>>5795038Depends on how massive you're talking about, I guess. Building-size or smaller, where it's a replacement for conventional armor(tanks)? I can get behind. Especially in alien terrain or battlefields where it's simply not plausible to deploy infantry because the environment is too hostile (Vacuum, shit atmosphere) and power sources aren't small enough/cheap enough to mass produce some sort of sealed exoskeleton.
Massive skyscraper scale or like land battleships or aircraft carrier-size? Freaking cool, but maybe a little harder to justify to myself.
Well, I can give you the Writer's excuse version of why Not giant droneswarms. Because no matter how high tech, how much air superiority you have, you cannot hold terrain with airstrikes. You always need a man on the ground, someone to go in and dig the enemy out from positions where airpower or loitering drones cannot go.
I guess another argument is reusability. Loitering droneswarms sound great, until you only have X amount of space on your transport, and you need to put down a rebellion of mostly shitty infantry. What are you gonna do, drone strike every hut on the planet? Or just take a company of mechs and use them for riot control?
Or perhaps ECM has advanced enough that loitering drone swarms can't target effectively, so we're back to the sticks and stones of targeting things. A sort of 'defense has outstripped attack' in the arms race.
Saying you NEED to be airborne is a whole different ballgame from being landborne. Like, you'll want to be light enough to actually fly, while having enough payload and armor to actually survive hits and keep mobile. Engineering difficulties go through the roof when considering 'I want to build a flying thing.' It's slightly easier (For me) to sell, 'I want to jump good'.
Rule of Cool does what it wants, though.
