit by a defending weapon on one of the mechs...

The way it SHOULD have gone, would be for the enemy armored force to be detected at about 50km (or more) by overhead imagery, either Satellite, recon plane, or UAV. UAVs (if available) should retain contact with the enemy throughout the approach, with further intel reported by the DOZENS of recon units (for an armor force of that size). Since the M2 Abrams is more than capable of getting tank kills with its primary weapon at 2500 meters, combat should have begun (and ended) with a single shell striking each mech, going through-and-through, and leaving them burning on the ground. Sandstorms have no effect either on microwave radar rangefinders (they would stop the laser ones though: good thing there are backups) and the thermal sights on the tanks would have shown the enemy clear as day. All this is assuming that brash young officers in the scout platoons don't light up the enemy with Javelin missiles first, (which would be less effective as they try for a top attack by default) but still should be more than lethal enough to take out the targets.

For mechs to be in any way realistic, they must have not only better energy systems than the tanks, but better (and lighter at the same time) armor, superior weapons, equivalent ammunition, superior stealth systems covering both radar, visual, and infrared, and some way to ignore the laws of physics to permit them to turn on a dime, and ignore the coefficient of friction between their feet and the ground.

And at that point, just build a spaceship and shoot them with an orbital laser because you are spending that much money anyway.

 

[Tunk]

Cool as Mechs are, Tanks have it.

We just need true ballistic weapons for planet side warfare.

 

[Dragleones]

guys..hear me out..how about.. a mech that transforms INTO a tank??!

On a serious note:

A mech that transforms in a tank and vice versa would basically be a tank minus the space dedicated to rotators/joints/etc. .
All in all just a weaker tank.

The only reason why in anime/whatever mechs often have the upper hand is the mobility/agility.
In starmade they are just clumsy though.

The only way how i think they would win in starmade would be in close quarters.... welp, with a blade out of disentrigators

 

[psteiner]

guy, guys, we are talking about starmade's current game system right...

 

[Tunk]

Well we have skid racing, why not tank wars?

 

[Winterhome]

Tanks and mechs still have to deal with a simple issue that hasn't been covered here.

Surface area and mass.

Mechs by default would, unless effectively wearing snowshoes, dig themselves deeply enough into the ground with each step that their height and leg advantage would be nullified in hilly terrain.

Tanks have a significantly larger amount of their total mass dedicated to large treads just to keep them from getting bogged down in dirt, let alone mud. Tanks take the advantage.

Also, it's a lot easier to rest shit on wheels than on jointed legs, so tanks can carry bigger guns easily.

 

[RabidBat]

It's kind of an unanswerable question. You'd need the stats of both unit types.

What are their weapons, speed, turning ability, armour, shields etc etc?
Are these starmade mechs/tanks? Are they from popular anime? Are they ground based? Can they fly?

If the tanks are the size of minis, and the mech the size of godzilla, then the mech would in theory win effortlessly.

Seriously these sort of questions need more information from the get go I feel.

I am going to say the winner is a frigate doing an orbital stike on all 3 from space. :p

 

[Visitor]

i noticed a problem with ground units. some people like tanks others like mechs. but who is superior? why dont you the community tell us? thanks for voting! i like u!

Given what qualities? Assuming they'd have similar stats, armaments etc and you ask which is superior in terms of practical use in combat, in Starmade it'd be much without meaning as both are basically starships with bits added onto them to appear as ground units and maybe thrust weak enough that they cannot leave the atmosphere of a planet.

Possibly tanks would have an edge due to current hp/armor system as they're more compact with all the 'guts' usually contained in a single compartment of a hull, which makes it easier to defend them. Also, in the game, both types of units at this time could only function as mobile weapon platforms so all the joints, rails etc in case of mecha wouldn't add any versatility, mobility or power to it, merely make the vessel mecha-shaped.

In practical, more realistic setting, as cool as mecha would be, in nearly every discussion about the same I took part in or read about people ultimately agreed that aside from very specific scenario - highly cluttered and hard to navigate terrain + level of technology allowing cheap & effortless maintenance/deployment of even complex systems with said systems resisting wear and tear easily - tanks will be always superior machines of ground combat.

It may be sad but there you have it.

 

[JTJSniperBee]

guys..hear me out..how about.. a mech that transforms INTO a tank??!

probably too much stress and. it would have wierd parts in mech form

 

[HolyCookie]

mech would also fall apart pretty easily,
because they are connected by 2 blocks, 1 of them breaks and you lost like 1 fifth of your hole mech.
tanks have only tracks to lose, they don't contain anything of importance, besides movability.