by Max Barry

Latest Forum Topics

Advertisement

Post

Region: Wintreath

Solaran olympus

French Albania wrote:That...doesn't even make any sense. First of all, a combat walker is already a bad design, for reasons I near constantly reiterate whenever the subject comes up. Then to make it able to transform into an air superiority fighter?
I can understand that that's cool for a video game. But it's utterly irrational from an engineering standpoint. Why build one thing to do two jobs, when you can build two things to do those two jobs individually for what is likely a fraction of the cost and complexity? I mean, we're seeing that with the F-35; because it's designed to do, what, three separate jobs, you could build 6 F-16s for the cost. And no matter how good it might theoretically be at that one job, one plane is certainly not going to do better than 6.
Any program that has 'multi role' in its description should be taken out back and shot, because all that means is that people are going to keep expanding the requirements until it's an overengineered pile of crap that can't even do its original job properly, nevermind the 15 others slapped onto it. Build one thing for one job. It's cheaper, it's simpler, and real talk, in Actual Wartime Situations that's what's going to be important, not being able to show off something that can halfass twelve jobs in peacetime. Sure, the T-34 wasn't sexy, and it wasn't the best tank in the world. But it was cheap to make and relatively simple to operate, and that's what won the war, not the glorious and wonderful Panther or Tiger tanks that half the damn time broke down before they ever got near a battlefield.
To bring it back onto the point I was originally making: no, I think that the 'A2 Viking Armored Mechanical Hybrid' is, practically speaking, incredibly stupid, for all that it's conceptually cool.

I'm just saying that subjectively, of course the Ciking unit wouldn't be practical. All I'm saying is that you don't need to replicate any piece of weaponry exactly, instead use the concept to further expand your imagination and possibilities.

The united acarian empires

ContextReport