Jason Liao wrote:

On Sat, 1 Aug 1998, Rhialto wrote:

first, the run down on a little used weapon of WW2 :)

<snip>

This tank was essentially the nearest thing in scale to a walker.

Ah!  So that's what's been bothering me.  Sure, running around in an EVA
seems cool, but from the descriptions given on the ffml, what's to
functionally separate an EVA from a tank during a war?

EVA advantages(off the top of my head):

1)Reacts quickly through use of neural interface.
2)Absorbs lots of damage.
3)Generates AT field, which can neutralize other AT fields, and blocks
  conventional weapons.
4)Sometimes regens by eating opponents.

Okay, limiting oneself to the tech levels in WW2, 1, 3, and certainly 4
all do not apply. 2 is good, but tanks were already designed to address
that.  From everything I've seen so far, it seems like a combat walker
would only fill the roles that a tank was already fufilling, but with
greater cost per unit, and greater vulnerability

Someone would have to drastically up the tech levels for one side, for
building walkers for combat to even be feasible.

Giant walkers always have and always will be problematic as a concept.  
The best approach in this case is to fall back on magic and anime 
physics.
  
One possibility:  You have an alien spacecraft that crashes conveniently 
in German controlled territory.  Most of the technology is, of course, 
entirely incomprehensible.  However, the Germans discover this goo 
inside that can grow when properly stimulated, and can be formed into
"muscles", which generate their own tremendous lifting power, regenerate 
and are responsive to the thoughts of humans, especially young humans, 
in direct contact.  Working frantically, they manage to turn out 
thousands of metal skeletons, grow the goo on them into big dangerous 
critters, then armour plate them and fit them with built in machine guns 
and a rifle-shaped sidearm firing an improved projectile.  The Germans 
also give this technology to the Japanese in the hopes that they can 
distract the Americans enough to let them finish off Europe.  In the 
long run doubtless a stupid move, but in wartime people tend to think in 
terms of whether their nation is going to be there in a year rather than 
what problems may arise ten years after the war is over.  And, it works. 
 The German walkers, which can operate underwater walk across the 
English Channel and establish a beachhead.  
The Japanese design special submersible delivery systems for their 
walkers and let them walk ashore on Hawaii.  The Russians collapse, 
having lost American and British support.  However the Americans gain 
their own walker technology, because somebody among the Japanese 
characters smuggles blueprints and a sample out.  Nukes might be delayed 
by the reallocation of American resources to this new technology (after 
all, how the muscles work opens up new vistas of physics), but at some 
point late in the story line, nukes will still be used at which point it
will be crucial to capture/destroy the bomb factories.  New Mexico isn't 
that far from California.