They look really weird on TAGs, like tiny vestigial arms. Plus, even from a practical POV, they're a massive liability. Beyond enemies shooting at them, if the TAGs holds bulky and long equipment (like swords or gun) in a wrong way, it could crush off the arms. What about if it fell down on those arms? Or the arms got caught on some fencing or wire? You'd think if people in the 21st century can aim and move better with a mouse and keyboard than with their actual hands, by the 23rd century, they'd find a way to move giant TAG arms better. Beyond neural interface, what about keeping the arms by the side, and bend forward at the elbows, like a fighter pilot? Surround the arms with pressure pads so the TAG arms move whichever direction the arm moves towards. Or even have a "combat mode" where you tuck your arms in, and your TAG is forced to hold the rifle and nothing else, while you aim with a mouse. When you need fine dexterity, or are engaged in CC and you want to use martial arts, armour pops open, so you can reach out with your little t-rex arms, and do whatever you need to do, before withdrawing your arms to go back into combat mode? I hate the way miniatures look with them most of all. It just looks really weird. I built my szalamandra without them for that reason. Don't think I'll build any of the manned TAGs with the little t-rex arms, either greenstuff over it, or use the plugs as part of the armour feature.
They exist because the design of manned TAGs is lifted directly from the Landmates of Shirow's Appleseed series. You are of course allowed not to like them, as long as you also don't mind being wrong ;)
that dessign allows for the big arms to move the same way the human would do it. There are some kind of movement that would be really hard "to tell the machine" with only a mouse/joipad, but are "natural" with that dessign. Of course, there are limitations, and in that world, they should not be necessary, and if a hacker can pilot remotelly a TAG, why cannot the owners? For that topic we are entering another place. Maybe is more secure for the TAG and there are a lot of extra defenses needed for remote presence TAGs, or because economical reasons (is way cheaper to maintain, not talking about making them) looking at the megabots vs suidobashi battle should show a lot of why a simple control cannot make a lot of kind of moves
You can also simply not put the tiny arms on the miniature. For many TAGs it won't show unless you know the arms are meant to be there. The Babybjörn design also limits the pilot's arm movement a lot* so while it's fairly reasonable this design sort of exists for less armoured versions where you can offer the pilot more movement or on TAGs where an extreme degree of mobility isn't as much an issue, there's a bunch of TAGs (primarily the Asian ones) where I'd recon' that the Babybjörn design is simply not very desirable. More likely in a more realistic setting where manga-references isn't as important, you'd look at piloted military TAGs having somewhat simplistic designs (I'm thinking multi-limb 3-directional joystics) coupled together with a self-teaching rudimentary AI as the last stage before full Remote/AI control - the pilot suggests how to best position the limbs and the AI makes the movements happen. Or you know... neurological controls. Hook the brain up, paralyse the body similar to sleep paralysis, and then highjack the brain's limb signals to move the TAG's limbs instead of the pilot's. It's a tech that's actively being researched in 2020, after all. This would also explain why such pilots would be extremely valuable personnel (the TAG is literally keyed to predict how the operator wants it to act) and also explain why a CC23 Blue Wolf TAG's pilot only has CC15 when they get out of the TAG - they've learned how to fight effectively in close quarters inside the TAG using non-human movement patterns, so good luck translating that to human martial arts expertise. I imagine that this is not a huge concern for a gun platform style TAG, though, where limb dexterity is more important than limb mobility. * I'd imagine it's a bit like wearing a formal suit, buttoned up, and carrying a baby in a Babybjörn, in fact. Can't move your arms too far back or the suit will stop you, can't move them to far forward or your crush the baby, can't squat too low or you'll squish the baby, have to be fairly careful with how you wield bulky guns, etc etc.
Mecha in general are a very unlikely future military technology, anyway, for a variety of reasons. Taking away their ability to go prone removes one of the few reasons they might some day actually exist. The reason we love them is purely for aesthetic reasons. If you don't like the arms you don't need a logical explanation to remove them; and the same goes for if you do like the arms.
And if they could be controlled by the enemy on the battlefield, it'd be even less likely. Everyone would be using Su Jians instead. Honestly the Batroid TAGs should be type REM not TAG.
I disagree. On the contrary, I love these pilot arms cause they make the TAG look more plausable and believable overall. Manned TAGs considered inferior and still allow a certain degree of agility/mobility at the expence of armor (and it would probably be easier to train pilots that way). It doesn't have any of these fancy neural interfaces, it's relatively simple and cheap. And in terms of armor bigger arms usually 'mostly' cover the pilots arms from fire. The only thing I don't like about them now is that they can be possesed (although they should be conttrolled by pilot directly). And how would a pilot operate otherwise? With a joystick? Or he's an armless cripple with connected roboarms like Blackjacks?
I like them a lot. In fact it's way better than having a black jack with impossible body proportions. The shoulder of the pilot is at least 1,5 meters long for the sniper.
I love the detail of the tiny arms. If you don’t know anything about landmates or infinity it would be a very curious thing to notice. Why the fuck does this giant robot have tiny baby arms ? What’s going on there? Oh it has the same exact pose... Visually interesting, and delivers narrative elements through sculpture / design alone. it also gives the model a sense of scale. For example , I have no idea how big a gun dam is. Maybe it’s 10 feet tall or maybe it’s 100 feet tall .
Nah, the Marut just has 4 arms for some reason. The CCW arms are a little bigger than the gun arms, but not to the extreme of piloted TAGs.
A good number of Vedic and Hindu gods are portrayed with 4 or more arms, controlling an armed TAG is probably a bit too complex for a human pilot but Maruts are controlled by aspects. From a practical standpoint 4 arms allows the TAG to properly brace their MHMG, wield a CCW, and still have a free hand for manipulation/vaulting/climbing.
One of the things that irritates me with other TAGs actually, is that the pilot arms are nowhere near as big as the t-rex arms, at least for the Anaconda and a couple others I looked at. Similarly, there is no way the Karkata fits in the Marut anywhere. But, the Marut has a perfectly valid reason for 4 arms, it makes it 64% cooler than other TAGs.
You are free to believe what you wish, even if it is categorically wrong. Master/slave arm combos for manned TAGs are intrinsic to the design of infinity, back to the first edition. Comes from them homaging Appleseed and GITS and Shirow manga.
I like the slave arms looks. But i havent seen a S7 Infinity TAG yet that I really liked with them on. The S6 Gecko pulls it off wonderfully. I think S6 is pefect for using that style. But once it's S7+, everything should be internal. Which you know, shouldnt be that hard. They can upload peoples brains into storage devices in their necks, and build robot bodies that people can pilot, but cant figure out neural controls on the bigger mechs. Though to my understanding, PanO, Aleph, and O-12 do remote neural piloting for their TAGs.
They do. They (PanO) developed the Ghost:Remote operation system for their TAGs. Since they build Aleph's gear for them as well, they naturally get it also. The manned "reptile" class (all the nomad stuff) with the master/slave waldo arm combo was considered "obsolete" by PanO after they went remote operated TAG, so they sold off the entire lines to the nascent nomad nation. The nomads may have modified them, but it's nothing more than putting $5k titanium rims on a pinto.
