Spider Tank: Difference between revisions

[''out of nowhere a giant mechanical spider shows up'']

'''[[Will Smith|Jim West]]''': He's got an 80-Foot Tarantula.

 

A subset of the [[Real Robot Genre]], with a decidedly non-humanoid appearance. These are often used by sci-fi series that want to use giant robots, but feel that humanoid shapes won't fit the setting. Even if the setting doesn't use giant robots, and sometimes even if it ''does'', smaller Spider Tanks may be found as robotic drones. In series that use giant humanoid robots as well as spider tanks, you can bet that the humanoid robots will often be more agile than their multi-legged counterparts, despite the fact that the opposite logically would be true.

* The Type IV Gadget Drones in ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]''. Fast, deadly, four-legged [[Mecha-Mooks]] with two sickles that slice through Barrier Jackets like butter. The manga also showed experimental versions of Type III Gadget Drones (those big ball things) that were six-legged walking tanks.

* In ''[[Fang of the Sun Dougram]]'', the spider tanks are improved model of [[Walking Tank]] ''Crab Gunner'' and ''Tequila Gunner''. They have lower profile and more mobile than their predecessor and come in two form. A six legs ''Desert Gunner'' and smaller four legs ''Blizzard Gunner''.

* A number of Scorpion-, Crab- and Insect-based [[Zoids]], notably the Death Stinger.

* A walking steam tank is shown for only one scene in ''[[Steamboy]]'', being used by the O'Hara foundation when fighting the British military's treaded tanks.

* Small, four-legged spider tanks appear in the ''[[Akira]]'' manga to enforce martial law after Tetsuo releases Akira.

 

 

* Anansi from ''[[Exoria]]''. Twenty-five meters tall. Carries ten chain guns and dozens of anti-tank top-attack missiles. Runs at three hundred kilometers per hour. Impervious to most conventional weapons. [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|Can jump]].

* The Nephilim Tsuchigumos of ''[[Aeon Entelechy Evangelion]]'' replace the useless canon Cthulhu Tech Nephilim. And yes, they are a [[Shout-Out]] to [[Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex|Tachikomas]].

 

== Film ==

** ''[[Dark Sun]]'' has Undead War Beetle. And when we say "beetle", we mean "elephant-sized giant rezhatta" (or sometimes watroach). The zombified carcass carries driver (spellcaster who animated it), commander, 9 troopers on the upper deck and another 9 in weapon ports. And it still can attack with mandibles, though cannot do anything at all without command.

* Four-legged ('quad') BattleMechs are a distinct minority in the [[BattleTech]] universe (starting with the ones from ''Dougram'' mentioned above), but they do exist. Their main in-game drawbacks are their lack of arms and more rigid firing arcs (partly due to lack of a twistable upper torso) -- in particular, the construction rules don't allow for weapons covering their ''side'' arcs at all, thus creating significant blind spots. On the plus side, they get minor maneuvering benefits and are less likely to fall down as long as all legs are still working.

** Ditto with the [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=194686 Hedron Rover], which is apparently a Spider Tank made out of rock.

* ''[[GURPS]]'' Ultratech has the Exo-Spider.

 

* Actual vehicles have been built that use the motor configuration of arachnids. However, [[Cool but Inefficient|they move much slower than just using wheels.]]

** However cool legged machines may be, there are several disadvantages. Maintenance is a major concern, and walking tanks are pretty much guaranteed to have at least 16 high-stress (hip lateral, hip vertical, knee, ankle, multiplied by at least 4 legs) compared to 4 for tanks (just the drive wheels, an M1 could almost certainly get by without a few of its road wheels given normal ground pressure of ~15 psi). That's only for cargo walkers as well, actual combat walkers (as actually fit the trope) have to factor in armour, recoil, speed, etc. most of which count against walkers.

*** All of this plus the touched on, but not explicitly mentioned ground pressure issue. A tank spreads its massive weight over a pair of equally massive treads resulting in ground pressure per unit of area no higher then a walking man. An armored walker of the same weight balancing on four much smaller pads would have massively higher ground pressure and could easily bog down in any sort of soft ground (ironically much like a wheeled vehicle). You could of course try to sort of counter this by making the feet huge like snowshoes, but this would be a weak work around and could make walking unwieldy to say the least. Or you could have extra "stability" legs that are used specifically at rest or when stability is needed, and leave them retracted on the move - like on some cranes and artillery pieces. It's a solution for self-propelled artillery rather than tanks, though.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Mecha Tropes]]

[[Category:Vehicle Tropes]]