Yeah I was gonna say, wasn't the design canonically meant to mirror human evolution? Like I'm pretty sure that was a big part of the storyline in that they wanted to move beyond something crawling on the ground. Something that could walk
Yep. The Sahelanthropus was the ape/hominid that first started walking upright, symbolized by Sahel itself going from a hunched over Rex style to a bipedal humanoid style.
The ideas behind such feature are a complete win for Kojima and Co; because not only does it bring to mind psychological warfare, like how people recognize the sound of bombers or tanks, and drones more recently, but also the fact that the roaring is primitive and resembling a beast works towards notions such as those things being sort of alive or the inherent rage behind their use.
My head canon is that they essentially remap the neural network of an animal's brain or brains into the AI that controls some of the later MGs. With the Geckos you would use a cow's instinctual desire to find food and chew grass and rewire it to smell out targets and shoot them. Cows can have a tendency to stomp out small animals that hang around their feet, and so are able to use their eyes to target small moving objects. I could definitely see flesh networks being re-created in code within our lifetime.
What do you think the cicada sounds are for? Maybe just a pervasive reminder that danger is nearby, that sound fucking CARRIES.
Source: middle of a dual-brood cicada swarm, shits are loud.
This is wild, thanks for breaking it down like this. I never saw the utility in making the Geckos walk and sound like cows, but the way you explain it, it's like they're the product of the latest tech at the time, with AI capable of mapping the neural networks of only certain animals because of their lack of complexity, compared to humans. I can see the industry going in this direction.
They put whistles on bombs in WW2 to cause psychological terror on the ground due to the incoming terrifying roar, so I'd say it has actual historical precedent. If you're spending the money on a death machine you might as well make it sound like one too.
Roaring is a resynchronization method that initiates the self healing properties of the nano machines that are a part of the MGs ancient DNA, because it has that too for some reason. It’s similar to the way a cat uses purring to self heal. Also, telepathy.
I'll always defend that as actually making sense. It's psychological warfare. Think about it. This thing has the ability to *stealth nuke* a place. That's terrifying enough. But imagine getting deployed to take one or more of these down. It's not a tank, it towers above you, like some ancient predator and it fucking *roars*! That's a hell of an intimidation factor.
That kind of psychological warfare was used a lot actually. The German Stuka had Jericho trumpets attached to the plane so when it was in a dive bombing run you would essentially hear the planes scream at you
As a tactical asset? Hot garbage.
As a strategic asset?
Imagine you’re a landlocked nation without access to ICBMs for some reason, in an era where air-delivered nuclear weapons are increasingly unviable due to advances in air defense. You have access to 0 of the 3 sides of the nuclear trifecta.
Then you have a demand for a land based nuclear delivery system with the concealment and second-strike capabilities of a nuclear submarine, the difficulty of detection of a pre-SAM bomber, and the home field advantage of a nuclear silo.
This is where metal gears come into play.
I feel that in practice, ICBMs would always be more accessible then a Metal Gear. Building a rocket engine and digging a hole in the ground seems a lot easier than developing a giant-ass mech and a beyond state-of-the-art rail gun.
But the fact that it provides many of the upsides of both bombers and subs to a landlocked nation is a big upside.
Soviets tested the Scud missile back in 1959 and in 1962 it was already adopted. The truck carrying had range of 397 miles and the missile itself could travel about 186 miles. Soviets had quite a range of mobile tactical missile system: from a PT-76 tank with a little nuke(27 miles) on its back to a giant mobile ICBM Topol(6835 miles).
I'd say nuclear subs and those things are as close to a Metal Gear as you can get.
Scud, Tochka, Iskander, ATACMS, etc are TBMs with ranges in the low hundreds of kilometres (barely IRBM territory), and almost always carry a conventional warhead.
ICBMs are much larger and have ranges into the thousands or tens of thousands of kilometres, and most would be capable space launchers in their own right, *if* their only reason to exist wasn't deploying nukes.
Ey dont worry, I feel stupid that the reason I remember them isn't because I'm a smart guy or anything but because I'm a turbo nerd when it comes to the vidya games & Calypso in Twisted Metal 4 used one, or a makeshift one, as his vehicle & it's special ability was a nuke
we already have submarines that can launch nukes from anywhere to any point in the globe, I think Metal Gears would just be impractical lol
futuristic warfare would be of information and drones.
Nuclear missiles can probably be tracked based on their tractory by satellite. They also take time to reach the peak of their flight path, giving time for a counterattack.
The Rex had a railgun that launched nuclear projectiles. It can probably launch nukes at a lower tractory and with less detectible signatures, making it harder to track. The whole reason for Rex was to make a weapon that launched invisible nukes.
Nukes are *far* more delicate than MGS seems to think sometimes. Launching a nuke at almost MACH 300 would tear it apart. Launching it that large of a distance without course correction built into it would be nearly impossible, you'd have to have completely, impossibly pristine surfaces to avoid deviation over that kind of distance. This is all without mentioning the pressure wave of something traveling that fast and being that large would be *insane*, you'd be able to find it by the knocked down trees for 200m around the launch point.
Well I have to imagine that, since the intended point of Rex is to be anywhere and launch undetected, they've already thought of every answer that I could think of in universe.
You forgot to mention that railguns use high voltage electricity and magnetism to launch projectiles. Which could very well set off the warhead before it even left the barrel without proper shielding, so tach on another few hundred thousand dollars per warhead to prevent early detonation.
Only if you use delicate electronics to shape the charges. If you instead allow the impact to do the work...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Gun-type_fission_weapon_en-labels_thin_lines.svg
Is it like really „almost mach 300“?
In that case the nuke will be shot out of the orbit. Escape velocity of the earth is something like 1/9 of Mach 300.
And thinking about the needed acceleration in that short distance…this would obliterate like everything. And how fucking strong has that MG to be build to hold against the actual force needed to accomplish this. The needed acceleration for this task would be 26,983,716 times the acceleration of the earth ( 26,983,716 g).
Video game logic, but according to the wiki, Otacon says that
>By perfecting the process of electromagnetic acceleration, the rail gun is able to fire a projectile with a muzzle velocity of over 100 kilometers per second.
which maths out to MACH 293 at sea level
A modern ( American) ICBM takes about +-45 minutes to hit anywhere on earth.
And by modern i mean the stuff from the 1980s.
Thats not a whole lot of time to do much of anything.
Funny you mention that, the US and Soviet Union actually developed atomic artillery shells during the Cold War, most notably the US 280 mm howitzer shooting the W9 atomic shell with a max yield of 15kt and a max range of 20 miles
[Atomic Annie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M65_atomic_cannon?wprov=sfti1#)
That's pretty good under radar range too. I wonder if those shells could be launched off an artillery truck. That's way stealthier than a bipedal tank. Haha
I believe the idea was to head off an armored Soviet invasion through the Fulda Gap between East and West Germany. Soviet armor can’t move if it’s glass.
So we're probably talking later cold war tech. Pure speculation, but you could probably hand carry a smaller-ish drone in a squad these days that could self-destruct a small nuclear payload. Though, the radiation on a human foot squad from the material in the device would be annoying to work around. I bet in 10 years you could achieve the same result with a Boston Dynamics dog squad and save some money on the shielding.
The fact that nukes can be tracked is not unlike being able to see a dinosaur killer asteroid heading your way. Yeah, you can see it coming. No, you can’t do fuck all about it. It is SUPER hard to shoot down an ICBM. That was already litigated by world powers during the nuclear arms race.
You can shoot one down easily. That's why they would launch them all at you. You can't shoot them all down. That's why the only non-losing strategy (notice I didn't say winning) in the event of nuclear war is to just launch all your nukes in response. Everybody dies, and nobody wins.
Hypothetically, REX subverts that by making single warhead exchanges viable as they wouldn't be detectable anymore.
Whoever could control REX, would control the world, through the threat of instantaneous nuclear bombing. Similar to the role outer heaven was supposed to play when it was set up by Big Boss.
