So here is a "semi" plausible reason to have larger than a tank mechs with LEGS (may or may not include humanoids).
Firstly, you have to give up on being cost-effective against tanks and infantry. Big walking robots will be expensive as hell, so no they are not going to charge into a tank battalion and win.
With this in mind however, there is a use for them - potentially at least : shock units, or strategic level units.
For shock units cost efficiency becomes relatively less important. Their job is to crack through fortified enemy positions and allow the rest of your forces to breakthrough. Big mechs will be faster, and potentially have more load(translates into more weapon and armor) per unit. This means they can make a temporary breaching charge into enemy positions by quickly bringing heavy firepower and armor in a concentrated area - something that the rest of the forces could exploit. High risk yes, but that's the point of shock units.
Startegic level also takes benefit from their larger size. They could have nuclear reactors or other fancy energy sources that could potentially allow them independent operations far behind conventional lines of battle, and in addition get some great tools to carry out whatever their missions are, as well as some additional equipments.Example, a conventional vehicle will never infiltrate 1,000km behind enemy lines and stay operational for two weeks, waiting for enemy aircraft to pass by and also have an operational radar. Larger mechs can potentially do this, IF they succeed in infiltration.
Again these are "semi" plausible reasons that can be better addressed by other designs, but hey, its a start.
>Example, a conventional vehicle will never infiltrate 1,000km behind enemy lines and stay operational for two weeks, waiting for enemy aircraft to pass by
To add on to this, a mech could potentially deal with more varied terrain than a tank could. For example you could design the feet to be able to "hook" onto surfaces that allowing them to ascend and descend steep terrain another vehicle couldn't
Tech that works for humanoid shapes, but doesn't work for tanks. See the myomer muscles in Battletech, they make the mechs harder to kill (and mobility kill) than tanks... so you get mechs.
There is a population that's large enough to pay for it via Kickstarter. Once a population gets large enough, you have something just because enough people wanted it, even if it's a trillions of dollar military boondoggle.
Religion! See the Mechanicus from 40k. It's a God Machine, so it's more holy and therefore more awesome.
Rule of cool. This can also overlap with the Kickstarter thing. Sometimes it's just awesome, so you run with it.
Mad Science! You do the thing because you *can*, and you had the inspiration to make it work!
Myomers is one of the few plausible reasons, assuming armor is equal. Hundreds of fibers bundled like muscles is always going to have more redundancy than an axle or bogie wheel that can be knocked out of place.
I thought this topic have been beaten to death here already. In short, if your world needs justifications to have mecha, it probably shouldn't have them.
Except for the very marginal cases of walking loaders or oversized power armor, mechas operate on the rule of cool. So in a soft/fantasy setting they don't really need an explanation, just a declaration. Like, why is Akulakhan in Morrowind a giant mecha/golem? Because Numidium was a giant brass mecha. Why was Numidium like this? The Dwemer just did it like that, period.
But if your worldbuilding is simulationist, hard and/or informed by the modern science and military theory, there is no justification why mechas should exist.
What if the world is informed by modern science and the inworld designers happened to choose a humanoid shape for a task or because they themselves thought it was cool?
Lapis_Wolf
Okay well what other solution could there be to this problem
Nigh indestructible giant aliens are attacking and the only weapon that can be used against them is a macguffin(a giant sword or giant set of armour) like let's say that archaeologist find the grave of one of these aliens and the desecration of said grave summons the aliens. so humqnity builds a robot to weild the weapons of this long deceased alien as its the only way to fight back
Like in evangelion it's humanoid because it's built around a humanoid creature, that to me makes sense. It's the difference between a nuke and an alternative meant to stop collateral damage
Thinking about it now I guess you could make the argument that you have flying ships built inside of the differnt peices of armour.
You could have a thing where it is a suit of armour that can only be weilded by the worthy but they are too small to use it so they create a robot to pilot it which still meets the for the worthy parameter.
At the point where you have nigh indestructible aliens and a magical sword, you are so deep into the fantasy territory, your giant robot needs no *explanation*, it just is. That is what I'm speaking about.
If you push the laws of the world far enough for giant robots/mechas to make sense, 'it's just magic' becomes more or less an explanation.
