[RankAmateur vehicle] Hawthorn Industries D90 Arctic walker-tank

[RedDwarfIV]

The Hawthorn Industries D90 'Arctic' is a walking tank design intended for difficult terrain, and escalated urban warefare. It carries four heavy weapons and two machineguns, the latter operated by a gunner in the lower cupola. Armour was traded for speed.

[Accelerando]

Just wait till somebody mortars those dainty legs.

Looks cool, though.

[LaydeeDem]

Looks like something I would see Spore.

EDIT: The more and more I look at it the more and more I see resemblance to a spore creation. Seriously.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Nutt007

[RedDwarfIV]

Looks like something I would see Spore.

EDIT: The more and more I look at it the more and more I see resemblance to a spore creation. Seriously.

That's because it was made in Spore. A number of the vehicles in my webcomic were/will be. It's just an easy way to design them.

Just wait till somebody mortars those dainty legs.

Looks cool, though.

The idea is that its an urban combat vehicle, so anyone with a mortar or RPG will have to be somewhere with line-of-sight with their target, and that's going to be quite close.

Elsewhere, this vehicle does not lead assaults. That job is left to tracked and wheeled vehicles. The Empire in Star Wars relied way too heavily on walkers.

Edited September 13, 2012 by RedDwarfIV

[Accelerando]

The idea is that its an urban combat vehicle, so anyone with a mortar or RPG will have to be somewhere with line-of-sight with their target, and that's going to be quite close.

That generally doesn't stop anyone with a car bomb, though, the carriers of which can easily be fairly numerous if your front has actually made it to an urban environment. Either way, walkers meant to carry people in a combat situation (or otherwise any bigger than a kei car) are probably not very effective solutions for warfare, urban or otherwise, because their size combined with the complication of all the added moving parts and electronics required to build such a vehicle make them vastly more vulnerable to weapons fire of any kind barring improvements in armor technology that could be more easily applied to wheeled transports.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Accelerando

[RedDwarfIV]

More to the point is that it can get over rubble piles that tracked or wheeled vehicles may not be able to.

I don't need to justify this, since they are almost entirely based off rule of cool anyway - no sane modern military is going to build one. But in my webcomic, these are built by a corporation which has an entire market niche to itself in militaries who aren't sane - somewhere in the galaxy, some general will want walkers or flying mechs, and Hawthorn builds them. That they aren't as good as tracked of wheeled vehicles doesn't mean no one wants one.

Hawthorn Industries just puts 'most useful for rough terrain or damaged urban environments' on its description because that's what its best at, even if its best isn't as good as other types of vehicle.