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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Starfox" data-source="post: 6006927" data-attributes="member: 2303">Mecha are an alternate branch of futuristic (or even past) technology. If you want to make a "likely" path of future technology, I don't see mecha in it. Not as weapon platforms, anyway.'Mechs can work in an ultratech setting - because anything can work there. If combat is a hyperspace event, anti-gravity is common, and we ignore physics as we know it, then combat can be anything we like to imagine it as. Also, mechs would work in a virtual combat environment - again because anything works there.Mecha can work in specific settings for setting-specific reasons - mostly cultural ones. If war is mostly a sport, that sport can have any desired set of rules, including mechs.They work in "Future that never was" settings, like the Jetsons - the future as it looked in the 20's, 30's. 50's or 70's, or even steampunk. Because then technology developed along different paths, and some of the experiences we have from RL are postulated to be untrue.If you postulate a technology that makes "reasonable" weapons systems obsolete (like the shields of Dune), that can make mecha feasible. Say that mechs use a neural interface identification that only works with a humanoid frame. This is most likely just not true - people interface very well with all kinds of vehicles today, experiencing the vehicle as an extension of themselves with no neural control - but it can be postulated to be true to enforce the setting. Or targeting computers that can very precisely predict the movement of most vehicles, but are confounded by the bounding moves of 'mechs.... Also not likely.Mechs are a power fantasy, a myth of being huge and invincible, and belong in fantasy - either future fantasy or as Tuft suggested in high fantasy as an extension of the knight's armor.</blockquote>

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