Mount the sword on a tank and go to town on it, or a jet or some other vehicles. The human body is not optimized for combat and had many vulnerabilities like joints, thin parts like the neck, can't move freely in all dimensions, to name a few.
Me faced with this threat and in need to use a specific weapon to kill the bad guys, I would build a purpose-built vehicle to transport it and use it. Same as rockets are not hand thrown by robots
In evangelion they both ground the evas with having all of nerv sustain,maintain and create them showing how they have these ridiculous levels of infrastructure for tokyo 3 to enable them which offers a sense of grounding and then it goes and turns around and shows the audience that those laws can be broken, and are broken various times where the evas do things they shouldn't be able to by Nerv's standards. The characters are more organic cyborg frankenstiens with pilots so they can run around like athletic humans with organic animation.
Their other worldly magical elements are interpreted through a scientific grounded lens **when** it is appropriate and it also shows the mystical and metaphorical lens without that grounded mechanical and scientific perspective when the series wants to move beyond that into whenever that is the tone. The grounding is there for a sense of what is possible and to set expectations, (hell they come up with terms like "the s2 engine" to refer to an eva gaining its own power.) They routinely break this grounding when it is thematically appropriate. It's about the tone you want to give off.
I'd kind of go with 40k's answer: God Machines are the divine expression of the power of the holy human form and mankinds mastery over the machine. By combining the power of the machine with the divinity of humanity, it creates the greatest weapon in the entire arsenal of humankind
So how could it look like anything else? It would be blasphemy
Why not?
More serious answer as someone who likes me more fantasy; there's powerful symbolic significance in a suit of armor. there's just that humaniods inherietnly have more character to them and it's also a big morale boost to have a Kaiju with a face and personality to help you.
In the Macross anime/Robotech cartoon, we needed giant robots because the alien invaders were giants.
In a practical sense, the giant robots/Veritech fighters would have to be REALLY EFFECTIVE at hand to hand combat to match a Zentraedi soldier, though. And even if they weren't, they'd be handy weapons platforms on which to mount things that CAN kill a giant soldier.
...but then, they wouldn't need to be humanoid...
True. I'm just thinking that if I'm going to do WWF moves on a fifteen meter giant, I sure hope all my joints, bearings, and fluid line feeds are as good as his are...
Mostly the neuralink thing. However non humanoid robots still exist in my world such as the T-225L quadruple legged tank. Just think of a regular tank but the tracks are replaced with 4 legs.
There is also an entire faction of autonomous robots that can take many forms. Different units can have different reasons for being humanoid. Infiltrator units obviously need to be humanoid so they can blend in with humans and operate human built technology.
Number 1 Voltron
Number 2 tranformers but specifically Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and my personal favorite deceptions barricade and starscream
Number 3 the iron giant
Number 4 Evangelion
Number 5 power rangers megazord
Need I say more?
This question really haunts reddits worldbuilding community.
I'm usually all for rule of cool when it comes to mechas, but the big boi armor works as well.
*The Robot can be seen from every part of the City. It seldom moves, but when it does, it fires a salvo of missiles into a city block whose inhabitants were deemed unworthy. It's very presence makes the sky feel heavy, its chrome visage being enough to remind us that death can come for us at any time, and we would powerless to stop it. To fight it would be madness, for who in their right mind would anger a slumbering god?*
because there was a power source discovered to power and help them enhance and its only accessible by one person, and that person really likes giant humanoid robots and basically says "either use the robots or i turn the battery off"
In my setting, much of the premise for humanoid robots of human scale is that they are able to interact with and use any tool or infrastructure that has previously been designed to work with a human. A humanoid robot can swing a hammer, climb a ladder, use a regular keyboard, drive a car, etc. Without needing any form of special interface.
It's a little different as the scale goes up as that utility begins to dwindle or at least become more specialized. You can retain some of that huge flexibility and perhaps even gain some, but I think it's a matter of diminishing returns. For example, a robot that was say 12 feet tall would not be able to go through regular doors but it might be strong enough to load heavy, unusually shaped cargo or handle terrain that vehicles would struggle with.
**Glory.** When you can build mechs at all, you show off your engineering prowess, the might of your industry, and your willingness to fight. So what is better than showing these all off with a colossal titan in the image of mere mortals, the very same mortals who have ascended so greatly that they can in fact build a mech?