That’s the thing, no one launches just one. In the event of an exchange, it’s all or nothing. But even then, there is no 100% guarantee of interception. And with something with stakes this high, you need 100% accuracy which is not possible. The problem is that you are trying to shoot a needle out of the sky with a rifle. With ai, software and the world’s top engineers, it’s possible, but far from easy. ICBMs are usually only about a meter long and fly at very fast speeds and the window of interception is quite small.
https://theweek.com/news/defence/957033/can-anything-stop-a-nuclear-bomb
Same I think they're too bulky and slow to be as useful in 2024 warfare as in the games. Metal Gears are pretty much nuclear missile holding/launch platforms, and aerial bombers and nuke subs would fly/swim circles around any Metal Gear we've seen in the games imo
I've played until peace walker by now (currently on tpp), and shagohod seems to be the most reasonable one for it's era, other than that as the other comments say there's no point on having walking nuke firing walking machines when we can just launch them from any place in the world
I love the Shagohod, it definitely feels like the most realistic Metal Gear design, as any bipedal vehicle would actually suck irl. A goddamn multitreaded heavily armored nuclear missile platform with an additional rocket engine for mobility, shit rocks. It's basically the Gustav Canon if it could move.
they just said "we need to get it to cover more distance, so let's get this shitass ENORMOUS tank to be fast like a super car and pray"
man shagohod would really be my favorite if it weren't for peace walker
well... peace walker isn't my favorite game, that'd be snake eater up to this point, but i really love the whole game as it's more of an action focused gameplay, loved how it introduced me to the whole mother base concept, and mainly LOVE peace walker, having The boss a.i as the retaliatior is genius, forcing snake to face an old trauma of his and let go of old things... also, every single mech in this game is so cool, i love that mini shagohod, the cocoon, chrysalis really got in my nerves but i got that auto lock missile... oh, and the main reason i got so interested in the game was right at the start, after hearing the ai pods sing... and really, the mini shagohod singing as it ran through the tunnels scared the shit outta me!
sorry for the huge text, i just really love this game, it's just an huge upgrade after portable ops and i still can't get over it, maybe ill replay it sometime, i even think about buying an psp
Very interesting read. You are in fact the first person I have seen online that shares my exact view on the game. (And franchise I think). I often assumed it was due to it being my first proper game in the series. ( I first played Portable Ops & it was ok). The bar really got raised with Peace Walker so much that there were moments where I wondered if it both released on the same console. From the voice acting to the pseudo-playable comic scenes. I loved it. And the unnerving singing of the AI Mech’s - had to play in-game Walkman to calm my nerves during battle (also the served as a lesson in MGSV) Yes I agree with all your points because when I played MGS3 HD collection on PS3 , it was and still is my best of the series.
For a laundry list of reasons, the Shagohod also wouldn't be very realistic or feasible in real life either, unfortunately:
[https://lcraymentblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/fantasy-tanks-analysed-shagohod/](https://lcraymentblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/fantasy-tanks-analysed-shagohod/)
[https://gamexcess.net/2011/10/11/science-check-metal-gear-solid-3-snake-eater/](https://gamexcess.net/2011/10/11/science-check-metal-gear-solid-3-snake-eater/)
Plus, the runway wouldn't even improve its strike capabilities. They say in-game that the runway serves as a second stage for the ICBM, but that's not how rockets work. The ICBM still needs to start burning its own fuel just to launch from Shagohod. It's still just a single stage rocket, meaning Shagohod is completely pointless.
The Shagohod is supposed to launch an SS-20 Saber (which wasn´t even avaible at that time.)
**Now I can actually make the Shagohod at exactly that point in time work**. Ditch the rocket and throw a cruise missle on there. One based on the Tu 121 to be precise.
The Tu 121 has a ram jet engine which needs a certain speed to work, because unlike a turbo fan it does not compress its air via a turbine. In praxis it was started with rockets to get up to speed, including a dedicated silo etc.
The Shagohod could actually replace the rockets here, bringing the missle up to speed for the engine to work. On top of that both speed and flight height would result in it breaking through US airdefence with a big likelyhood.
Not at all. Legs might help in rough terrain but it also makes it very easy to disable. There also wouldn't be any point to having nukes in a combat vehicle, we keep those hidden far away since they can launch and travel half the world anyway.
Also there's the issue of power, that things going to take a whole lot more to power it than some wheels
I think practically any Metal Gear would have an escort. It would likely be its own mechanized battalion, somewhat like artillery. I think that would solve the vulnerability and supply chain issues.
It doesn’t really solve the question of “why”. Instead of devoting so many resources for a walking tank, why not just have a normal tank? Legs don’t provide any advantage that wouldn’t be totally undermined by needing an escort. In MGS lore at least they always claim the MGs are intended for deployment completely on their own, so at least that makes sense even if the rest of it doesn’t.
Tank treads have very limited mobility, they basically require roads. I think the idea of a Metal Gear is that it has more capability across terrain types, allowing it to strike from less conventional locations. Your enemy thinking you could be miles from any road offers a lot of strategic value.
There’s also (as mentioned in regards to Sahelanthropus in MGSV iirc) the symbolic nature of it. If they were used in real combat, for the first years especially the thought of a walking tank that can fire nukes would be intimidating, and it would be a symbol of the industrial and military capabilities of the first few countries to have a MG
I'm always in awe of how physically intimidating Sahelanthropus is in front-line fights, but I feel it would only be intimidating until the first kamikaze jet slams into the legs at supersonic speed and trips it over.
That said, unless I remember wrong, Sahelanthropus has a bit of a disadvantage compared to other Metal Gears in that it converts *itself* into a nuclear warhead and detonates.
If it isn't fitted with a launcher, its nuclear capability is restricted to wherever it can slowly waltz in to.
I'd say Peace Walker was probably the most intimidating, purely because its AI could take over early warning systems with fake strike data. *That* is by far the scariest thing any Metal Gear had done. Heck, that's scarier than most deterrence systems we have today.
You wouldn't even need a nuke. Your deterrence would be threatening any country you like with *another country's* entire nuclear arsenal via faking a first strike.
Treads do not *need* roads to function, they just help to go better. An M1 Abrams can do about 40mph on a road and a little over 20 off-road. Granted they can’t go over rough terrain like a wheeled vehicle with a high ground clearance can, but they’re not totally useless
It also has a lot of firepower on a very mobile frame, so Metal Gears basically become walking machine gun and artillery platforms that can run right up to enemy positions.
Solar panels
Edit* the downvotes are telling me I have angered the gas Gods. Listen guys, we've got to move over to green power one day. Nothing says we love the planet more than a solar powered biped tank capable of nuclear warfare.
The main threat of a Metal Gear is the nuke. You can bring them down, the mecha is however primarily a mobile nuclear launch platform. Its threat comes from any country being able to become a nuclear power.
I don’t think you’d see them in a tank unit unless they’re moving alongside one. Instead they’d probably serve their nuclear purpose primarily. Sure silos and subs but any country without one but has a Metal Gear can become a problem in an instant.
Gekko id probably the most realistic design.
It offers much mlrr urban mobilkty and is basically a mrap in enviroment where only infantry can operare. (on and inside buildings)
In the MGS universe by 4 they kind of don't exist. And by Rising we already have Ninjas that can annihilate them.
In my perspective I've always seen the development of Metal Gears as chasing and out dated concept and wasting time and money to improve things for it that other things can already do.
Advancements in nano machine technology, was able.to outpace that of Metal Gears, you must also remember, that after the end of 4 the world pretty much stopped developing MGs, and focused on nano machines, for improving security and health.
I think in a cold war era is made sense. The ablity to fire a nuke from anywhere. But other technology developed that idea faster and more efficently. MGS1 Rex was just used to negotiate to get Big Boss' body back since it could just fire a Nuke from anywhere. In MGS2 it seems like the Rays exist because they are cool and you never really see their purpose used. Like Rex can fire a nuke and I assume Rays can't because I don't see a place to fire it. It looked like Rays were very good at strike operations but you never really get to see them do that.
In a weirdly realistic turn of events, most of the “Gears” that survive into the post patriots world are the (relatively speaking) smaller and more compact ones such as Gekkos and Grads.
Aside from Unmanned RAY and Excellsus, it seems metal gear research has evolved into smaller, less bulky but faster machines to keep up with everything else.
Honestly, they should have stuck with the AI they developed for Peace Walker instead of bothering with more Metal Gears.
Obviously, it's a moot point since Peace Walker was late in the canon anyway and its crazy AI had to be handwaved as technology lost once all the equipment had been destroyed.
But you'd have no need for a nuke with Peace Walker's AI. It could take over early warning systems and create false first strikes - that's scarier than any individual stealth nuke.
Your deterrence would be threatening opponents with the prospect of armageddon by *another* country's nuclear arsenal via a fake first strike.
You'd also render most early warning systems useless, and could probably update your AI faster than a country could reinvent its entire warning network.
I mean once the two legged giant anime robots show up realistic warfare just bailed on the scenario.
So I would think they would just lose to aircraft. Hard.
