Before we begin, I encourage you all to open up the following image:[quote][url=http://www.bungie.net/images/News/Inline12/Again/thirdtimesthecharm.jpg]Destiny's first piece of Official Concept Art[/url][/quote]As you can see, the concept art depicts several soldiers moving across a wintery landscape. In the background of the art, you can see a large machine that seems to be equipped with an artillery cannon and perhaps a chain gun below the cockpit, and is held aloft by several tube-like legs. Personally I think the artwork is cool as hell, and for that reason I've made it my desktop background on all the computers I use. Anyways, I was working on a Graphics project in one of the computer science labs on campus when one of my friends noticed my background and inquired as to what it was. I excitedly told him the story of the latest leak and the implications that it might have for Bungie's next game. He nodded, paused, and said "I think that tank with legs is really silly." He went on to point out that a walking tank just seems bad when compared to the usual treaded counterpart we see in reality. "Why would we start using an inferior kind of tank 700 years in the future?" he asked. Now, I understand that the entire walking tank thing could just be an artistic direction, but Bungie isn't one to do things just because they can, they seem to do a good job of basing a lot of the things they do in some sense of reality. A grunt's battle harness doesn't just slope up in the back because it looks cool, grunts are unable to breath oxygen so that's where they keep their methane tanks. So if this tank walks instead of rolls, there must have been a good reason for the humans 700 years in the future to design it that way. So what is that reason? Because my friend brought up several excellent points in the discussion we had. In general, a treaded tank has a larger base and more surface area on the ground than a legged tank does, which gives it better balance. If the tank is moving through an area with a loose foundation and the ground gives away, the treaded tank will likely slide with the ground, whereas the legged tank is more likely to topple over, causing greater damage to the main body of the tank. Especially since the tank in the concept art is moving across a snowy landscape, it seems more likely to sink into the snow because the tank's legs put point loads on the snow's surface, whereas a treaded tank would act more like a snowshoe, distributing the weight across the surface of the snow and ice. In terms of combat, a legged tank seems especially fragile because it has weak points in the joints of the legs. A well placed enemy shot would destroy the joint, causing the tank to topple over and become unable to aim itself properly. The Rebels might have suffered a larger defeat at the Battle of Hoth if the Empire did the right thing and build AT-ATs that hovered or rolled over the ground rather than walked, because those types of tanks can't be so easily tripped. Not to mention, a walking tank seems much more difficult and resource intensive to manufacture, and I imagine that treads do a better job at compensating for the recoil of the cannon on the back. There just seems to be a ton of reasons why a tank with legs seems rather unfeasible. After several minutes of thought, the only argument I could make for having a walking tank was that if the tank could jump, it would be able to quickly move and position itself over walls and rocks that a treaded tank would have trouble moving around. As awesome as that sounds (if the tank is indeed capable of jumping), it seems like there's still a ton more negatives than there are positives. Help me brainstorm more positives community! Let us discuss Legged Tanks!