aside from the lizard i don't remember any multi armed Tags during N1. Spoiler: N1 tags availble when i played back then Nomads Pan'O the best looking TAG of N1 and the most butt ugly tag of N1 yu jng haqqislam wish they still kept these tags as a separate unit, the RPG allows these to be troops carriers combine army
It's worth noting that currently the TAGs that have the small arms are either old stuff (In universe, that is, such as Reptile TAGs) or the Guijia. Everything else is either remote controled, an aspect, a spider tank or alien tech (new Raicho)
It could carry a couple of models in N2 (using the "braces" rule, although I don't recall seeing it used that much ) as well.
that's a good question. just checked my old N1 book, huh that braces rule was in N1 too, didnt vs anyone with a haqq army back then so never thought about it
Why i fully understand the design coming from those mangas i don't get how people say it makes logical sense. Let's built this heavily armored tank on two legs and the only thing we are not going to protect properly is the hands that control it. Not that this is a problem. I prefer rule of cool over logic anyway.
Because tags are not tanks at all, tags are light infantry support. Even if they have enough armour to be resiliant against small firearms they are not meant to withstand heavier guns, or too many small impacts. A tank should be able to negate 20mm rounds to the front armour, a tag does not. The main defence of the tag is the exact same defence of the infantry, speed and low profile, armour is just a plan B like body armour. If having puppet arms allows the tag to be more stable, run, jump, grab things or have precise arm movement that's way more beneficial for their role than having some extra armour. That also applies in the game. Is better to have a tag with climbing plus or extra movement with armour 6 than having armour 8 and move 10cm.
Yup. Even with the -6 to Dodge, a TAG usually dodges at 10 or 9. That is almost as agile as a trained soldier, despite being way bigger
A TAG has significantly higher profile and lower speed than a tank, you know. Particularly a tank with 200 years of development over modern tanks and if you recall that not all tanks are the monstrosities that the US favours in their continual desert campaigns. I think it's also worth noting that the game is an abstraction and it's very possible that e.g. a Guijia is fully capable to taking a 20mm fin-stabilized projectile to certain parts of its armour, just like a main battle tank, and that the ARM value abstracts the likelihood of both hitting a vital component that has less protection and how much protection vital components have that you can harm with small arms fire. Basically, a tank wouldn't necessarily be invulnerable to a Portable Autocannon (which is likely a 20mm cannon with the auto-reloader removed) even to the front. Still... it's funny how there's these two fairly obvious weak spots that has what looks like HI level ARM, right at the front where the enemy is most likely to shoot (when things are going well), and how historically armour tends to be weakest where it needs to move - that is to say, leg joints and more importantly, elbows and hands. So basically, the manned TAGs are walking around with heavy infantry level weak spots at the front.
A TAG is not as big of a target as a tank: Leopard2a6 Length 9.97 metres (gun forward) Width 3.75 m Height 3.0 m But you are missing the point. A tag has to be compared to the guy that has the machinegun in a squad not to a tank. It is something that can make supresion fire and cover the rest of the squad while following them around as much as possible and having better protection than a regular soldier to expose itself to more dangerous situations with the intention to keep the squad safer. It's not meant to run at 90kmh in the open, it needs to be agile and follow the infantry no matter the terrain, if you need to transport the squad you slap the tag in to the truck / helicopter with them. A magariba can have problems maneuvering infinity tables, a tank would have it way worse, it's just a completely different role. And even then infinity battles are cover ops firefights, lightning fast in environments with civilians where a tank would stand out a lot. Additionally you can consider the arms weak spots, but in reality they have just enough protection, and even if the pilot is injured it will not die, and probably it will be possible to replace the arm. Regular soldiers don't have body armour on the arms or legs, they have it on the vital organs at the torso and the head.
Au contraire, I'm nitpicking your strange choice of words "speed and low profile", as you post several pictures of TAGs in excess of a Leopard 2's 3m. As has been noted, the TAGs major advantage was their comparable weight, mobility and transportability for fighting in dense terrain where they more likely replaced the infantry fighting vehicle than the tanks or the squad automatic weapon infantryman, the latter being extremely prolific in Infinity after all (one of which is standing in front of the TAG in the last image of your post). I think what you meant by "main defence of the tag is [snip] speed and low profile" was more along the lines of "agility and small(er) frame", infantry being renowned for being fairly slow after all. Plus, you know, the stuff you cut out. ARM is an abstraction and we know they make TAGs at least partly from unobt- tesseum, so fairly likely the ARM is representative of the weak spots rather than the chest plate.
The hacking risk for TAGs means they wouldn't really be workable as military units anyway. Like why are Batroid TAGs not just big REMs? They'd be superior. And don't get me started on symbiont armor.
This but everything in the setting. It is purely a game abstraction that radios and other communication devices aren't hackable, and frankly it would be way easier to write hijacking software for REMs than for bipedal walker mechs- especially ones which are explicitly too low-tech to be usefully remote controlled. From a purely fluff sense, a manned TAG should be essentially the least Hackable thing on the field!
Even a manned TAG still has quantronic controls, the only way they could be unhackable is if they were hydraulic controls which would be large, bulky, heavy, slow, and fragile. If the arms are controlled via servos, even if those servos are mimicing the movement of the operator, then a computer is involved, and if there's a computer it can be hacked. You're right that if TAGs can be possessed then remotes should be possessed as well, at this point it's a gameplay distinction, and not even the most annoying or egregious one (see: every unit with a sword).
The problem is that the computer obviously can't drive the TAG alone (otherwise they wouldn't need the pilot), so the Hacking Device must be running all the relevant instructions that the pilot would normally provide. And Hacking Devices are commercially available and trivially small, which makes me a bit surprised that Nomads still use pilots since they have top-tier computer tech that could easily replace a human, with the same or less space and weight. Put Pi-Well in a Szalamandra and you have a war machine to match EI Avatars.
The computer converts the pilot's inputs into movement of the TAG's main limbs. A hacker can spoof those inputs and control the TAG, blocking off the inputs from the pilot. It's like a modern fighter jet's fly by wire system, the computers convert movement of the stick and pedals into movement of the control surfaces, if you could get a quantronic hacking device into range then you could spoof commands and control the jet. Fortunately quantronic hacking devices don't exist in the real world so this not a danger F35 pilots need to think about. A TAG retrofitted for control by an onboard Pi-well-like AI replacing the pilot would be a really neat idea for a Nomad unit. Considering how illegal that would be it'd probably better as a Sectorial specific character than a general troop type.
It's just a bigger/stronger version of powered armor, really. Instead of making it squat so your arms can be in the arms, they're exposed because meh, whatever. Still more likely than motorcycles, probably.
Sure, but being able to possess TAGs and not REMs is a big mark in favor of the latter. I don't think the points costing system accounts for that vulnerability, and it breaks verisimilitude in some cases. Why are big Batroids TAGs and not REMs?
Rules-wise, there are several differences between TAGs and REMs, like hacking (both offensive and supportware), Dodging, bonuses to weapon damage... I guess that's one of the things CB considered when defining Batroids as TAGs instead of REMs. Probably, there are also aesthetic reasons.
Sidetrack: Would Xeo/Overdron Batroids be scarier with TA, Fatality, and possessable as they are now, or as REMs with Assisted Fire and non-possesssable?
Because they cross an arbitrary line between small to medium sized mechanical trooper to large stompy mechanical trooper. The likliest answer is that they were designed as a pair of light TAGs for OCF and their background came later. Still doesn't break verisimilitude as much as people carrying and using swords in a gunfight though. At some point its there for gameplay or genre convention, and then we're getting into that annoying personal preference thing.