Everything Wrong with Half Life's Vehicle Design
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- čas přidán 28. 06. 2024
- I got a Valve Index recently (after waiting three months), so I thought it'd be cool to experiment with using it in a video. Coincidentally, people have been asking me to cover Half Life vehicles for a while. While half Life's vehicles are kinda hard to talk about as they're either real life vehicles or really weird and unknownable amalgamations, I'll try my best. In this video I'll talk about the Construction Strider, Combat Strider, APC, and Prisoner Transport.
Check the channel "About" section for the link to the creator of my profile picture.
Songs used (in order from first to last):
Half Life: Alyx - Intro
Half Life: Alyx - Garage Approach
Half Life: Alyx - Anti-Citizen
Halo 3: ODST - Rain (Deference for Darkness)
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#halflife #everythingwrongwith #tankhistory - Hry
Yes, this video was just an excuse for me to mess around in VR. I didn't talk about the gunships / dropships because aircraft aren't really my forte.
I can’t remember, did you ever see Any faults in halo 4’s mantis?
Please red alert 3 vehicle design. It will blow your mine. Remember quad track, the apocalypse tank have hex tracks
@Peterson V.2 Wasn't that fanmade, technically speaking?
@Spookston, can you please make a comparative video of wheeled SPGs in top tier?
Unit cost, armor, speed, gun...
HL is better known for emergent behaviour on it's "vehicle" enemies such as gunship(what if I just shoot down this missile approaching me with my autocannon?) and helicopter(I have ordnance reserve. I am losing. If I lose my ammo is lost anyway. Conclusion: fire all the ordnance NOW!).
Any chance of a video covering another spectre of bio fiction? How would vehicles adapt to fight monstrosities in Resident Evil(BMP-3 had already demonstrated what happens if tank is not taken by surprise and A-10 had just driven the point further) or Prototype(mostly nothing changes, however second game changes models a bit -making them cartoony and murdering Abrams- and has some good ideas in missions).
About APC:
1) It uses guided missiles with pretty good maneuverability.
2) Apparently, the pulse machine gun mount can telescope upwards to shoot *over* the canopy.
I also pointed the Pulse machine gun ability out too in my separate comment .
Also, the APC does seem to have suspension, likely some form of leaf spring or torsion bar. Not the smoothest, but it works.
And the fact the drivetrain under the vehicle is exposed isn't considered a fault for many MRAPs: vehicles such as the Casspir, Maxxpro, and Cougar have similarly exposed drivetrains, yet are considered excellent MRAPs. Heck, even the biggest and baddest of them all, the Buffalo, has exposed drive components. Of course, other mine-resistant designs such as the M-ATV, M1117 ASV, and the Bushmaster IMV shield their drive components.
Other than that, perfectly agree.
Working around a problem you could avoid entirely is not good engineering
@@Invizive don't think it matters when it's all honing weaponry and controlled by an interface linked to a Metrocop's helmet
Even if they are guided missiles it's still a bad design because there is no gun elevation / depression. Which means you can't fire from behind a hill or whenever the vehicle is facing downhill, both of which you probably want to do a lot if your target is far enough to require guided missiles. If they really are maneuverable enough to suddenly turn upwards they can probably engineer a proper launcher.
Half Life 1 logic:
105mm HEAT round from M1 Abrams cant one-shot a grunt
Crossbow can :P
120mm* Heat, only M1IP and M1 abrams had a 105mm cannon
@@PedroAugusto-zw9ob I may be wrong but the Abrams tanks in HL1 were the M1 variants
*I see, I wrote M1A1. My bad.
Crossbow can't one shot on hard unless you're aiming for the head
pretty sure they can, but splash doesn't gib them if it's too far-away.
now headshots being more lethal than explosives is often a thing in old school shooters, so i'm not surprised xbow has more burst potential.
if you want the greatest incoherence hl could ever offer with vehicles, it's how you can destroy an abrams or a bradley with any weapon, crowbar and glock included.
But it's a HEATED crossbow. Surely that's better than a HEAT round!
The “unnecessary” gun on the strider is used for heavy fortifications.
It Does use it during fight with a player.
Right, did this guy not play HL2?
I was always more interested in the Combine's aerial vehicles. They have a particular "cool factor" to me
I love the look of the dropships
The choppers reminds me of the Hind
they aren't vehicles, you know, the gunship and dropship are cyborgs
Tacticool
@@re57k yeah they also remind me of the Comanche too
Maybe Contruction Strider need operator for some tasks that need normal size human to do like operate console in for power adjustment or fixing some smaller machinary without put too much resource and time bio-engineering the Strider, just slap some platform and put one dude on it (good luck for that guy that will dizzy all day)
That is... if he havent fall off of the platform yet
Perhaps they arent an “operator” so much so as a worker hitching a ride. A stride makes a pretty good alien scissor lift
@@henrycooper3431 safety harnesses exist for a reason.
