I was just looking through some of my favorite images on Derpibooru when I started to think, what if one were to have mechs in their Cyberpunk setting.

I could see them being used by the police, private military groups, guards for the corpos, gangsters, perhaps even as a form of entertainment (like WWE and Rock'Em Sock'Em Robots if they had a baby).

So, what are your throughts on this?

7954847
mechs would be used where tanks cannot, but you'll most likely find something like an exoskeleton thing since that's cheaper than a mech

as for fighting entertainment, yeah, they'l be the main thing

7954853 I do think the guality of a mech might also depend on who it belongs to. For example a mech owned by a corpo might be more prestine compared to one put today by a street urchin wotking in a scrapyard.

But yeah, most like someone would start with an exo-suit and then build on top of it. Perhaps there might be a corporation that builds a base chassi with a lot of accessories for their mechs.

7954863
mechs by themselves are pretty dumb of an idea, like, here is a machine that has to dedicate a huge amount of its space to balancing mechanisms and if you break one of the presumably 2 legs then boom, its just a turret in the ground now. An exoskeleton would be better because you could probably get like 5 for the cost of 1 mech, allowing you to distribute firepower and stuff.

mech battles for entertainment would probably be a thing though.

I'd considered adding them to my own Cyberpunk stories, but figured they'd be closer to exosuits like mentioned.

7954873 True, but it's also possible that the corporations might not care how much it costs, or in the case they are selling them, they might view the leg weakness as a means of getting more money.

"You mech's leg broke? Well, that's a shame, but don't worry here at Flim Flam Industries, we can repair that leg for a low, low price."

Could also have construction worker mechs as well.

7954881
Yea, true dat

I could also see smaller mechs like the kind DVA has in Overwatch being used.

I don't think mechs are feasible the way you think they are.

They need an absurd amount of engineering just for balancing alone. Not to mention the programming needed just to precisely articulate their arms at human speed precisely everytime with no error for the rest of its life. Which is impossible due to the nature of physical things.

Then the next thing is the size. Where and how big could you fit the pilot in it, in this case, AI? We already need so much electricity just to power the AI alone and based on what I see, mechs need to be able to process stuff in real time, so quite a number of CPU and GPU needs to fit in an absurdly small space in the chassis. Lets not forget these things need insane amount of cooling.

Of course, it could be solved if they have managed to engineer our brain. Analogue computer is vastly more superior and leagues beyond what purely electrical AI could do. The only thing they have us beat is speed and micro precision.

But lets say that these are non-issue. The world is so sufficiently advanced enough that mechs are common, the issue is society. Are they just as progressive like their technology or are they going to demonise mechs like how our younger gen are just "brainrotted ipad babies"?

Either case, I would see them more in the rescue side. They are much safer, stronger, and more equipped a human physically could. I can already imagine them saving victims in collapsed buildings, mines, and any hard to reach spots that needs heavy equipment. If piloted by humans, they could also work alone, which saves on manpower. Plus, they won't need to be saved.

I'm sure there will be some for the military, but the main concern for them is whether they are vulnerable to hijacks, be it hacking or disabling. Not to mention that they could easily be used to covertly spy on the enemies. The only safe way to use them is on the battlefield, a unit of their own. Even if remotely piloted by humans, who's to say that their tech aren't advanced enough that the enemies could simply just hijack that signal for themselves?

But, I believe the benefits can outweigh the costs. The military would simply use an old school method to stop this: EMP. But so does their enemies.

As for civilian entertainment/fighting, I don't see why not. But, I believe those fight rings are more underground. There isn't much entertainment from just seeing robots duking it out; they'll probably kit the mechs out with dangerous weaponry. Likely ones that violate a robot version of Geneva Convention.

Plus, I believe these might be the military adjacent's interests. People are creative, sometimes a little too creative.

I doubt a lot of the standard mechs are even publically allowed. The likelihood is that the civilain models are like our current AI models, like ChatGPT, but more computationally faster and they are built with less powerful frames. Of course, modifying these would probably be a very grey area. They are just as capable of manslaughter.

7954847
I am thinking of Bubble-gum Crisis from this. Power armour or very compact mech could work. The only case that I know were mechs are widely used in a cyberpunk setting is AppleSeed in the nation of Olympus that are used in military and civilian market because all citizens are supposed to be trained in their uses in case of mobilization. There is a also Patlabor too on the lighter side. Blue Gender has pretty small mechas that seems feasibly useful for a Cyberpunk setting. Mechs tend to be more for war operas or space operas, but can have a lot of cyberpunk elements to it like in that doesn't include full scale war in it. I would say that for that to happen you would need to be in the aftermath of a massive war that needed them. I tend to go in the Oriental approach for the function of mecha being the extension of the body and not just a vehicle, so they would need to be treated loser to upscale infantry using infantry tactics along with being able to do a lot of sapper and ungarnering that can fill in multiple heavy machine roles at the same time in the middle of a was zone or other hazardous/toxic environment. Having the support of drones to substitute infantry support to make sure that there are guerilla who can use a RPG against it near by who would want to take a pock shot at it.

What would be very important is how readily easy it is to service repair your mech and how easy it is to get spare part the universality of parts, other then corporation it it would be a almost crippling expenses. I have my own ideas on how to make mech readily easy to build and maintain.

Here are some of my mech stuff if any one of you are interested; My mech gallery on DeviantArt

7954904
7954910 I agree that they might be cumbersome, I just think that they're really cool.

I like both your ideas about deadly underground mech battles and that perhaps these mechs are left over from some great war/conflict.

I could definitely see a story where maybe something happens when a corporation or military group declare martial law on a city and maybe some residents who are sick of it, pull out their mechs in defiance.