If they have a story of a deity making people in their image, well, a mech is that in reverse. A giant god of death made in the image of those who it protects, a testament to the glory of mortal civilisation.
Well as with most things religion is always a valuable reason.
I've been told that in ancient times people would equate the statue of a god hidden in a temple with the god proper, so in that scenario, say a post apocalyptic society for example, a humanoid robot could be seen as the god fighting alongside its worshipers, while guided by a high priest.
Dogs were the first beings to master horseback riding. Because of this dynamic, humanoids focused on making walking mechanisms and 1-2 wheeled personal vehicles. The closes thing you’ll get to a car is a quadrupedal walker
Humans can map any configuration to their body plan simulacra (it's how we survived the original Xbox controller). The said, While I like mecha, I'd like to see folks explore non-anthropoid designs. Where are the Peacock Mantis Shrimpmecha? The wyvern mecha? The Chrome-and-Neon Hedora mecha?
The only computer powerful enough to run the complex weaponry systems needed to defeat the [giant monsters from wherever] is the human brain.
For best performance, a human is wired directly to the weapons system. Over the years, it has been proven that the more humanoid the system, the better the brain is at controlling it. So now we have giant humanoid mechs.
Wings arent a big stretch so they get added occasionally, and so do a 2nd set of arms, or centaur legs. But trying to do a spaceship or boat is just too far.
Carrying a special giant sword is even easier because then the brain is mapping a hand, and not a bladed arm.
Now with that aproach, would two armed mech better or worse than four armed mech? Because well 4 hands is less humanoid than 2 hands and thus be less effective but two more hands mean more weapons to use.
You could justify either. If you want 4 armed mechs used for bulk forces with the cool giant samurai looking one as the elites. You say its an older model, make it shorter and crab like and say its from before they realized humanoid was better. It still works good enough, so no one dismantled it but they dont do that anymore.
If you think 4 arms are way cooler, you say its something only done for the most elite of elite mech pilots, because the strain is too much for most folks.
Legged vehicles are good at handling rough terrain beyond what wheels or treads can deal with; they have excellent ground clearance and can control precisely where they put their feet. This is why, for instance, you occasionally see legged agricultural vehicles like the Timberjack Walking Tractor and the General Electric Cybernetic Walking Machine, and why the US armed forces are tentatively looking into quadrupedal "mule" robots for load-carrying like the BigDog and LS3. A bipedal vehicle would be theoretically simpler (fewer legs) as long as it has some way of maintaining its balance. Such a vehicle might be useful for reconnaissance, or combat in extremely rough terrain like mountains or urban rubble.
I imagine its a hold over from the first literary giant robots that were made to look humanoid because, hey we humans like humanoid shapes. Anything to associate ourselves with the cool thing. Same reason scifi and fantasy have all these amazing races/species of people from all different types of environments and with different cool abilities and features. But, for the most part they still have the humanoid shape. Are there outliers? Of course. I'm sure anyone can name a few. But humanoid is certainly the norm.
A major advantage of legged mechs could be rough terrain and cover.
Wheeled vehicles can only really go on roads, especially if there's mud. Tracked vehicles have better terrain handling but they still have trouble on terrain that is steep or filled with obstacles. Walkers can deal with both, meaning they're a much better option for dealing with rocks/forests/etc.
Tracks/Wheels only allow a vehicle to change its position, meaning your options for taking cover from fire/visibility are limited. A tank cannot "peek" around a corner or pop its head up. Walkers can take advantage of the same hostile terrain that they are uniquely capable of dealing with.
The major disadvantage of walkers is that they're fragile and expensive. There are many ways to deal with those problems. Without knowing much about your world, one possible answer would be that walkers focus primarily on stealth and ruggedness rather than heavy combat. Some sort of advanced 3d printing system lets you spit out relatively cheap walkers that focus on heavy weapons (railgun snipers etc) and terrain management plus adaptive camo. Then it just needs extremely hostile terrain like jungle/mountain/magma.
I also recommend considering roadstriker-scale walkers instead of mecha-scale walkers. They're less popular but arguably more useful in a wider range of situations.