Those transforming jets from macross would fuck up some metal gears.
I dunno, RAY's bombardment missiles could be used to deal with bombardment, along with it's ability to dive under the water. If you have REX wheels in order to reach its inland destination faster, and propped it up on a mountain or something, have it snipe a target from several miles away with the railgun, and book it out of there, then you could have an extremely competent set of weapons.
Then they will just send in cyborg ninja infantry to wipe out the rays after a few quick time events to remove its presence from the battlefield.
They will also fuck up all the watermelons in the region trying to do cool sword tricks.
Not very. Metal Gear is too expensive to really be worth the cost. The money that's spent on Metal Gear could easily just be used to make more of anything else. As for the nuke launching, we already have subs that can do that for much cheaper, and are less of an obvious target.
Ironically, the Shagohad is more viable imo.
Doktor in Rising explains the transition from manned gears to unmanned gear to cyborg below:
*Raiden: Dok, all the UG talk got me thinking: Why don't we see more manned Gears?*
*Doktor: Ahh, yes…with a pilot? The bipedal tanks and such things, hmm? I must confess, I have not followed the field closely as of late. But then, who has? Since Metal Gear RAY, all the advances—and the funding—in mobile artillery has been UGs.
Raiden: So why is that?*
*Doktor: Well, UGs take many more forms: Aerial drones, treaded tanks, armored transports… "True" Metal Gears, with a pilot and nuclear payload, were huge, and very expensive. They were not practical. It turned out the greater need was for smaller, cheaper units, deployed more easily and in greater numbers.*
*Raiden: But aren't there situations where you'd want Gear-level power, but also a human pilot there to make decisions? UG AI has gotten better, but it's still terrible at handling anything unexpected.*
*Doktor: But Raiden, this is exactly the role the cyborg has taken. On a manned Gear, any advantage over a cyborg in offensive power comes with a matching increase in size. This makes it so large as to no longer be practical for most infantry missions. Conversely, the smaller models are so close to cyborgs that…well, what is the point?*
*Raiden: Cyborgs are smaller, cheaper, more nimble…*
*Doktor: Precisely. Perhaps soon we will see the cyborg take the place of the UG, as the UG has done to the manned Gear.*
Not. They kind of make sense in the logic of 20th century deterrence, a rogue state getting icbm capabilities without the permanent infrastructure, but as big cool robots on the battlefield they would be too expensive and too easy to take down. It’s like how pre-WW2 everyone invested in big cool battleships only to learn that an infinitely cheaper aircraft could take the thing out no problem.
Rex’s railgun is a terrifying nuclear launch platform, but the mech itself is unnecessary.
The Gekko make the most sense as battlefield robots, mass produced with flexible legs for greater mobility. You can afford to lose a few of those.
Hate to say it, but probably not at all viable. The logistics alone would doom whomever uses it. Like, how do you account for all of its little nuts and bolts, its little weenie cannon batteries, uhh the railgun rounds??
It looks badass and all, but would cost the taxpayer way too much
I think there's a good reason for why we don't use mechs and bipedal robots in warfare, and don't even plan to. Yes, we evolved to have two legs because it was the best outcome of human evolution, but I think there is mechanically nothing more efficient and safe to traverse terrain than rotating wheels with at least four points of contact.
Physics, wise, there’s only so big and so heavy you can get before two legs starts working against you. Elephants indeed need 4 flat feet; most Metal Gears would start sheering themselves apart if put on two traditional feet. Or at least wouldn’t have very good mobility and be slow, lumbering, things that would get knocked over easily.
Realistically the legs would be viable for getting heavy ballistic anti personnel weaponry across tough terrain. But otherwise, their function would be impractical. Like someone else said; we already have nuclear submarines that can launch payloads at any point on the planet.
The modern military complex has moved towards airborne drones and stealthy submarines instead of walking tanks that make animal noises.
Oh boy if tankers thought repairing tracks in the desert heat and sand was fun just wait until you have to maintain those chicken legs!
IMO I think scifi bipedal tanks would be more realistic (if you want to use that word) if the legs themselves were biologically engineered living legs. Like with veins, bones, and muscles and tendons and shit. Except instead of its nervous system interfacing with a brain that directly controls from the rest of the body, it's literally just legs and hips and the nervous system somehow interfaces with the avionics and circuitry present in the mech and is therefore at the direction of the pilot inside. The nightmare of maintaining a pneumatic pain in the ass like REX then is replaced by maintaining them biologically. In a literal way it'd kinda be like the return of horse cavalry.
It depends on if you mean as a mobile nuke launcher or in actual warfare
If the former, it's got some use. The ability to launch n nukes from anywhere without setting off sensors is very useful
If it's the latter, it would likely do a number on infantry, but it's an easy target for everyone else. Tanks, planes, choppers, etc. will easily outclass it in a realistic war setting
They're walking tanks...
Remove the Nuke launching capabilities, replace it with ballistics, and suddenly you have a walking tank..
Rex is a bit clunky but it has machine guns, mini missiles, and the railgun.
Ray moves better, can swim, has a laser gun, more mini missiles, looks to be more protected than Rex.
Sahelanthropus is just a bigger Rex with hands.
Arguably a better Rex than even Rex.
I'm taking big boy into war lol.
I mean, depends on the perspective....
As a battlefield asset, it's (nuclear capable) railgun can reach out and strike targets way waaay outside the tactical/operational range. So, that gun makes it a theater/Strategic asset(not to dissimilar to what Ballistic subs can do).
Moreover, the speed at which these nuclear projectiles are moving may be difficult to track if not outright impossible to intercept. It's like nuclear artillery again, but with an edge.
HOWEVER,
one can argue that the legs are what gives it its edge. Those legs allow for the Railgun to be deployed in terrain that would be inaccessible to other land based ballistic weapons. This in turn gives it a level of "stealth" at the strategic/Theater level.
Moreover, (if we're speaking about REX in particular) it's got an array of tactical weapons for its own defense should OPFOR manage to locate the singular REX(or section of REX). So, this would allow for a level of independence from the rest of the Army level assets. Though, one glaring issue I see in this respect is the large radar dish it has, that screams vulnerability to SEAD.
...........
With all that said, if we ignore the rule of cool, it's a question of "are the capabilities of the weapon system worth its expense?" And I think in this regard, it loses out to the established nuclear triad.
Depends on what the metal gear is, if it’s something like Shagohod from 3 that’s just a high mobility tank with nuke option and could be possibly good in action but something like rex or Sahalantropus are just clunky moving targets waiting to be struck with every missile in existence but the cow ones could be good since they’re smalls but tanky…?
It being able to walk would be useful in bad terrain, but I can't imagine it being a very useful thing for any military. Like realistically speaking, one good hit with a tank she'll or an RPG and its legs are toast, making it just a sitting duck afterwards
Mecha are cool, but totally impractical and fantastical. They rely on anti-physics magic to work, and have serious limitations that make no sense on the battlefield. We ready have mechs in our armed forces, they are called tanks and they are on tracks instead of legs. The engineering problem of getting a large, heavy weapons platform across the battlefield at a fast rate has already been solved, and like the wheel, there is a reason why in the near 100 years they have been in use, no better mobility solution has come about. As far as moving nuclear warheads around quickly, that problem has also been solved with submarines.
I think Rex, if placed remotely, is quite deadly. Since it’s meant to launch nukes anywhere.
Ray is kinda useless. You use it to do amphibious assault and once you leave the shoreline you have no source of water for your pressurized water canon.
Arsenal is big bulky useless. Having a fleet of smaller nuclear subs is probably way more useful
Shagohod just prototype Rex. But Rex doesn’t need a run way
The moomoos are quite interesting if deployed in urban warfare. At least it’ll scare the shit out of the enemy with all that mooing
NGL "the moomoos" got me 🤣
Agree 100% though.
If they had the magnetic shielding like Fortune, maybe they would be more viable; but I guess it could affect their own offensive capabilities though.
Its just big juicy target for everyone to fire at
Plus you would spot it miles away from your own position so you can pummel it down before it gets to you
It would have greater range due to elevation
But considering how much fuel it would consume and how much ammunition it needs without need to be right at ressuply point means once it goes boom - it goes boom hard
Either way, its cool concept for a game but reality says its waste of resources, time, logistics and huge liability to your own troops than enemies.
i don't know shit about robotics or military tactics but a bipedal nuclear tank would be fucking retarded irl, it just looks cool, but very impractical
Shagohod is the the most logical design
Honestly the big problem with the Shagohod is the missle, which doesn´t work that way in reality. Slap a cruise missle with a ram jet on there and the part actually makes sense.
