Are Mecha a feasible alternative to tanks.

I could see them being useful in a manual labor way in zero G but not in a military way, being able to whip around to shoot the guy coming around the corner is alot less important when there is no corner, true, but I think the fighter will be king in space. Unfortunately, we can only guess what combat in space will be like.

This is just me being silly, but I think a great idea for a weapon is a floating ball with anti-gravity and thrusters with turrets and missiles sticking out from every angle possible - everything's covered!

maybe thats why they made the RB-78 Ball in Gundam 0079. I know it was a modified work pod to help make up for a sheer number advantage in the war.

The only problem the a ball design is that you can't bring all of the guns to bear on a single target, sometimes you need to make that single target dead but you can't because you can only hit it with a handful of guns at a time.

Yeah but a ball design suffers from a lack of strong points, for example in Star Wars the imperial battleships all had a strong point, typically it was either the broadside or directly in front of the vessel, they had huge weak points too, the engine exhaust was a big hole they had, but good strategy and decent fighter flying prevented that from being a problem. The human ships in Halo were horrifyingly powerful in the front arc but were only Ok in the side and back arcs(bless you M.A.C. ....oh and don't call the M.A.C. a gun because cannon is the "C" in its name) even enemy ships who did have shields would find them quickly offline after 2 hits from the M.A.C. (and Pillar of Autumn would fire 3 at a time, which is why I like to call it the Pillar of Justice). The Andromeda had a fascinating weapons system even though for a ship of it's weight class I consider it under-armed hyper-velocity missiles is an interesting idea but I think they were asking those single weapons systems to do too much, it has impact, piercing, and explosive damage.

I would prefer the human vessels in the Halo universe after Cortana gave them all of the Covenant technology, since humans are horrifyingly capable of making that tech work better, I'm sure they will have no problem winning space battles from that point on, imagine a Star Trek vessel, only more agile, with a M.A.C., extra armor and it's phasers can track you down, as well as providing the ability to use constant power to slice your ship in two.

that ship sounds pretty cool only if it didnt sound so nerdy i would go for a different base ship than the Star trek ship whatever its called and why did it go to space-sphere mechs-space ships-Halo again-Star Trek?
also i just finished watching Full Metal Panic and found the mechs were decent except for the Black tech and Lambda system wgich were cheap but explained who these mechs developed

In addition to the normal ship-mounted M.A.Cs there were also the super M.A.C platforms orbiting Mars, Earth, and Reach. Capable of neutralizing a Covenant ship in one shot.

Oh! Here's a great example for the cons of a mech. Any blind spots can be easily circumvented. I know its a bad example, but the Scarab in Halo is destroyed because of the fact that when a man-sized object is advancing on it from above, even with its sensors and crew, there are no weapons that can be brought to bear quickly enough to negate the attack. I know this kind of loses its meaning with a sealed bipedal mech, but I think you get my meaning. The mech would have to be modified to have guns everywhere on it or walking between buildings taller than itself would be suicide. The weight of the guns makes it even more unbelievable to work, though.

No I was saying it would be better than a Star Trek vessel but it would still have the earmarks of one, force fields, torpedoes, laser beams, human design, but most of all it is well outside it's weight class in power. I think it would be built like a mix between covenant and human ships it would probably be similar to the Pillar of Autumn in hull design (since that build is really tough) only it would have plasma turrets interspersed between the defensive weaponry and the missiles, and it would have force field generators that regenerate at an astounding speed.

Most things have a weakness to something flying in from behind it(not veritechs oddly enough many of them have that covered with lasers mounted to shoot backwards, at least in robot mode) even modern tanks can't really do much but turn their turret to shoot people behind them.

Infantry being a big deal in the future doesn't surprise me any, the Landmates from appleseed simply need to cross tech with the Mjolnir from Halo and you get some pretty disgustingly effective units. That is when you will get stuff like Starship Trooper(not the movie the book, in the book they sent a guy to a planet and he would take on all comers and typically win)

I guess that I will throw some more fuel in th fire. I don't believe that mechs will replace tanks, mechs will get their own niches in batte as special duty units or something like commandos, getting in places that tanks can't reach and defend it from a strady position with the use of high caliber weapons and state of the art long distance sensors.
As defending a hill of high tactical value a small group of mechs armed with long distance weaponry can use its height combined with long range sensors and weapons to shoot off enemies before they get on their firing range. The humanoid shape allows them mechs to build some fortifications using material from the area i.e. stones, boulders, trees. to make crude protection for them.
Using the Gundam from 8th mobilid suit, Labor and Valkyrie size scale, the mechs can also be deployed in urban areas, especially if the terrain has obstacles that tanks can't move across, or even backing up tanks in urban areas, i.e. killing infantry and other menaces in positions that the tanks can't shoot.
As for tanks, I agree that they will branch out to make smaller tanks, anyone saw New Dominion tank police, that small two sitter tank used by the main character? While small that tank as higher mobility and can enter inside buildings and even move up and down stairs.

EDIT: I forgot to add this in the original post, another mech that can be build is the mechs from Gasaraki, I forgot their names, but they have an artificial muscle system, they run quite fast and are able of some really impressive feats in combat.

Ah, the Bonaparte what a horrifying little machine...didn't help that the crew of that thing were vicious bastards. Well Al wasn't so bad but he followed Leona so he isn't that nice. The only issue the Bonaparte had was that it was kinda frail, that's it. The bloody thing was small, cheap to make, didn't take much gas (compared to other tanks) could go in buildings, and had enough firepower to put down a small country.

The poor guy isn't bad, just spineless and in love for Leona, besides I wouldn't make her angry knowing that she can just frag me for denying her something. In the end Al is just a smart guy trying to survive when being Leona's partner.

There was nothing spineless about Al, that dude has some serious cajones. He does stand up to her, when he thinks she is wrong, but those two operate on similar wavelengths, only he is calmer and more laid back, so they generally thing the same thing about any given situation, you want spineless look at Shinji, my friend has taken to calling him spineless lad.

I guess that my memory is a bit bad then. I saw the anime it has ten years ago or something. So my memory is a bit fuzzy of most of the details, I do remember that he stood up against her once, but it was in a pretty critical time. Thought I do remember well of that episode where Leona is inside that hacked truck filled with explosives or something explosive and she is trying to stop it, then the big guy with a green sweat shirt, mustache and smoking somethign shot the thing precisely on the spot that would disable the truck's computer so Leona could save the day.

That was Captain Britain, Leona trashed his tank and rebuilt it as the Bonaparte, which she then trashed taking on a super tank (she still managed to win) so the city built her a new one with more stuff on it as she had requested. He's reliable, but stupid sometimes. Good guy all things considered. yeah it has been a few years since I've seen it but my memory for this kind of stuff is pretty good, Britain spent most of his time behind a desk doing paper work because he was so horrible about it. I remember one point Leona signed her resignation to follow up on a case and Britain took a leave of absence to follow her, he ended up saving her life after a cyborg took her captive trying to do something (I'm not sure what) to her involving this creepy looking computer thing with a bunch of mechanical arms, each of which held a sharp pointy object, she managed to escape and as the cyborg was about to capture her Britain blew the guys arm off (mechanical arm) with a tank shell, then pressed his gun to the perp's head saying "I bet you don't have a robot head."

I remember that one, Leona quited because the department refused to investigate the death of a friend of hers because it was related to some company, that company turned her friend into a cyborg and when Leona went there following her friend's steps she was almost was turned into one too, she was saved by Al and the others, if I am right.

Yes, it is.