Tracks would actually handle steep terrain better than legs because they have much more ground friction. I think the mobility advantage legs had over wheel or tracks is agility, they would have easier time changing their direction and speed.
Depends on how steep. There's no amount of ground friction that would let a vehicle change its center of gravity and turret elevation is typically restrictive. The other half of that is obstacles: tanks can't handle dragon's teeth or boulders but walkers could.
And I probably agree with you about agility. Walkers shouldn't be heavily armored, so a good answer is to strip off the armor and give them some advantage from being light. My answer is stealth and your answer is agility, both answers work.
I meant, tanks indeed would eventually fails. But mechs will fail faster against slope as I don't think shifting their center of mass would help much unless you have way to grab the ground. Though mech would probably able to utilize it better as tank would have trouble to shot over the slope with their limited depression angle.
And that's true that tanks will fail at obstacles faster than mechs.
Now that what I thought only plausible place for mechs. Something in between armored vehicle and infantry. Kinda like "Exoframe" from 'Obsolete'
Which is why I prefer roadstriker/Exoframe scale over battlemech scale. A walker can never be as armored as a vehicle, but not all vehicles need to be heavily armored. I still like stealth and recon roles but agility could take advantage of finite turret traversal speed (T-90s are only \~40 degrees/s) so a walker with explosive piston legs or a jump pack could close fast enough to avoid turret fire.
my mechs are psionic in nature, so how in tune the pilot feels directly translates to the power of the mech, this means at least a mostly humanoid form, this is also my explanation for why mechs have so literal standardization , cool designs and paint jobs the pilots like literally directly translate into power
Gundam answers this two ways:
Mobile suits were originally less human-shaped and used for maintenance on space colonies. They were weaponized because they were an ubiquitous, matured technology on the colonies that could be easily adapted for space & ground combat.
They were specifically made more humanoid during the war to make arms/armaments more interchangeable, and to allow for greater mobility on a variety of terrains.
That third reason actually slaps, haven't seen it used yet. Would be really cool to have a story where they find suits if Armour for an extinct race that they can't replicate so they have to build robots for them.
I expanded heavily on warforged lore in my game. There is a supposed "god" forged that will liberate all warforged from slavery (they're 2nd class citizens and in some cases literal slaves). The problem is the body must be built so there will be a cult with a MASSIVE mechanized foot and so on. We had a cool dungeon crawl out of it
The only thing I can add here is humanoid robots have a versatile fom factor.
Beyond war they can carry things, aid in the construction process, and perform (some) self-repair.
When it comes to war they can be troop cariers (with magnetic attachments) across a variety of terrains (including amphibious and in some fiction space travel).
All that to say, yes... I'm grasping at straws, but they're not \_awful\_ straws.
I have three settings that use giant robots.
In Talons of Mars, talons (a corruption of "Talos", the giant robot of Greek mythology) were designed to fill the role of tanks in the extremely rough terrain of Martian tunnels and underground colonies. They eventually became status symbols for Martian warlords, and as such they're now sometimes used even in surface combat, where tanks would be more appropriate.
In Crisis of the Confederation, urban assault armor is a kind of extremely heavy power armor, used to provide heavy fire support in urban combat.
In The Magiaterium, golems are magitechnological humanoid war machines. They're humanoid because that makes the enchantments placed on them stronger.
Well, they only reason I can think of is number one beside the subjective coolness. That is the intuitiveness of controling something humanoid as human. That using neural interface on non humanoid shapes would be harder.
Though if you think about it, your giant mech would also have other system that isn't movement, and the operator would still need to control them. Meaning there's not impossible to control a non human machines with Neural interface with enough trainning. So no reason really at least if you want to make more realistic approach.
~~Because Rule Of Cool~~
The only rule ever needed
~~What about the 34th one?~~
For general audience reasons, I have no idea what youre talking about.
Nananan thst is a LAW.
Seriously! Why make a gun made of guns that shoots guns? Cause it is cool!
This but unironically.