The Combine really don't care if someone feels dizzy
I think the operator uses the welder on the front
While a strider can perform tasks and follow orders autonomously, fine manipulation and smaller work would probably require someone smaller with dexterous fingers. It's also not entirely clear exactly how smart they are.
-Using one to climb a building like at the beginning of Alyx is damaging, we don't exactly know it's ground pressure (Probably insanely high yes) but it can get a lot of places that other things cannot. Rule of cool a little bit :P
I like that the bladed feet do flare out at the top of the blades at least; if the blades just sink into softer ground the bulbous part would take up the pressure at least somewhat.
-It may well have thermal vision, but if you're adding extra vision methods there's no real reason to remove any, especially on an organic machine creature that would get all that data directly to it's brain.
-The big gun I'd imagine is useful for anything larger than a person, in the same way a tank's main gun isn't generally designed with the intent for anti-infantry. I also don't think the cable supports it, again in HL2 it's shown to flex and point around with quite an impressive traverse, and the cable is slack in both HL2 and Alyx.
-As to the radiator vents; that big gun would put out a lot of heat when firing, and it's shown to not have the fastest fire-rate. I'd argue that venting heat doesn't necessarily mean the inside is cooking constantly, more that you don't WANT it to cook at all. Heat build up prevention rather than venting heat when it gets too high.
-A mech requires power constantly just to move around. Apart from some structural reinforcement in the legs, most of the locomotion and movement seems to be done organically. The tech seems to be limited mostly to offensive capabilities.
The APC missiles are guided as an aside but it's a pretty dumb design I agree whole heartedly.
Don't mistake a long comment for disliking the video; your videos always make me look at things from a different perspective, even if I don't always agree. Love your channel!
Regarding ground pressure, it's possible that the strider is just extremely lightweight. That sounds like a dumb excuse but we're dealing with an alien empire that conquered earth in seven hours here, not to mention they're shown to be fairly easy to airlift. We're essentially dealing with a living animal the size of a car on really long legs, and the effectiveness of the armor for its weight can be explained away because a l i e n s. Heck, it may be less about armor and more about just being able to survive multiple penetrating hits. Saying its torso weighs as much as, like, two rhinos, plus proportionally lightweight armor, seems fair.
@@northropi2027 Very much this. The body really isn't very big at all, and the legs are so thin it's probably like putting perhaps only a single rhino up on 3 flagpoles. Still fairly high ground pressure but breaking through the roof and every single floor of a stone building...? Possibly not that high (especially given the construction strider has noticably and deliberately broad feet)
The big canon on the strider is absolutely not for destorying infantry.
Just think of the end of half life 2 ep 2, where the striders would blast the buildings to pieces from those things.
It's basically a giant, explosive laser.
You can also see that hunters have special communication devices on them, allowing them to contact other hunters, striders, combine, and be commanded by whoever holds control over them. This means the striders also have special devices in them that give them signals and commands. So though the strider can work autonomously, it only works like that at the level of an animal, and knows how to walk around and fire it's gun, however, it doesn't know how to build, or advanced military strategies and tactics.
So I think it's safe to say the strider is autonomous enough to stand, walk, shoot, and hold basic stances and positions for assault and defense, but still require someone (or something) to command it.
Also a side note: The hunters move around, and are shown to have much intelligence, this means that, when packed with striders, they scout around and command the the striders, since they probably have better problem solving skills.
@@northropi2027 I think the Striders or any other Synth are intelligent being like humans not animals. I mean during the final battle in Half-Life Alyx the Strider talk.
A living organism would still require power constantly to move around, just of a different kind. Regardless, the Strider is not an organism. It's a synth, a form of self-replicating, self-improving technology. Think the synthetics from Aliens.
The launcher on the ACP definitely fires missile instead of rockets, it does so a number of times in Half Life 2.
unguided rockets on vehicles to suppress incoming fire is a thing anyways
the APC's gun actually Rises up to fire over the glass canopy, Yes I know that I'm nitpicking But I'm just telling you this information. However the gun Rises up on a very much thin Pole Made of metal it can possibly get shot off
yeah, but you don't really know if it's metal or not. From the looks of it, it could be the same material they use to build the citadel or the same material they use for those really *thicc* walls in some buildings.
What you just said is not nitpicking, you're just correcting someone with a fact. Nitpicking is looking for problems where they aren't or are problems so small that they don't matter.
The vents on the strider are for the heat generated by the big gun.
couple counterpoints;
the combat strider wouldnt constantly generate heat. if anything, my guess is that the radiators are specifically to vent the warp cannon on the bottom after firing, which brings me to my next point - the strider's pulse cannon, while obviously high caliber (being able to shred gordon in just a few shots in HL2) probably isnt strong enough for dedicated demolition/anti-vehicle duties, hence the warp cannon on the bottom
as for the APC, the rockets are actually guided missiles. you can see this in action during water hazard in HL2
remember, the combine are a tier 1 civilization, they do not give a fuck about the laws of physics
The missiles shots from the front of the APC are laser guided
That still begs the question of how the laser is controlled since the launcher is fixed in place, unlike the laser from the RPG that can be aimed alongside the gun.