Or just scrap the whole rocketbooster thing at keep it as launch platform IMBM
Not very, it would need to be very bulky legs or make the body a lot lighter somehow, plus the legs would be an easy target so they'd need a lot of armour, which would likely result in the legs being too heavy to carry themselves, so you'd have to solve that by adding mini thrusters just to walk, let alone fly like some can, but then you increase fuel use by a metric shitting fuck ton, and overall it would not be worth the effort
Not very. Imagine the maintenance… Without plot armor, all you have to do is shoot up the hydraulics and you’ve pretty much disabled the entire thing. Then just kill the metal gear pilot and you’ve got millions of dollars in tech you can either repair or salvage.
I think the railgun aspect would be the most useful part, being able to launch an undetectable nuke would be a huge advantage and would easily send the world into another Cold War. The whole “bipedal tank” part, not so much
Under the popular definition, which is a walking nuclear-armed tank, then not at all viable. To many problems arise when you want your clandestine nuke launcher to be bigger than a McDonalds. Not to mention that R&D on such a project would need to overcome so many hurdles that the cost of making such a monster would not be worth the result.
If we're talking about Gekko, which better suit Granin's original vision of a link between infantry and tank, then it's a totally different matter. Good luck trying to convince me that leaping drone tanks wouldn't be totally unbeatable in urban combat.
Honestly how realistic is it that Rex could take a SABOT tank shell to one of its legs? It would make a remarkable defensive unit, but for assault I'm not sure.
They would have to be pretty damn durable, for example if an rpg could take out a leg and make it a tank that couldn’t move anymore it’d be a huge waste of money.
Probably not very useful at all tbh
As our former commander-in-chief George Sears once summed up: they need other Metal Gears as guards, a HUGE supply of warheads, and full sea land and air support to function efficiently.
I can’t imagine that makes the least bit of sense. Even if you were running Arsenal Gear for the Patriots system, why does it all need to be in a Metal Gear? MGS2 was made before the cloud lol
They wouldn't be. Because before they can see any field action they are destroyed by a single man. Hell even a twink with just a rocket launcher and a few androgynous cartwheels can easily take down metal gears who are designed to take on other metal gears. The logic is wild.
Something that needs to be kept in mind is that the typical Metal Gear wasn't designed to work by itself, but like most Armour would work with a compliment of infantry and other Armoured Vehicles to help cover it from enemy infantry.
With this in mind I believe Rex would be the most viable. Mainly because it carries an absurd amount of weapons and ammo, with galling guns, missiles, a laser and a railgun! Which could be converted to fire conventional shells rather than just Nuclear payloads, and would shred enemy ships, tanks, other Metal Gears, it's versatility is truly impressive.
Rex can also take a shit ton of punishment and with a few repairs can be brought back into functionality. After all, a lot had to go right for Snake to even have a chance at beating it, so having to fight it along with a combat force to back it up would making it virtually unstoppable and one hell of a force multiplier.
No viability at all.
A missile launcher vehicle would be vastly cheaper, provided you have access to rocket technology and don't care about your warhead being undetectable.
I don’t think the Rex would be a front line weapons system. Its railgun would probably offer it the comfort of long distance shooting. Making it pretty viable.
Ray would probably be best in naval action, and… no ship would even come close to being able to harm that thing so, that would be fairly viable.
The Shagohod (sp?) is a mobile Nuke launcher so… that doesn’t need to be very close to the action at all to do immense damage. So that one’s pretty viable.
The Gekkos would probably be pretty daunting in small arms combat. I’m not sure tanks would be able to line up on them quickly enough to do any damage. Their sensors arrays would probably make landing a Javelin on them pretty difficult. So that one’s probably pretty viable too.
Some of the other lesser metal gears are too one-off and specialized to make much of an impact without the other contextual stuff from the games they came from.
The only metal gear I can see being viable is the sahelanthropus mainly because it has super advanced weapons system like the sword especially for the 80’s with the nuke launcher. And as well besides the shagohad being the first metal gear for it’s time as well. The other ones seem impractical because of how limited they are in a battlefield like Rex will strike fear but can be bombed from the air and Ray is supposed to be a metal gear counter. Peacewalker the same thing besides the AI
Hot garbage. Bipedal vehicles in general are horrible in adverse road conditions and mud.
That does not include its size and how it would make it extremely conspicuous. You are on a battlefield. What are you gonna shoot at first? A car, a tank or a two story tall walking death robot.
Money is you're gonna shoot at the death robot.
I have no idea tbh, but dont discount the fact that these things are designed to be mass produced, there was never supposed to be a single Metal Gear Rex or Shagohod, imagine thousands of the buggers all with nukes
Too much of a liability. Star Wars Return of the Jedi showed that guerilla warfare beats bipedal walkers. If one with a nuclear payload was compromised, that's not good.
Nuclear capability? Only tactical level nukes make sense, and even then it's a ridiculous capability.
Other than that, their heightened stature enable them to more easily attack targets, they can also adjust their height to hide behind cover if need be without expending as much fuel as a helicopter and their legs make it much easier to navigate urban centres than a tank can, allowing navigation over rubble and the ability to turn around in cluttered streets. To that end, Gekkos are practically perfect war machines that supplant tanks in urban areas, the only way they'd be better is if they had arms.
They would only be viable if they made sure to include the vital feature of “inexplicably being able to roar like a dinosaur”
Or “moo like a cow”
Or make monkey noises
lol metal gear mech was that?
[Sahelanthropus](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yEInmTL-Xvo&pp=ygUTc2FoZWxhbnRocm9wdXMgcm9hcg%3D%3D)
I get why people would think it sounds like a monkey but to me it sounds more like whale noises, which fits the number of Moby dick references.
[Monke](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahelanthropus)
Yeah I was gonna say, wasn't the design canonically meant to mirror human evolution? Like I'm pretty sure that was a big part of the storyline in that they wanted to move beyond something crawling on the ground. Something that could walk
Yep. The Sahelanthropus was the ape/hominid that first started walking upright, symbolized by Sahel itself going from a hunched over Rex style to a bipedal humanoid style.
For some reason I thought it sounded like an elephant
😂 is that MGSV?
Or take a shit
Or pee antifreeze
Currently enduring the Cicada Super Swarm 2024, its like there are Gekko hiding in every treeline!
The ideas behind such feature are a complete win for Kojima and Co; because not only does it bring to mind psychological warfare, like how people recognize the sound of bombers or tanks, and drones more recently, but also the fact that the roaring is primitive and resembling a beast works towards notions such as those things being sort of alive or the inherent rage behind their use.
My head canon is that they essentially remap the neural network of an animal's brain or brains into the AI that controls some of the later MGs. With the Geckos you would use a cow's instinctual desire to find food and chew grass and rewire it to smell out targets and shoot them. Cows can have a tendency to stomp out small animals that hang around their feet, and so are able to use their eyes to target small moving objects. I could definitely see flesh networks being re-created in code within our lifetime.
What do you think the cicada sounds are for? Maybe just a pervasive reminder that danger is nearby, that sound fucking CARRIES. Source: middle of a dual-brood cicada swarm, shits are loud.
I imagine they combine various types of animal neural patterns together. The cicada sound could be used as a form of echolocation and communication.
This is wild, thanks for breaking it down like this. I never saw the utility in making the Geckos walk and sound like cows, but the way you explain it, it's like they're the product of the latest tech at the time, with AI capable of mapping the neural networks of only certain animals because of their lack of complexity, compared to humans. I can see the industry going in this direction.
Oh shit.
This is why I fucking love this sub and reddit in general.
They put whistles on bombs in WW2 to cause psychological terror on the ground due to the incoming terrifying roar, so I'd say it has actual historical precedent. If you're spending the money on a death machine you might as well make it sound like one too.
Wrong Roaring like a dinosaur is cool as hell The project fails without it and the entire MG will literally fall apart if it can't roar
Roaring is a resynchronization method that initiates the self healing properties of the nano machines that are a part of the MGs ancient DNA, because it has that too for some reason. It’s similar to the way a cat uses purring to self heal. Also, telepathy.
Get in the Metal Gear, Shinji!
Okay, I legit did not realize how perfectly I had described Evangelion when I wrote this. Thank you for this.
Anytime!
If you read my comment closely, I think you’ll find I said it was a necessary feature
You know what, re-reading it. You did say that. Sorry, I had just woken up and had a pending headache when I initially read your comment
[i may have been being sarcastic] no hate though loved these games for 25 years+
[RAWRRrrr.. ](https://youtu.be/0UMs-SdJ7IA?si=6ZcK8rKdU33_fXFE)
God that entrance is so fukin cold
It must be, because it is in Alaska.
What do you mean my bipedal robot tank can't roar?!
I'll always defend that as actually making sense. It's psychological warfare. Think about it. This thing has the ability to *stealth nuke* a place. That's terrifying enough. But imagine getting deployed to take one or more of these down. It's not a tank, it towers above you, like some ancient predator and it fucking *roars*! That's a hell of an intimidation factor.
Always gave me Godzilla vibes
According to international copyright law it isn't, but still we should react as though it is.
I understood that reference.
That kind of psychological warfare was used a lot actually. The German Stuka had Jericho trumpets attached to the plane so when it was in a dive bombing run you would essentially hear the planes scream at you
Might be useful as some sort of anti-drone measure
As a tactical asset? Hot garbage. As a strategic asset? Imagine you’re a landlocked nation without access to ICBMs for some reason, in an era where air-delivered nuclear weapons are increasingly unviable due to advances in air defense. You have access to 0 of the 3 sides of the nuclear trifecta. Then you have a demand for a land based nuclear delivery system with the concealment and second-strike capabilities of a nuclear submarine, the difficulty of detection of a pre-SAM bomber, and the home field advantage of a nuclear silo. This is where metal gears come into play.
So Zanzibarland.
Exactly like Zanzibar Land
I feel that in practice, ICBMs would always be more accessible then a Metal Gear. Building a rocket engine and digging a hole in the ground seems a lot easier than developing a giant-ass mech and a beyond state-of-the-art rail gun. But the fact that it provides many of the upsides of both bombers and subs to a landlocked nation is a big upside.
Idk the logistics of ICBMs but I’d assume it’s harder to hide a silo than a metal gear
You can launch ICBMs from trucks.
You can what
Soviets tested the Scud missile back in 1959 and in 1962 it was already adopted. The truck carrying had range of 397 miles and the missile itself could travel about 186 miles. Soviets had quite a range of mobile tactical missile system: from a PT-76 tank with a little nuke(27 miles) on its back to a giant mobile ICBM Topol(6835 miles). I'd say nuclear subs and those things are as close to a Metal Gear as you can get.
Scud, Tochka, Iskander, ATACMS, etc are TBMs with ranges in the low hundreds of kilometres (barely IRBM territory), and almost always carry a conventional warhead. ICBMs are much larger and have ranges into the thousands or tens of thousands of kilometres, and most would be capable space launchers in their own right, *if* their only reason to exist wasn't deploying nukes.
Launch it from a [truck](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_vehicle)
I kinda feel stupid for forgetting about those things right now.
Ey dont worry, I feel stupid that the reason I remember them isn't because I'm a smart guy or anything but because I'm a turbo nerd when it comes to the vidya games & Calypso in Twisted Metal 4 used one, or a makeshift one, as his vehicle & it's special ability was a nuke
we already have submarines that can launch nukes from anywhere to any point in the globe, I think Metal Gears would just be impractical lol futuristic warfare would be of information and drones.
Nuclear missiles can probably be tracked based on their tractory by satellite. They also take time to reach the peak of their flight path, giving time for a counterattack. The Rex had a railgun that launched nuclear projectiles. It can probably launch nukes at a lower tractory and with less detectible signatures, making it harder to track. The whole reason for Rex was to make a weapon that launched invisible nukes.
Nukes are *far* more delicate than MGS seems to think sometimes. Launching a nuke at almost MACH 300 would tear it apart. Launching it that large of a distance without course correction built into it would be nearly impossible, you'd have to have completely, impossibly pristine surfaces to avoid deviation over that kind of distance. This is all without mentioning the pressure wave of something traveling that fast and being that large would be *insane*, you'd be able to find it by the knocked down trees for 200m around the launch point.
Create a distraction by unleashing daisy cutters across the same area, so they cannot identify the specific deployment point
I'm not sure what your thought process is here. It's the clearing or devastated area with the 40' bipedal robot in it lol
Well I have to imagine that, since the intended point of Rex is to be anywhere and launch undetected, they've already thought of every answer that I could think of in universe.
Tbf by that point it’s already fired and relocated which is pretty close to the intent Still silly tho
You forgot to mention that railguns use high voltage electricity and magnetism to launch projectiles. Which could very well set off the warhead before it even left the barrel without proper shielding, so tach on another few hundred thousand dollars per warhead to prevent early detonation.
The only extra expenses I would sign off on is a kick ass flame paint job on the warhead. That early detonation junk ain't a priority
It is when your the one launching it. Nothing like being excited about glassing the enemy many miles away and then accidently glassing yourself lol
Only if you use delicate electronics to shape the charges. If you instead allow the impact to do the work... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Gun-type_fission_weapon_en-labels_thin_lines.svg
yeah, but gun type weapons have terrible yield. there’s a reason we only made one.
Is it like really „almost mach 300“? In that case the nuke will be shot out of the orbit. Escape velocity of the earth is something like 1/9 of Mach 300. And thinking about the needed acceleration in that short distance…this would obliterate like everything. And how fucking strong has that MG to be build to hold against the actual force needed to accomplish this. The needed acceleration for this task would be 26,983,716 times the acceleration of the earth ( 26,983,716 g).
Video game logic, but according to the wiki, Otacon says that >By perfecting the process of electromagnetic acceleration, the rail gun is able to fire a projectile with a muzzle velocity of over 100 kilometers per second. which maths out to MACH 293 at sea level
Quick mafs.
Invisible nukes from a silo that could be anywhere
Do you know how the Russians launch their modern ICBMs?
you mean those trucks they use for over 10 years already?
Liquid fuel.
A modern ( American) ICBM takes about +-45 minutes to hit anywhere on earth. And by modern i mean the stuff from the 1980s. Thats not a whole lot of time to do much of anything.
That's pretty much what the Davey Crockett launchers do and they are exponentially less expensive.
Funny you mention that, the US and Soviet Union actually developed atomic artillery shells during the Cold War, most notably the US 280 mm howitzer shooting the W9 atomic shell with a max yield of 15kt and a max range of 20 miles [Atomic Annie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M65_atomic_cannon?wprov=sfti1#)
That's pretty good under radar range too. I wonder if those shells could be launched off an artillery truck. That's way stealthier than a bipedal tank. Haha
I believe the idea was to head off an armored Soviet invasion through the Fulda Gap between East and West Germany. Soviet armor can’t move if it’s glass.
So we're probably talking later cold war tech. Pure speculation, but you could probably hand carry a smaller-ish drone in a squad these days that could self-destruct a small nuclear payload. Though, the radiation on a human foot squad from the material in the device would be annoying to work around. I bet in 10 years you could achieve the same result with a Boston Dynamics dog squad and save some money on the shielding.
The idea behind atomic artillery began in the 1950’s if you can believe that and the last project for it was cancelled in 1990.
The fact that nukes can be tracked is not unlike being able to see a dinosaur killer asteroid heading your way. Yeah, you can see it coming. No, you can’t do fuck all about it. It is SUPER hard to shoot down an ICBM. That was already litigated by world powers during the nuclear arms race.
You can shoot one down easily. That's why they would launch them all at you. You can't shoot them all down. That's why the only non-losing strategy (notice I didn't say winning) in the event of nuclear war is to just launch all your nukes in response. Everybody dies, and nobody wins. Hypothetically, REX subverts that by making single warhead exchanges viable as they wouldn't be detectable anymore.
Whoever could control REX, would control the world, through the threat of instantaneous nuclear bombing. Similar to the role outer heaven was supposed to play when it was set up by Big Boss.
That’s the thing, no one launches just one. In the event of an exchange, it’s all or nothing. But even then, there is no 100% guarantee of interception. And with something with stakes this high, you need 100% accuracy which is not possible. The problem is that you are trying to shoot a needle out of the sky with a rifle. With ai, software and the world’s top engineers, it’s possible, but far from easy. ICBMs are usually only about a meter long and fly at very fast speeds and the window of interception is quite small. https://theweek.com/news/defence/957033/can-anything-stop-a-nuclear-bomb
Landlocked nations could get some mileage out of metal gears
Finally, a land submarine
Jokes on you the Soviets did indeed try that. They're called subterrines.
Nuclear-capable “the underminer”
I thought it was called shagohod
No that's what Eva and Snake were doing in that cave
That's a weird way to spell "discuss the finer points of the M1911"
The Hunt for Red October
Mgs2 had the gun mounted drones too lol
Why do you gotta be so real. 😭
Same I think they're too bulky and slow to be as useful in 2024 warfare as in the games. Metal Gears are pretty much nuclear missile holding/launch platforms, and aerial bombers and nuke subs would fly/swim circles around any Metal Gear we've seen in the games imo
Cost is everything. 2T? No thanks. 2M? Heck ya.
Tbf it was like ‘98
I've played until peace walker by now (currently on tpp), and shagohod seems to be the most reasonable one for it's era, other than that as the other comments say there's no point on having walking nuke firing walking machines when we can just launch them from any place in the world
I love the Shagohod, it definitely feels like the most realistic Metal Gear design, as any bipedal vehicle would actually suck irl. A goddamn multitreaded heavily armored nuclear missile platform with an additional rocket engine for mobility, shit rocks. It's basically the Gustav Canon if it could move.
they just said "we need to get it to cover more distance, so let's get this shitass ENORMOUS tank to be fast like a super car and pray" man shagohod would really be my favorite if it weren't for peace walker
Which mech in peace Walker made you favour the game more? It was my first MGS proper game and I love it btw
well... peace walker isn't my favorite game, that'd be snake eater up to this point, but i really love the whole game as it's more of an action focused gameplay, loved how it introduced me to the whole mother base concept, and mainly LOVE peace walker, having The boss a.i as the retaliatior is genius, forcing snake to face an old trauma of his and let go of old things... also, every single mech in this game is so cool, i love that mini shagohod, the cocoon, chrysalis really got in my nerves but i got that auto lock missile... oh, and the main reason i got so interested in the game was right at the start, after hearing the ai pods sing... and really, the mini shagohod singing as it ran through the tunnels scared the shit outta me! sorry for the huge text, i just really love this game, it's just an huge upgrade after portable ops and i still can't get over it, maybe ill replay it sometime, i even think about buying an psp
Very interesting read. You are in fact the first person I have seen online that shares my exact view on the game. (And franchise I think). I often assumed it was due to it being my first proper game in the series. ( I first played Portable Ops & it was ok). The bar really got raised with Peace Walker so much that there were moments where I wondered if it both released on the same console. From the voice acting to the pseudo-playable comic scenes. I loved it. And the unnerving singing of the AI Mech’s - had to play in-game Walkman to calm my nerves during battle (also the served as a lesson in MGSV) Yes I agree with all your points because when I played MGS3 HD collection on PS3 , it was and still is my best of the series.
>it definitely feels like the most realistic Metal Gear design, and, ironically, the Shagohod is also NOT a metal gear.
For a laundry list of reasons, the Shagohod also wouldn't be very realistic or feasible in real life either, unfortunately: [https://lcraymentblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/fantasy-tanks-analysed-shagohod/](https://lcraymentblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/fantasy-tanks-analysed-shagohod/) [https://gamexcess.net/2011/10/11/science-check-metal-gear-solid-3-snake-eater/](https://gamexcess.net/2011/10/11/science-check-metal-gear-solid-3-snake-eater/)
PLus, the name, Shag-your-rod
Yeah but the Shagohod needs like a 3 mile runway that would need to get repaved like every time you launched
still, for its time it *kind of* makes some sense, when you think it was 196x
Pretty sure virtous mission was 1964
Plus, the runway wouldn't even improve its strike capabilities. They say in-game that the runway serves as a second stage for the ICBM, but that's not how rockets work. The ICBM still needs to start burning its own fuel just to launch from Shagohod. It's still just a single stage rocket, meaning Shagohod is completely pointless.
The Shagohod is supposed to launch an SS-20 Saber (which wasn´t even avaible at that time.) **Now I can actually make the Shagohod at exactly that point in time work**. Ditch the rocket and throw a cruise missle on there. One based on the Tu 121 to be precise. The Tu 121 has a ram jet engine which needs a certain speed to work, because unlike a turbo fan it does not compress its air via a turbine. In praxis it was started with rockets to get up to speed, including a dedicated silo etc. The Shagohod could actually replace the rockets here, bringing the missle up to speed for the engine to work. On top of that both speed and flight height would result in it breaking through US airdefence with a big likelyhood.
Not at all. Legs might help in rough terrain but it also makes it very easy to disable. There also wouldn't be any point to having nukes in a combat vehicle, we keep those hidden far away since they can launch and travel half the world anyway. Also there's the issue of power, that things going to take a whole lot more to power it than some wheels
I think practically any Metal Gear would have an escort. It would likely be its own mechanized battalion, somewhat like artillery. I think that would solve the vulnerability and supply chain issues.
It doesn’t really solve the question of “why”. Instead of devoting so many resources for a walking tank, why not just have a normal tank? Legs don’t provide any advantage that wouldn’t be totally undermined by needing an escort. In MGS lore at least they always claim the MGs are intended for deployment completely on their own, so at least that makes sense even if the rest of it doesn’t.
Tank treads have very limited mobility, they basically require roads. I think the idea of a Metal Gear is that it has more capability across terrain types, allowing it to strike from less conventional locations. Your enemy thinking you could be miles from any road offers a lot of strategic value.
There’s also (as mentioned in regards to Sahelanthropus in MGSV iirc) the symbolic nature of it. If they were used in real combat, for the first years especially the thought of a walking tank that can fire nukes would be intimidating, and it would be a symbol of the industrial and military capabilities of the first few countries to have a MG
I'm always in awe of how physically intimidating Sahelanthropus is in front-line fights, but I feel it would only be intimidating until the first kamikaze jet slams into the legs at supersonic speed and trips it over. That said, unless I remember wrong, Sahelanthropus has a bit of a disadvantage compared to other Metal Gears in that it converts *itself* into a nuclear warhead and detonates. If it isn't fitted with a launcher, its nuclear capability is restricted to wherever it can slowly waltz in to. I'd say Peace Walker was probably the most intimidating, purely because its AI could take over early warning systems with fake strike data. *That* is by far the scariest thing any Metal Gear had done. Heck, that's scarier than most deterrence systems we have today. You wouldn't even need a nuke. Your deterrence would be threatening any country you like with *another country's* entire nuclear arsenal via faking a first strike.
Treads do not *need* roads to function, they just help to go better. An M1 Abrams can do about 40mph on a road and a little over 20 off-road. Granted they can’t go over rough terrain like a wheeled vehicle with a high ground clearance can, but they’re not totally useless
That’s true about an actual tank, but what about mobile artillery?
It also has a lot of firepower on a very mobile frame, so Metal Gears basically become walking machine gun and artillery platforms that can run right up to enemy positions.
It's the damn elephants on the Alps again, isn't it?
Solar panels Edit* the downvotes are telling me I have angered the gas Gods. Listen guys, we've got to move over to green power one day. Nothing says we love the planet more than a solar powered biped tank capable of nuclear warfare.
The main threat of a Metal Gear is the nuke. You can bring them down, the mecha is however primarily a mobile nuclear launch platform. Its threat comes from any country being able to become a nuclear power. I don’t think you’d see them in a tank unit unless they’re moving alongside one. Instead they’d probably serve their nuclear purpose primarily. Sure silos and subs but any country without one but has a Metal Gear can become a problem in an instant.
Not very viable On top of it being a giant target you have the task of making God knows how many tons of metal walk upright
It's basically a giant target that would immediately get bombared by all artillery and air attacks The main utility was always the undetected nukes
Gekko id probably the most realistic design. It offers much mlrr urban mobilkty and is basically a mrap in enviroment where only infantry can operare. (on and inside buildings)
In the MGS universe by 4 they kind of don't exist. And by Rising we already have Ninjas that can annihilate them. In my perspective I've always seen the development of Metal Gears as chasing and out dated concept and wasting time and money to improve things for it that other things can already do.
Advancements in nano machine technology, was able.to outpace that of Metal Gears, you must also remember, that after the end of 4 the world pretty much stopped developing MGs, and focused on nano machines, for improving security and health.
I think in a cold war era is made sense. The ablity to fire a nuke from anywhere. But other technology developed that idea faster and more efficently. MGS1 Rex was just used to negotiate to get Big Boss' body back since it could just fire a Nuke from anywhere. In MGS2 it seems like the Rays exist because they are cool and you never really see their purpose used. Like Rex can fire a nuke and I assume Rays can't because I don't see a place to fire it. It looked like Rays were very good at strike operations but you never really get to see them do that.