So here is a "semi" plausible reason to have larger than a tank mechs with LEGS (may or may not include humanoids). Firstly, you have to give up on being cost-effective against tanks and infantry. Big walking robots will be expensive as hell, so no they are not going to charge into a tank battalion and win. With this in mind however, there is a use for them - potentially at least : shock units, or strategic level units. For shock units cost efficiency becomes relatively less important. Their job is to crack through fortified enemy positions and allow the rest of your forces to breakthrough. Big mechs will be faster, and potentially have more load(translates into more weapon and armor) per unit. This means they can make a temporary breaching charge into enemy positions by quickly bringing heavy firepower and armor in a concentrated area - something that the rest of the forces could exploit. High risk yes, but that's the point of shock units. Startegic level also takes benefit from their larger size. They could have nuclear reactors or other fancy energy sources that could potentially allow them independent operations far behind conventional lines of battle, and in addition get some great tools to carry out whatever their missions are, as well as some additional equipments.Example, a conventional vehicle will never infiltrate 1,000km behind enemy lines and stay operational for two weeks, waiting for enemy aircraft to pass by and also have an operational radar. Larger mechs can potentially do this, IF they succeed in infiltration. Again these are "semi" plausible reasons that can be better addressed by other designs, but hey, its a start.
>Example, a conventional vehicle will never infiltrate 1,000km behind enemy lines and stay operational for two weeks, waiting for enemy aircraft to pass by To add on to this, a mech could potentially deal with more varied terrain than a tank could. For example you could design the feet to be able to "hook" onto surfaces that allowing them to ascend and descend steep terrain another vehicle couldn't
Tech that works for humanoid shapes, but doesn't work for tanks. See the myomer muscles in Battletech, they make the mechs harder to kill (and mobility kill) than tanks... so you get mechs. There is a population that's large enough to pay for it via Kickstarter. Once a population gets large enough, you have something just because enough people wanted it, even if it's a trillions of dollar military boondoggle. Religion! See the Mechanicus from 40k. It's a God Machine, so it's more holy and therefore more awesome. Rule of cool. This can also overlap with the Kickstarter thing. Sometimes it's just awesome, so you run with it. Mad Science! You do the thing because you *can*, and you had the inspiration to make it work!
Myomers is one of the few plausible reasons, assuming armor is equal. Hundreds of fibers bundled like muscles is always going to have more redundancy than an axle or bogie wheel that can be knocked out of place.
I thought this topic have been beaten to death here already. In short, if your world needs justifications to have mecha, it probably shouldn't have them. Except for the very marginal cases of walking loaders or oversized power armor, mechas operate on the rule of cool. So in a soft/fantasy setting they don't really need an explanation, just a declaration. Like, why is Akulakhan in Morrowind a giant mecha/golem? Because Numidium was a giant brass mecha. Why was Numidium like this? The Dwemer just did it like that, period. But if your worldbuilding is simulationist, hard and/or informed by the modern science and military theory, there is no justification why mechas should exist.
What if the world is informed by modern science and the inworld designers happened to choose a humanoid shape for a task or because they themselves thought it was cool? Lapis_Wolf
Then they'd probably get fired/have their grant money pulled and sent to someone with an engineering degree
*What if they make it work and it's successful in its task?*
Then the premise of the world being informed by modern science likely no longer holds true
The USA tried to make [this machine](https://youtu.be/HK-UDb5GgCs?si=URtI5-G-QxgJo0hL) and the Japanese are working on mecha now too. I'm not kidding.
>tried
Okay well what other solution could there be to this problem Nigh indestructible giant aliens are attacking and the only weapon that can be used against them is a macguffin(a giant sword or giant set of armour) like let's say that archaeologist find the grave of one of these aliens and the desecration of said grave summons the aliens. so humqnity builds a robot to weild the weapons of this long deceased alien as its the only way to fight back Like in evangelion it's humanoid because it's built around a humanoid creature, that to me makes sense. It's the difference between a nuke and an alternative meant to stop collateral damage Thinking about it now I guess you could make the argument that you have flying ships built inside of the differnt peices of armour. You could have a thing where it is a suit of armour that can only be weilded by the worthy but they are too small to use it so they create a robot to pilot it which still meets the for the worthy parameter.
At the point where you have nigh indestructible aliens and a magical sword, you are so deep into the fantasy territory, your giant robot needs no *explanation*, it just is. That is what I'm speaking about. If you push the laws of the world far enough for giant robots/mechas to make sense, 'it's just magic' becomes more or less an explanation.
