From: laird@think.com (Laird Popkin)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Genres
Date: 24 Jul 1992 23:20:52 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: django.think.com

In article <3651@blue.cis.pitt.edu.UUCP> hummell+@pitt.edu (Andrew G Hummell) writes:
>In article <1992Jul23.212026.21107@Princeton.EDU> woodhams@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Michael Woodhams) writes:
>>of the future. You can suspend your disbelief all you like (in this
>>case, by the neck until dead) but there's no way giant huminoid robots
>>will ever be a better military buy than something like a tank.
>This is just *your opinion*, not a fact.  It can never be proven to be
>a fact (to us anyway, we'll be dust by the time it can be proven one way or
>another).
>
>Tanks are already pretty much obsolete now.  The average infantry soldier can
>carry a tank killing rocket.  An A10 Warthog can chew up tanks like bubblegum,
>with proper air support.  Tanks are only effective against troop transports,
>buildings, and other tanks.

While I *do* agree that tank-killer rockets and A10's are quite effective,
they don't make the heavily armored and armed land vehicle obsolete; they
just make ECM, infantry and air cover more important.  I bet that the
Iraqui infantry that confronted America (etc.) tanks in the recent dust-up
in the Middle East wouldn't have argued that Tanks weren't effective
against them.  Tanks *do* have machine guns and other anti-personnel
weaponry.

Incidentally, any weaponry that is effective against tanks should be *more*
effective against the larger, more lightly armored giant humanoid robots.

>Giant humanoid robots (if such beasts *could* be built -- I beleive that is
>*very* unlikely) would have advantages such as terrain (a walking robot can
>move across terrain that is impassable for tanks), more armor, more firepower,
>more manuverability, more versatanity (a giant humanoid robot could be used
>to pick heavy things up and move them, i.e. construction work).

Giany humanoid robots would have the advantage of being about to walk, so
they could go to a few places that tanks cannot (e.g. over large trenches,
through water deeper than a tank's height but shallower than a robot's
height), and versatility.

A tank can carry more armor, since it doesn't have to hold it off the
ground on legs.  A tank can carry more weaponry for the same reason,
provides more room for a crew, electronics, etc., and also provides a more
stable firing platform.  In addition, tanks are more efficient because they
don't need to spend any space/mass/money on legs or arms, but rather have
simple wheels and/or treads.

>Tanks, on the other hand, have a speed advantage (unless the technology was
>*really* good), and would be smaller targets.

It's possible, though unlikely, that robots could walk faster than a tank
could drive.  Tanks are not only smaller targets (e.g. more compact) but
are much lower to the ground.

Basically what it comes down to is that any technology which makes giant
humanoid robots more effective also makes tanks more effective, and 

>If you can't bring yourself to beleive that giant robots are a *possibility*,
>how can you play *any* science fiction game?  FTL travel is no more unlikely
>that giant robots.  Sentient robots/androids/computers are no more unlikely than
>giant robots.  The same goes for any other type of fantasy as well.

I disagree.  All SF relies on making one or more assumptions of things that
"aren't real", and good SF (as opposed to fantasy with ray guns) is based
on assumptions that don't contradict what we know, and work from the
assumptions in a plausable manner.

For example, once you make the assumption that FTL tracel is impossible, a
good SF story will extent that in plausible ways, such as having messages
carried by FTL ship rather than light-speed broadcast.  In BattleTech, they
start with the assumptions that there is "metal muscle" (I forget what it's
called), and a direct neural link between a soldier and his 'Mech, which
are certainly interesting and reasonable assumptions.  But then they
contradict things we know (e.g. missiles can hit things with great accuracy
over great distances) so many times that it's obvious that what they wanted
to do was create a *fantasy* world in which huge robots beat each other up,
not a *science fiction* world.

>If giant-robot-type genres are not to your taste, don't play those type of
>games.

Saying that Battletech's world is implausible doesn't mean that it isn't a
fun game.  It just means that it's not a believable world.  There are
plenty of games played in worlds that aren't believable (e.g. Toon,
Paranoia) so there's no shame in adding Battletech to that list.  Nobody
ever accused Car Wars of excessive realism (you can't target windows, for
example), but that doesn't mean that it's any less fun to play.  It's just
a game...

>Andy
-- 
- Laird Popkin, Thinking Machines

Connection Machine: Massively parallel supercomputer.  Also a cool black
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Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc