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Message no. 1
From: Mike Bobroff <Airwasp@***.COM>
Subject: Mechs and Shadowrun (Long)
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 11:53:13 EDT
Okay,

First, an apology to Jon Szeto, Keith ('K') and Nexx for the line of questions
regarding and how I botched it so quickly by tossing in the word 'mech' into
the sentence, otherwise who knows where the thread would have wound up at.

So, I'm going to get a bit more detailed into how mechs may come to pass in
SR, and until we become the past for BattltTech (which would grate a lot of
people).

-=-=-=-

The format of this is going to be similar to a series that talked about
innovation and inventions and how they came to be from the strangest of angles
(Keith, do you remember the name of the show?). The narator was an Englishman
who was a news anchor at one time on the BBC.

-=-=-=-

To begin, the problem with tall mecha is that they require legs with enormous
strength or load-bearing capability to bear the weight of the entire mecha
across various types of terrains. And moving created all sorts of wear-and-
tear.

And so, due to mechanical design limitations, mechs were kept to small scales,
hence the Anthroform and Walker style Drones, but they have a limit of
weighing at most 199 kg, tops (Body 2).

-=-=-

Now then, there is something called a crane. There are various types of
cranes, they are either giganti shovels, or the things which put material onto
and off of naval type ships and railroad cars.

One type of crane was one that had a articulated joint which allowed it to
bend forwards and backwards, and then clamps similar to some types of shovels
to pick stuff up and carry them around. Of course, they were attached to a
vehicle of some form or another or they were in a fixed position.

Another variant of a crane is something used to load some of today's cargo
planes, a payload lifter (like what MAC -Military Air Command- US Military
use) where the object to be loaded on is put onto a flatbed truck and the
object is the hoisted so that it can be moved onto the aircraft without having
to go up at an upward angle (for those things which can not be loaded on that
way).

So, the difference between these two types of cranes is one can pick stuff up
using some sort of gripping mechanism and an articulated joint, versus
something that can lift something up into the air and was attached to a moving
vehicle which was nothing more than a flat-bed.

So, one day, someone decides that they want one vehicle, which can carry
another vehicle, and which can also hoist that vehicle up so that it can go
somewhere the main transporting vehicle can't go.

-=-=-=-

And boy does that give all sorts of ideas ...

The limitations though ... the vehicle that is carrying the second, smaller
vehicle has to be able to have the load to carry the second, smaller vehicle.

-=-=-=-

Getting back to the large cranes though ... one day some company decides that
they need a crane or cranes that are capable of lifting something that is
very, very long. So, some company comes up with a vehicle with two cranes, of
the lifting type with an articulated joint to do the job.

So, now you have a vehicle, with a pair of cranes that is capable of lifting a
very heavy object.

But, now we skip over to something called a Crawler Drone, this is a drone
which has multiple articulated limbs and can move them to go where it needs to
go. The best example of this (albeit a small one) is the Renraku Spider
Drone.

Getting back to the corp who made the double crane ... this company then makes
another crane which does nothing but takes things up and down from various
heights, by lifting whatever objects from underneath them (hey, sounds like
some elevators). Though, due to gravity and other problems, the crane-lift
has only a limited height range, which might be less than twice the height of
the vehicle carrying the lifting crane (buildings only limitation is the depth
to the bed-rock and the amount of cred spent on the proper design of an
enclosed lift-crane).

Then, one day, someone who just happened to watch the re-release of the movie,
Empire Strikes Back.

This same person few days later is in a site with an articulated crane is in
use and falls over, and tumble so that he is know on his back, and with his
body (feet to head) pointing at the crane. And he notices the similarity
between the Articulated Crane and the legs of an AT-AT Walker from Empire.

Then, in his spare time, he makes a small-scale version, using a Body 1
Crawler Drone, to make a scale model of the AT-AT.

He then proceeds, and with some help from some friends who are also engineers,
to make larger scale drawings of what a real AT-AT would look like and it's
engineering concepts behind it. Eventually the corp gets interested as the
rumors have begun spreading about this idea, which became something far more
serious.

So, first, the main body was designed to house the power plants and other
things which their AT-AT would carry. Let's use a Heavy Transport (Car)
Chassis, which has built-in 120 CF, which is more than enough space for the
four cranes which will be used to keep the AT-AT in an upright position, and a
diesel power plant. Ah, but then a snag comes into play, when the thing tries
to move, it collapses in the simulations. So something else has to come into
play.

Getting back to the corp and the main body of the AT-AT. The diesel power
plant was chosen because of the maximum load of 12,000 kg that it can carry,
which far exceeds the 5,000 kg maximum weight of the tractor and the normal
weight of the crane-legs.

In the meantime, someone in the military has begun to take an interest in this
project, and manages to get some military contractor to assist or take over
the project from the current corporation who began this project in earnest.

They add in something called Structural Agility into this mess ... and also
have to add in Drive-By-Wire into the picture, and a very good autonav too
boot.

Finally, after many years, and millions or billions of nuyen spent, a working
prototype is finally built. It works, but then something apparent comes into
being. For the sheer terror-factor this thing has, it is slow, and
cumbersome, and limited to the types of terrain it can handle easily. It is
also very expensive. As four crane-legs capable of lifting a total of 12,000
kg maximum is very expensive.

So, the idea gets shelved.

But hey, somehow or another it got made.

-=-=-=-

My take on mecha in SR ... mecha (anthroforms and Walkers) over a certain size
don't need to exist, they would jsut make SR into BattleTech with Magic. And
that would ruin the game for me at least.

The cost of mecha is one thing that would keep them from being used as
military category vehicles, though I could see some being used in construction
sites, though even they would be only slightly larger than the normal Walker
(perhaps Body 3 or 4 maximum). And they would have to be drones, not piloted
by a person directly via a datajack link.

What I wanted to show was that it is possible in the SR age to be able to
build mecha from the material that is contained within the Rigger 2
Sourcebook, which, IMHO, is the -BEST- sourcebook anyone could have in
addition to the BBB.

And to you Jon, Thank you from me ...

-Mike

Further Reading

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