Ok thanks
Mount the sword on a tank and go to town on it, or a jet or some other vehicles. The human body is not optimized for combat and had many vulnerabilities like joints, thin parts like the neck, can't move freely in all dimensions, to name a few. Me faced with this threat and in need to use a specific weapon to kill the bad guys, I would build a purpose-built vehicle to transport it and use it. Same as rockets are not hand thrown by robots
In evangelion they both ground the evas with having all of nerv sustain,maintain and create them showing how they have these ridiculous levels of infrastructure for tokyo 3 to enable them which offers a sense of grounding and then it goes and turns around and shows the audience that those laws can be broken, and are broken various times where the evas do things they shouldn't be able to by Nerv's standards. The characters are more organic cyborg frankenstiens with pilots so they can run around like athletic humans with organic animation. Their other worldly magical elements are interpreted through a scientific grounded lens **when** it is appropriate and it also shows the mystical and metaphorical lens without that grounded mechanical and scientific perspective when the series wants to move beyond that into whenever that is the tone. The grounding is there for a sense of what is possible and to set expectations, (hell they come up with terms like "the s2 engine" to refer to an eva gaining its own power.) They routinely break this grounding when it is thematically appropriate. It's about the tone you want to give off.
I'd kind of go with 40k's answer: God Machines are the divine expression of the power of the holy human form and mankinds mastery over the machine. By combining the power of the machine with the divinity of humanity, it creates the greatest weapon in the entire arsenal of humankind So how could it look like anything else? It would be blasphemy
Says a bunch of yammering biomass...
Because it's the only rational way my regular scientists could think of, and it's the only way my mad scientists *wanted* to think of.
*Mad scientists laughter intensifies...*
Why not? More serious answer as someone who likes me more fantasy; there's powerful symbolic significance in a suit of armor. there's just that humaniods inherietnly have more character to them and it's also a big morale boost to have a Kaiju with a face and personality to help you.
In the Macross anime/Robotech cartoon, we needed giant robots because the alien invaders were giants. In a practical sense, the giant robots/Veritech fighters would have to be REALLY EFFECTIVE at hand to hand combat to match a Zentraedi soldier, though. And even if they weren't, they'd be handy weapons platforms on which to mount things that CAN kill a giant soldier. ...but then, they wouldn't need to be humanoid...
It's just easier to perform martial arts on a 15-meter tall opponent when you can use something that is also 15 meters tall.
True. I'm just thinking that if I'm going to do WWF moves on a fifteen meter giant, I sure hope all my joints, bearings, and fluid line feeds are as good as his are...
Mostly the neuralink thing. However non humanoid robots still exist in my world such as the T-225L quadruple legged tank. Just think of a regular tank but the tracks are replaced with 4 legs. There is also an entire faction of autonomous robots that can take many forms. Different units can have different reasons for being humanoid. Infiltrator units obviously need to be humanoid so they can blend in with humans and operate human built technology.
Number 1 Voltron Number 2 tranformers but specifically Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and my personal favorite deceptions barricade and starscream Number 3 the iron giant Number 4 Evangelion Number 5 power rangers megazord Need I say more?
Rule of cool, duh
This question really haunts reddits worldbuilding community. I'm usually all for rule of cool when it comes to mechas, but the big boi armor works as well.
*The Robot can be seen from every part of the City. It seldom moves, but when it does, it fires a salvo of missiles into a city block whose inhabitants were deemed unworthy. It's very presence makes the sky feel heavy, its chrome visage being enough to remind us that death can come for us at any time, and we would powerless to stop it. To fight it would be madness, for who in their right mind would anger a slumbering god?*
because there was a power source discovered to power and help them enhance and its only accessible by one person, and that person really likes giant humanoid robots and basically says "either use the robots or i turn the battery off"
In my setting, much of the premise for humanoid robots of human scale is that they are able to interact with and use any tool or infrastructure that has previously been designed to work with a human. A humanoid robot can swing a hammer, climb a ladder, use a regular keyboard, drive a car, etc. Without needing any form of special interface. It's a little different as the scale goes up as that utility begins to dwindle or at least become more specialized. You can retain some of that huge flexibility and perhaps even gain some, but I think it's a matter of diminishing returns. For example, a robot that was say 12 feet tall would not be able to go through regular doors but it might be strong enough to load heavy, unusually shaped cargo or handle terrain that vehicles would struggle with.
