Originally posted by aldo_14
You're not thinking of the right tanks, then.
Seconded.
Read some Sven Hassel.
On mechs, tanks and battle:
No matter what you do in ground battle the shorter, closer to ground vessels have the advantage since they have a smaller target profile.
Ton-for-ton a tank will be able to wield heavier weaponry as it will put less pressure on the terrain than a mech.
Ton-for-ton a tank will have a more effective armor.
I don't find the whole more legs or legs less valnurable ideology solid - after all, all your legs are one joint away from falling you.
Though you're probably right on the many legs issue - the best viable concept for a battlemechs is the spifer mechs Shirov came up with:
They are relativly small and low profile, and mount their weaponry in a similar fashion how tanks do (a big ass turret). The only reason they have legs is to make turning and traversing difficult terrain faster - and they have threads/wheel built into the base of the legs.
As for overseeing the battlefield: There's not much point to doing so. Today with informatically integrated armies and a myriad of recon measures availible you can't think of combatants as individual units anymore.
Creating a bigger target profile or sacrificing armor for said observation capacity is more of a viability than any gain.
I reccomend the excelent anime
Gasaraki. It showed a quite realistic - though in ernest pretty glorified - concept of what mechs could be.
They used a separate command unit with its recon drones to give the information edge.
Said VR + Information technology was also the main thing that made the mechs head and shoulders better than tanks.
The sad thing is though that given the same information support and technologically improoved averness (cameras, VR reconstructed battlefield that grants unobstructed visuals of the battlefield) tanks would also perform in a similarly miraculous and savage manner as how 'mechs' are usually portreyed in anime. Even better than mechs as they are purer war machines.
Except for very difficult and uneven terrain or conditions completly nullfying infantry mechs will be useless or far less economic than either tanks or infantry. So places where I would use a mech:
-Swamps, very steep rolling hills,
anti-tanks emplacement ridden mazes (Still open terrain! Infantry would rape you in close-quarters.)
-NBC warfare, where only vehicles can sustain your soldiers. (Power armor negates this aspect.)
There still
is a niche though: clearing the road for the tanks when the terrain was specificly 'prepared' to stop them.
BTW even tanks are outdated, since helicopters have prooven to be their real nightmare along with CAS aircraft (like the A-10 or the Su-29).
Actually, except for all out NBC warfare or the employment of massed artilery, infantry is once again king of the battlefield, as it was prooven in Vietnam, then Afganistan and finally as it prooves in Iraq.
That is from the sheer 'combat' potential (after all Iraq couldn't protect its industrial assets, though in sheer guerilla warfare its pacifation prooves to be very difficult).
With modern miniaturised weaponry (ergo RPGs) infantry will be more economic and effective than any other 'weapon platform' - though the reason why modern nations refrain from employing it is kinda obvious...you need men, lots of men....and good portion of them will die whatever you do.
IMHO the only futuristic weapon technology that has a real and drastic effect on warfare would be power armor - it would once again create an overwhelming force similar to what knights and pikemen used to be in the Medieval ages.
They would gain a vast combat endurance (the real lacking of infantry) and would effectivly demand the same resources from the adversary (armor piercing high caliber weapons) as tanks do. They could also mount said weapons in greater numbers becoming superior tank killers while retaining the flexibility of infantry.
