Okay, let's say we solve the square cube law and build mecha. Are there any non-arbitrary reasons why tanks aren't better? If not, what are some bullsht reasons I can use for stories that aren't that absurd?
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Replying to @BootlegGirl
(Maybe a good additional note here: I don't believe the square/cube law even needs solving. It's only applicable on solid objects, and any mecha you can build is going to be mostly hollow or filled with machinery, not a block of solid steel. Even PR's Jaegers were hollow.)
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Replying to @chton @BootlegGirl
...No, it applies to any physical object It applies *less* to a hollow object than a solid one but it still applies, it determines how thick the structural part of the machine needs to be to support its weight The whole point here is you can't make it arbitrarily thin
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
There is no "less applying". The scaling between a hollow object and a solid one is entirely different. Structural elements will need to grow but not nearly at a square/cube rate. The hull, if you keep the same thickness, would scale at the square, not the cube.
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You need strong support beams to handle that too, yes, but those won't increase at a cubed rate either. If hollow structures were anywhere remotely at a cubed scaling, we wouldn't be able to build a building larger than a house. And we're not building mechs out of heavy concrete.
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Objects that scale in even one dimension still have extra mass that needs to be supported. If you have a girder that you're trying to make longer, then the extra weight of one end will snap/crush the other end even if it's hollow at *some* point
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Yeah the point is there's a maximum size you can make a skyscraper no matter what you make it out of because every building material will snap and fall over at a certain point, no matter how thin you make the girders
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There is? I didn't know there was a cap on stationary building size
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @arthur_affect and
You could get around that by building out around the base, right?
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Comoressions strength becomes the biggest factor, but with current techniques I think that maximum size is somewhere around 10km or so. We're nowhere near yet.
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There was a proposal in the 90s to build a 4 km tall supertower in Tokyo (the current tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is only 800 m) but it never went anywhere because there was nowhere to put it, since the base would've been several square km
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Heh yeah I just mentioned that one too. It's a cool concept but you're basically building a mountain at that point.
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