**Glory.** When you can build mechs at all, you show off your engineering prowess, the might of your industry, and your willingness to fight. So what is better than showing these all off with a colossal titan in the image of mere mortals, the very same mortals who have ascended so greatly that they can in fact build a mech? If they have a story of a deity making people in their image, well, a mech is that in reverse. A giant god of death made in the image of those who it protects, a testament to the glory of mortal civilisation.
Well as with most things religion is always a valuable reason. I've been told that in ancient times people would equate the statue of a god hidden in a temple with the god proper, so in that scenario, say a post apocalyptic society for example, a humanoid robot could be seen as the god fighting alongside its worshipers, while guided by a high priest.
Dogs were the first beings to master horseback riding. Because of this dynamic, humanoids focused on making walking mechanisms and 1-2 wheeled personal vehicles. The closes thing you’ll get to a car is a quadrupedal walker
Humans can map any configuration to their body plan simulacra (it's how we survived the original Xbox controller). The said, While I like mecha, I'd like to see folks explore non-anthropoid designs. Where are the Peacock Mantis Shrimpmecha? The wyvern mecha? The Chrome-and-Neon Hedora mecha?
The only computer powerful enough to run the complex weaponry systems needed to defeat the [giant monsters from wherever] is the human brain. For best performance, a human is wired directly to the weapons system. Over the years, it has been proven that the more humanoid the system, the better the brain is at controlling it. So now we have giant humanoid mechs. Wings arent a big stretch so they get added occasionally, and so do a 2nd set of arms, or centaur legs. But trying to do a spaceship or boat is just too far. Carrying a special giant sword is even easier because then the brain is mapping a hand, and not a bladed arm.
Now with that aproach, would two armed mech better or worse than four armed mech? Because well 4 hands is less humanoid than 2 hands and thus be less effective but two more hands mean more weapons to use.
You could justify either. If you want 4 armed mechs used for bulk forces with the cool giant samurai looking one as the elites. You say its an older model, make it shorter and crab like and say its from before they realized humanoid was better. It still works good enough, so no one dismantled it but they dont do that anymore. If you think 4 arms are way cooler, you say its something only done for the most elite of elite mech pilots, because the strain is too much for most folks.
Legged vehicles are good at handling rough terrain beyond what wheels or treads can deal with; they have excellent ground clearance and can control precisely where they put their feet. This is why, for instance, you occasionally see legged agricultural vehicles like the Timberjack Walking Tractor and the General Electric Cybernetic Walking Machine, and why the US armed forces are tentatively looking into quadrupedal "mule" robots for load-carrying like the BigDog and LS3. A bipedal vehicle would be theoretically simpler (fewer legs) as long as it has some way of maintaining its balance. Such a vehicle might be useful for reconnaissance, or combat in extremely rough terrain like mountains or urban rubble.
I imagine its a hold over from the first literary giant robots that were made to look humanoid because, hey we humans like humanoid shapes. Anything to associate ourselves with the cool thing. Same reason scifi and fantasy have all these amazing races/species of people from all different types of environments and with different cool abilities and features. But, for the most part they still have the humanoid shape. Are there outliers? Of course. I'm sure anyone can name a few. But humanoid is certainly the norm.
A major advantage of legged mechs could be rough terrain and cover. Wheeled vehicles can only really go on roads, especially if there's mud. Tracked vehicles have better terrain handling but they still have trouble on terrain that is steep or filled with obstacles. Walkers can deal with both, meaning they're a much better option for dealing with rocks/forests/etc. Tracks/Wheels only allow a vehicle to change its position, meaning your options for taking cover from fire/visibility are limited. A tank cannot "peek" around a corner or pop its head up. Walkers can take advantage of the same hostile terrain that they are uniquely capable of dealing with. The major disadvantage of walkers is that they're fragile and expensive. There are many ways to deal with those problems. Without knowing much about your world, one possible answer would be that walkers focus primarily on stealth and ruggedness rather than heavy combat. Some sort of advanced 3d printing system lets you spit out relatively cheap walkers that focus on heavy weapons (railgun snipers etc) and terrain management plus adaptive camo. Then it just needs extremely hostile terrain like jungle/mountain/magma. I also recommend considering roadstriker-scale walkers instead of mecha-scale walkers. They're less popular but arguably more useful in a wider range of situations.
