Real-Life Advantages of Mechs in Military Use

[doghunter1]

Okay, but do you think this,this, and this are possible?

No, no and no.

Anything that has external legs attached to it in any height for ground combat and does not utilize the legs of the human pilot is impractical.

Legs are much more inefficient than wheels, tracks and hovers, a child on a bicycle can simply outrun an adult with much more power. With ranged weapons wheeled/tracked vehicles do not really need to get into hard to manuevre places that only legged vehicles can get in, they can simply shoot and kill the legged vehicles from afar.

But why not have the pilots legs control the mecha, with pedals, and that, given my earlier suggestion of "legs for short-distance, wheels for long-distance," their should be a switch that goes from either walking mode or wheel mode?

Granted, even with powersuits, you will need to have a design feature where you can detach the machine legs from the user legs to do high jumps and quick movements(if still attached, it is very likely to strain the muscles in vigorous motions). But most of the time its just there to support the human.

At the same height(around 2m), a piloted machine is going to have a larger profile for it needing to accomodate the whole human in a cockpit, as opposed to just surrounding the whole human as in the powersuit concept. This either means lower average armour thickness, or an overall heavier machine.
You won't really have much more space to put the main power source, since the shape of the machine is not really fixed and even the powersuit can just carry a big backpack to house a large generator.
Even with technology about 10 years ago, we already have powersuits for civilians use that can have the user take completely rest, or even sleep in the suit and the suit continue walking to a certain given location, it cannot get through traffic safely, but can at least get up and down stairs.

See, this is where combined arms tactics come in. Mecha engage outside, whereas Powered Armor infantry handle fights inside. Why not have both 3-4m mecha and 1-2m power suits?

[MythSearcher]

But why not have the pilots legs control the mecha, with pedals, and that, given my earlier suggestion of "legs for short-distance, wheels for long-distance," their should be a switch that goes from either walking mode or wheel mode?　

When you have 2 or more modes, you are wasting your payload.
Legs are bad enough by themselves in terms of energy efficiency, if you tag wheels on them, it is further decrease that efficiency by simply adding weight. Even if you are using the wheels mode, you have the extra weight of the legs.

Let me give you some numbers as an example.
Wheels: weight 5, energy consumption 1
Legs: weight 10, energy consumption 5 (extra power requires heavier generator and legs are heavier than wheels in general for the same strength)
Both push the same weight, say, 20, around for the same speed.
So with wheels, your payload is 15, with legs, your payload is 10.
With both wheels and legs, your payload is 5.
The larger you make it, the legs are going to give you more problems as it will require an even larger power consumption rate

See, this is where combined arms tactics come in. Mecha engage outside, whereas Powered Armor infantry handle fights inside. Why not have both 3-4m mecha and 1-2m power suits?

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Because you can replace the 3-4m mecha with AFVs with flying colours.
AFVs at a similar weight will be much more fuel/power efficient, can go faster, can carry more people, offers much better protection, much more stable weapon mounts with faster aiming and fire rate, has more freedom to allow for more types of equipments to be installed, less blind spots.
The 3-4m mecha is not going to escape the "legs are useless" law if it can only engage outside of the buildings, where conventional weapons are already built to be efficient at, which we covered quite a while ago.
Power suits have their positions in combat simply because it is very hard to get them into other shapes(unless you go the extreme inhumane way).

[doghunter1]

But why not have the pilots legs control the mecha, with pedals, and that, given my earlier suggestion of "legs for short-distance, wheels for long-distance," their should be a switch that goes from either walking mode or wheel mode?　

When you have 2 or more modes, you are wasting your payload.
Legs are bad enough by themselves in terms of energy efficiency, if you tag wheels on them, it is further decrease that efficiency by simply adding weight. Even if you are using the wheels mode, you have the extra weight of the legs.

Let me give you some numbers as an example.
Wheels: weight 5, energy consumption 1
Legs: weight 10, energy consumption 5 (extra power requires heavier generator and legs are heavier than wheels in general for the same strength)
Both push the same weight, say, 20, around for the same speed.
So with wheels, your payload is 15, with legs, your payload is 10.
With both wheels and legs, your payload is 5.
The larger you make it, the legs are going to give you more problems as it will require an even larger power consumption rate

See, this is where combined arms tactics come in. Mecha engage outside, whereas Powered Armor infantry handle fights inside. Why not have both 3-4m mecha and 1-2m power suits?

Because you can replace the 3-4m mecha with AFVs with flying colours.
AFVs at a similar weight will be much more fuel/power efficient, can go faster, can carry more people, offers much better protection, much more stable weapon mounts with faster aiming and fire rate, has more freedom to allow for more types of equipments to be installed, less blind spots.
The 3-4m mecha is not going to escape the "legs are useless" law if it can only engage outside of the buildings, where conventional weapons are already built to be efficient at, which we covered quite a while ago.
Power suits have their positions in combat simply because it is very hard to get them into other shapes(unless you go the extreme inhumane way).

1. For the wheels, why not make them small?

2. As for the leg issue, why not make the legs smaller, like 0.5m-0.9m, whereas the rest of the mecha's height is determined by the body and head.