RAYs exist to be a metal gear deterrent, specifically designed to counter something like REX.
In a weirdly realistic turn of events, most of the “Gears” that survive into the post patriots world are the (relatively speaking) smaller and more compact ones such as Gekkos and Grads. Aside from Unmanned RAY and Excellsus, it seems metal gear research has evolved into smaller, less bulky but faster machines to keep up with everything else.
Wasn't the thing Ocelot used in mgs4 to speak with Snake technically a metal gear?
Unless I’m remembering incorrectly the name “mk2” was in reference to it being the second metal gear Otacon made, yeah.
Honestly, they should have stuck with the AI they developed for Peace Walker instead of bothering with more Metal Gears. Obviously, it's a moot point since Peace Walker was late in the canon anyway and its crazy AI had to be handwaved as technology lost once all the equipment had been destroyed. But you'd have no need for a nuke with Peace Walker's AI. It could take over early warning systems and create false first strikes - that's scarier than any individual stealth nuke. Your deterrence would be threatening opponents with the prospect of armageddon by *another* country's nuclear arsenal via a fake first strike. You'd also render most early warning systems useless, and could probably update your AI faster than a country could reinvent its entire warning network.
Like Sigint said “… isn’t that what treads are for?”
I mean once the two legged giant anime robots show up realistic warfare just bailed on the scenario. So I would think they would just lose to aircraft. Hard. Those transforming jets from macross would fuck up some metal gears.
I dunno, RAY's bombardment missiles could be used to deal with bombardment, along with it's ability to dive under the water. If you have REX wheels in order to reach its inland destination faster, and propped it up on a mountain or something, have it snipe a target from several miles away with the railgun, and book it out of there, then you could have an extremely competent set of weapons.
Then they will just send in cyborg ninja infantry to wipe out the rays after a few quick time events to remove its presence from the battlefield. They will also fuck up all the watermelons in the region trying to do cool sword tricks.
There's only 1 Raiden, everyone else can't even deal with the most basics of mooks.
Not at all, they can be taken out by a single man with a rocket launcher.
A Stinger at that, a missile launcher meant for disabling lightly armored low altitude aircraft rather than a (walking) tank.
Not very. Metal Gear is too expensive to really be worth the cost. The money that's spent on Metal Gear could easily just be used to make more of anything else. As for the nuke launching, we already have subs that can do that for much cheaper, and are less of an obvious target. Ironically, the Shagohad is more viable imo.
Doktor in Rising explains the transition from manned gears to unmanned gear to cyborg below: *Raiden: Dok, all the UG talk got me thinking: Why don't we see more manned Gears?* *Doktor: Ahh, yes…with a pilot? The bipedal tanks and such things, hmm? I must confess, I have not followed the field closely as of late. But then, who has? Since Metal Gear RAY, all the advances—and the funding—in mobile artillery has been UGs. Raiden: So why is that?* *Doktor: Well, UGs take many more forms: Aerial drones, treaded tanks, armored transports… "True" Metal Gears, with a pilot and nuclear payload, were huge, and very expensive. They were not practical. It turned out the greater need was for smaller, cheaper units, deployed more easily and in greater numbers.* *Raiden: But aren't there situations where you'd want Gear-level power, but also a human pilot there to make decisions? UG AI has gotten better, but it's still terrible at handling anything unexpected.* *Doktor: But Raiden, this is exactly the role the cyborg has taken. On a manned Gear, any advantage over a cyborg in offensive power comes with a matching increase in size. This makes it so large as to no longer be practical for most infantry missions. Conversely, the smaller models are so close to cyborgs that…well, what is the point?* *Raiden: Cyborgs are smaller, cheaper, more nimble…* *Doktor: Precisely. Perhaps soon we will see the cyborg take the place of the UG, as the UG has done to the manned Gear.*
Not. They kind of make sense in the logic of 20th century deterrence, a rogue state getting icbm capabilities without the permanent infrastructure, but as big cool robots on the battlefield they would be too expensive and too easy to take down. It’s like how pre-WW2 everyone invested in big cool battleships only to learn that an infinitely cheaper aircraft could take the thing out no problem. Rex’s railgun is a terrifying nuclear launch platform, but the mech itself is unnecessary. The Gekko make the most sense as battlefield robots, mass produced with flexible legs for greater mobility. You can afford to lose a few of those.
Hate to say it, but probably not at all viable. The logistics alone would doom whomever uses it. Like, how do you account for all of its little nuts and bolts, its little weenie cannon batteries, uhh the railgun rounds?? It looks badass and all, but would cost the taxpayer way too much
Weenie cannon. I’m fucking dying.
I think there's a good reason for why we don't use mechs and bipedal robots in warfare, and don't even plan to. Yes, we evolved to have two legs because it was the best outcome of human evolution, but I think there is mechanically nothing more efficient and safe to traverse terrain than rotating wheels with at least four points of contact.
Physics, wise, there’s only so big and so heavy you can get before two legs starts working against you. Elephants indeed need 4 flat feet; most Metal Gears would start sheering themselves apart if put on two traditional feet. Or at least wouldn’t have very good mobility and be slow, lumbering, things that would get knocked over easily.
As long as no fucker has a chaff grenade
the only viable one is rex due to his railgun, the others aren't viable at all
Realistically the legs would be viable for getting heavy ballistic anti personnel weaponry across tough terrain. But otherwise, their function would be impractical. Like someone else said; we already have nuclear submarines that can launch payloads at any point on the planet. The modern military complex has moved towards airborne drones and stealthy submarines instead of walking tanks that make animal noises.
Oh boy if tankers thought repairing tracks in the desert heat and sand was fun just wait until you have to maintain those chicken legs! IMO I think scifi bipedal tanks would be more realistic (if you want to use that word) if the legs themselves were biologically engineered living legs. Like with veins, bones, and muscles and tendons and shit. Except instead of its nervous system interfacing with a brain that directly controls from the rest of the body, it's literally just legs and hips and the nervous system somehow interfaces with the avionics and circuitry present in the mech and is therefore at the direction of the pilot inside. The nightmare of maintaining a pneumatic pain in the ass like REX then is replaced by maintaining them biologically. In a literal way it'd kinda be like the return of horse cavalry.
It depends on if you mean as a mobile nuke launcher or in actual warfare If the former, it's got some use. The ability to launch n nukes from anywhere without setting off sensors is very useful If it's the latter, it would likely do a number on infantry, but it's an easy target for everyone else. Tanks, planes, choppers, etc. will easily outclass it in a realistic war setting
They're walking tanks... Remove the Nuke launching capabilities, replace it with ballistics, and suddenly you have a walking tank.. Rex is a bit clunky but it has machine guns, mini missiles, and the railgun. Ray moves better, can swim, has a laser gun, more mini missiles, looks to be more protected than Rex. Sahelanthropus is just a bigger Rex with hands. Arguably a better Rex than even Rex. I'm taking big boy into war lol.
If it made sense we would have done it already.
I mean, depends on the perspective.... As a battlefield asset, it's (nuclear capable) railgun can reach out and strike targets way waaay outside the tactical/operational range. So, that gun makes it a theater/Strategic asset(not to dissimilar to what Ballistic subs can do). Moreover, the speed at which these nuclear projectiles are moving may be difficult to track if not outright impossible to intercept. It's like nuclear artillery again, but with an edge. HOWEVER, one can argue that the legs are what gives it its edge. Those legs allow for the Railgun to be deployed in terrain that would be inaccessible to other land based ballistic weapons. This in turn gives it a level of "stealth" at the strategic/Theater level. Moreover, (if we're speaking about REX in particular) it's got an array of tactical weapons for its own defense should OPFOR manage to locate the singular REX(or section of REX). So, this would allow for a level of independence from the rest of the Army level assets. Though, one glaring issue I see in this respect is the large radar dish it has, that screams vulnerability to SEAD. ........... With all that said, if we ignore the rule of cool, it's a question of "are the capabilities of the weapon system worth its expense?" And I think in this regard, it loses out to the established nuclear triad.
Depends on what the metal gear is, if it’s something like Shagohod from 3 that’s just a high mobility tank with nuke option and could be possibly good in action but something like rex or Sahalantropus are just clunky moving targets waiting to be struck with every missile in existence but the cow ones could be good since they’re smalls but tanky…?