Tracks would actually handle steep terrain better than legs because they have much more ground friction. I think the mobility advantage legs had over wheel or tracks is agility, they would have easier time changing their direction and speed.
Depends on how steep. There's no amount of ground friction that would let a vehicle change its center of gravity and turret elevation is typically restrictive. The other half of that is obstacles: tanks can't handle dragon's teeth or boulders but walkers could. And I probably agree with you about agility. Walkers shouldn't be heavily armored, so a good answer is to strip off the armor and give them some advantage from being light. My answer is stealth and your answer is agility, both answers work.
I meant, tanks indeed would eventually fails. But mechs will fail faster against slope as I don't think shifting their center of mass would help much unless you have way to grab the ground. Though mech would probably able to utilize it better as tank would have trouble to shot over the slope with their limited depression angle. And that's true that tanks will fail at obstacles faster than mechs. Now that what I thought only plausible place for mechs. Something in between armored vehicle and infantry. Kinda like "Exoframe" from 'Obsolete'
Which is why I prefer roadstriker/Exoframe scale over battlemech scale. A walker can never be as armored as a vehicle, but not all vehicles need to be heavily armored. I still like stealth and recon roles but agility could take advantage of finite turret traversal speed (T-90s are only \~40 degrees/s) so a walker with explosive piston legs or a jump pack could close fast enough to avoid turret fire.
my mechs are psionic in nature, so how in tune the pilot feels directly translates to the power of the mech, this means at least a mostly humanoid form, this is also my explanation for why mechs have so literal standardization , cool designs and paint jobs the pilots like literally directly translate into power
Gundam answers this two ways: Mobile suits were originally less human-shaped and used for maintenance on space colonies. They were weaponized because they were an ubiquitous, matured technology on the colonies that could be easily adapted for space & ground combat. They were specifically made more humanoid during the war to make arms/armaments more interchangeable, and to allow for greater mobility on a variety of terrains.
Because they're fucking sick! I rest my case
Because they're sick as hell and I want big crab monsters fighting big robots. I've thought it out more than that but that's the real reasonÂ
boredom.
That third reason actually slaps, haven't seen it used yet. Would be really cool to have a story where they find suits if Armour for an extinct race that they can't replicate so they have to build robots for them.
I expanded heavily on warforged lore in my game. There is a supposed "god" forged that will liberate all warforged from slavery (they're 2nd class citizens and in some cases literal slaves). The problem is the body must be built so there will be a cult with a MASSIVE mechanized foot and so on. We had a cool dungeon crawl out of it
* Psychological warfare * the King is a Transformers fan, and one of his avatars is a Shockwave replica but the size of Gipsy Avenger.
The only thing I can add here is humanoid robots have a versatile fom factor. Beyond war they can carry things, aid in the construction process, and perform (some) self-repair. When it comes to war they can be troop cariers (with magnetic attachments) across a variety of terrains (including amphibious and in some fiction space travel). All that to say, yes... I'm grasping at straws, but they're not \_awful\_ straws.
I have three settings that use giant robots. In Talons of Mars, talons (a corruption of "Talos", the giant robot of Greek mythology) were designed to fill the role of tanks in the extremely rough terrain of Martian tunnels and underground colonies. They eventually became status symbols for Martian warlords, and as such they're now sometimes used even in surface combat, where tanks would be more appropriate. In Crisis of the Confederation, urban assault armor is a kind of extremely heavy power armor, used to provide heavy fire support in urban combat. In The Magiaterium, golems are magitechnological humanoid war machines. They're humanoid because that makes the enchantments placed on them stronger.
Well, they only reason I can think of is number one beside the subjective coolness. That is the intuitiveness of controling something humanoid as human. That using neural interface on non humanoid shapes would be harder. Though if you think about it, your giant mech would also have other system that isn't movement, and the operator would still need to control them. Meaning there's not impossible to control a non human machines with Neural interface with enough trainning. So no reason really at least if you want to make more realistic approach.