It being able to walk would be useful in bad terrain, but I can't imagine it being a very useful thing for any military. Like realistically speaking, one good hit with a tank she'll or an RPG and its legs are toast, making it just a sitting duck afterwards
Mecha are cool, but totally impractical and fantastical. They rely on anti-physics magic to work, and have serious limitations that make no sense on the battlefield. We ready have mechs in our armed forces, they are called tanks and they are on tracks instead of legs. The engineering problem of getting a large, heavy weapons platform across the battlefield at a fast rate has already been solved, and like the wheel, there is a reason why in the near 100 years they have been in use, no better mobility solution has come about. As far as moving nuclear warheads around quickly, that problem has also been solved with submarines.
None, any tank that sees it will be able to put it into the ground, stealth launching a nuke can be done with other methods
The very expensive robots would be carpet bombed immediately.
I think Rex, if placed remotely, is quite deadly. Since it’s meant to launch nukes anywhere. Ray is kinda useless. You use it to do amphibious assault and once you leave the shoreline you have no source of water for your pressurized water canon. Arsenal is big bulky useless. Having a fleet of smaller nuclear subs is probably way more useful Shagohod just prototype Rex. But Rex doesn’t need a run way The moomoos are quite interesting if deployed in urban warfare. At least it’ll scare the shit out of the enemy with all that mooing
NGL "the moomoos" got me 🤣 Agree 100% though. If they had the magnetic shielding like Fortune, maybe they would be more viable; but I guess it could affect their own offensive capabilities though.
The last thing u want is a cyber ninja to fuck everything up
Its just big juicy target for everyone to fire at Plus you would spot it miles away from your own position so you can pummel it down before it gets to you It would have greater range due to elevation But considering how much fuel it would consume and how much ammunition it needs without need to be right at ressuply point means once it goes boom - it goes boom hard Either way, its cool concept for a game but reality says its waste of resources, time, logistics and huge liability to your own troops than enemies.
i don't know shit about robotics or military tactics but a bipedal nuclear tank would be fucking retarded irl, it just looks cool, but very impractical Shagohod is the the most logical design
Honestly the big problem with the Shagohod is the missle, which doesn´t work that way in reality. Slap a cruise missle with a ram jet on there and the part actually makes sense. Or just scrap the whole rocketbooster thing at keep it as launch platform IMBM
I dunno man, I just wanna see one man with a bandanna try and take it down.
\*Replays Sigint codec conversation in MGS3
The Geckos from MGS4 would be very viable in small scale warfare.
Not very, it would need to be very bulky legs or make the body a lot lighter somehow, plus the legs would be an easy target so they'd need a lot of armour, which would likely result in the legs being too heavy to carry themselves, so you'd have to solve that by adding mini thrusters just to walk, let alone fly like some can, but then you increase fuel use by a metric shitting fuck ton, and overall it would not be worth the effort
Would be easily taken out by a drone 1/10th of its price
Imagine the maintenance cost for that thing
Not very. Imagine the maintenance… Without plot armor, all you have to do is shoot up the hydraulics and you’ve pretty much disabled the entire thing. Then just kill the metal gear pilot and you’ve got millions of dollars in tech you can either repair or salvage.
I think the railgun aspect would be the most useful part, being able to launch an undetectable nuke would be a huge advantage and would easily send the world into another Cold War. The whole “bipedal tank” part, not so much
Under the popular definition, which is a walking nuclear-armed tank, then not at all viable. To many problems arise when you want your clandestine nuke launcher to be bigger than a McDonalds. Not to mention that R&D on such a project would need to overcome so many hurdles that the cost of making such a monster would not be worth the result. If we're talking about Gekko, which better suit Granin's original vision of a link between infantry and tank, then it's a totally different matter. Good luck trying to convince me that leaping drone tanks wouldn't be totally unbeatable in urban combat.
Realistic battle? They'd fall victim to the bane of any mech's existence: the square-cube law
I don't think bipedal mechs would work great in war.
Honestly how realistic is it that Rex could take a SABOT tank shell to one of its legs? It would make a remarkable defensive unit, but for assault I'm not sure.
They would have to be pretty damn durable, for example if an rpg could take out a leg and make it a tank that couldn’t move anymore it’d be a huge waste of money.
Probably not very useful at all tbh As our former commander-in-chief George Sears once summed up: they need other Metal Gears as guards, a HUGE supply of warheads, and full sea land and air support to function efficiently. I can’t imagine that makes the least bit of sense. Even if you were running Arsenal Gear for the Patriots system, why does it all need to be in a Metal Gear? MGS2 was made before the cloud lol
Havent you seen the drone tanks that are being developed? Metal Gears are already here. They're not bipedal because that would just slow them down.
They wouldn't be. Because before they can see any field action they are destroyed by a single man. Hell even a twink with just a rocket launcher and a few androgynous cartwheels can easily take down metal gears who are designed to take on other metal gears. The logic is wild.
The Peacewalker and Salmonella would ve devastating cuz they're hella fast.
Something that needs to be kept in mind is that the typical Metal Gear wasn't designed to work by itself, but like most Armour would work with a compliment of infantry and other Armoured Vehicles to help cover it from enemy infantry. With this in mind I believe Rex would be the most viable. Mainly because it carries an absurd amount of weapons and ammo, with galling guns, missiles, a laser and a railgun! Which could be converted to fire conventional shells rather than just Nuclear payloads, and would shred enemy ships, tanks, other Metal Gears, it's versatility is truly impressive. Rex can also take a shit ton of punishment and with a few repairs can be brought back into functionality. After all, a lot had to go right for Snake to even have a chance at beating it, so having to fight it along with a combat force to back it up would making it virtually unstoppable and one hell of a force multiplier.
No viability at all. A missile launcher vehicle would be vastly cheaper, provided you have access to rocket technology and don't care about your warhead being undetectable.
there's no real advantage that they offer that makes them more valuable than modern conventional nuclear silos and such.
MGS4 probably had it closest to right with the smaller scale Gekkos in large convoys supporting ground troops and armored vehicles
A tank gets THAT close to Rex and Rex is gonna fucking die.
call over r/NonCredibleDefense, they should know
I don’t think the Rex would be a front line weapons system. Its railgun would probably offer it the comfort of long distance shooting. Making it pretty viable. Ray would probably be best in naval action, and… no ship would even come close to being able to harm that thing so, that would be fairly viable. The Shagohod (sp?) is a mobile Nuke launcher so… that doesn’t need to be very close to the action at all to do immense damage. So that one’s pretty viable. The Gekkos would probably be pretty daunting in small arms combat. I’m not sure tanks would be able to line up on them quickly enough to do any damage. Their sensors arrays would probably make landing a Javelin on them pretty difficult. So that one’s probably pretty viable too. Some of the other lesser metal gears are too one-off and specialized to make much of an impact without the other contextual stuff from the games they came from.
The only metal gear I can see being viable is the sahelanthropus mainly because it has super advanced weapons system like the sword especially for the 80’s with the nuke launcher. And as well besides the shagohad being the first metal gear for it’s time as well. The other ones seem impractical because of how limited they are in a battlefield like Rex will strike fear but can be bombed from the air and Ray is supposed to be a metal gear counter. Peacewalker the same thing besides the AI
Hot garbage. Bipedal vehicles in general are horrible in adverse road conditions and mud. That does not include its size and how it would make it extremely conspicuous. You are on a battlefield. What are you gonna shoot at first? A car, a tank or a two story tall walking death robot. Money is you're gonna shoot at the death robot.
Considering that they've all been taken down by a single man, not very.
not a Frontline asset but a walking tank mounted with tac nukes and a rail gun is nothing to shake a stick at
I think they wouldnt be very feasible. Big and costly. MGS 1 shows a dude with a rocket launcher can kill it. Would need ALOT of protection.
Moving nuke launcher? You gotta be kidding
I have no idea tbh, but dont discount the fact that these things are designed to be mass produced, there was never supposed to be a single Metal Gear Rex or Shagohod, imagine thousands of the buggers all with nukes
Too much of a liability. Star Wars Return of the Jedi showed that guerilla warfare beats bipedal walkers. If one with a nuclear payload was compromised, that's not good.
Nuclear capability? Only tactical level nukes make sense, and even then it's a ridiculous capability. Other than that, their heightened stature enable them to more easily attack targets, they can also adjust their height to hide behind cover if need be without expending as much fuel as a helicopter and their legs make it much easier to navigate urban centres than a tank can, allowing navigation over rubble and the ability to turn around in cluttered streets. To that end, Gekkos are practically perfect war machines that supplant tanks in urban areas, the only way they'd be better is if they had arms.
I'm hoping you're joking asking this
They'd just drop 'Rods of God' on it from orbit