I'd rather take elefant than 2 of these
In that case it would probably be better to fire them upwards rather than forwards so they have more room to maneuver away from the car in tight spaces.
Ksavier Krajewski Because the Elefant would break down before it even resaches the frontline?
@@guntherhermann4225 Did you forget what the Combine are? They could make their missiles self-aware if they wanted to
I remember the APC's missiles being guided, like to an absurd degree. In Half-Life 2 they shoot up and then come down on you during the airboat segments
Next time you talk about half life can you go over the synths more? I'd like to hear about the potential advantages vs disadvantages biomechanical creatures have over regular machines
I'd like to think that one advantage to biomechanical constructs rather than strictly mechanical constructs would be ease of repair. Sure, take for instance the Strider, it'd have the same problems as a mech; take out the one leg, the entire thing goes tumbling down. But for minor injuries, rather than having to weld on a new plate or replace chunks of the frame, you could just give the thing extra nutrients and time, and essentially have it perform self maintenance while it's still in active service.
A problem with that though, is that you can't just replace a destroyed part. Sure, a mech the leg goes down, it's down and won't fix itself, but once it is fixed that's it, the mech is fully operational and ready to get back into the fray. A biological construct though, you take out the leg and you're not exactly going to easily hack off the existing leg and staple a new one on, and in the months or so it'd take for the injury to heal it may not even be completely operational. What if the Strider, with its newly healed leg can't walk more than 20 steps without wincing in pain and stopping, either due to having scarred over or not having fully healed?
@@jerryanderson8116 it's probably cheaper to grow a new one, as metals are limited
i remember gunships having welding performed on them by a stalker, so regen's power is seriously questionable. unless the combine has a bunch a synths with quickly interchangeable parts (that's possible, but you never see any unit going through that sort of process), then machines are better here imo.
i'll go this way: using evolution's masterpieces and integrating the obligatory armor/gun systems may make for more flexible combat units than building actual drones or manned vehicles with a crew to train.
why give a damn about rigid mechanical stuff when somewhere there may be a species fitting the criterias but with muscles and a brain knowing how to move the body around? a strider can already dodge plenty of stuff a mbt wouldn't and who knows if there isn't better in the combine's ranks. or perhaps you could, but perhaps it's also more complex than just making farms of enslaved species and then tweaking with mechanics.
in fact, it's also worth wondering how the combine manages to have designs so seamless between the bio and the mechanical. the armor is like a shell, you don't see scars around the impanted reactors or radiators, ect. might be a crazy stretch, but what if they mastered genes so well that all of this happens to be actual parts of the manufactured organism?
@@jerryanderson8116 Replacing organic parts can be just as easy as replacing mechanical ones, it just requires technology we yet do not master. We can already transplant organs, limbs and even heads, so I imagine that to the combine it is quite trivial to replace a broken Strider leg with a new one.
There's also the advantage of a living thing being able to sustain itself with whatever food grows in the area its posted, unlike a machine that requires fuel externally synthesized/distilled.
The cost for such a low maintenance force is a slower manufacturing rate. Some parts just have to mature naturally, and as such also have to be screened for any unwanted mutation (and even then for all we know Combine Synths are mass produced like Fallout 4 ones).
Also it's possible the Combine just suck at programming and prefer using premade brains to control their creations. We have already achieved such feat www.sciencealert.com/scientists-put-worm-brain-in-lego-robot-openworm-connectome.
@@MetalX34 actually, in dropships you can see some scars around its wings , like blood and stuff on the connecting part of metal
The strider, a synth, is a synthetic organism. So it's not a vehicle. It's also worth pointing out that its pulse cannon might also double as its eye, since it constantly moves it around as if it's looking around.
construction striders may need an assistant for maintenance in cramped areas. i doubt that's a pilot.
the combat strider is no vehicle, but i think you know that already. the whole importance of ground pressure could be questioned since the unit is mostly seen in action in urban areas and its height/firepower don't warrant the need to climb like the construction version (the white forest battle in ep2 could be seen as a strategic mistake since iirc gunships have a belly cannon which could have done the job, albeit you never see it used in the canon events). the need for a big gun doesn't seem inadequate when rebels had plenty of cover to abuse during the uprising. the ropes may just be here to hold it in place and cut some slack to the "aiming" muscles so they don't have to flex 24/7. can't say they don't have "alien" thermals already, but from experience striders are often blind af; they even receive help from scanners to pinpoint targets in one instance. only two-three in the whole series are woke and track their target well for the whole 1v1.
apc does fire guided missiles, making the launcher placement bearable (although i never recall seeing the rockets spawning from there in-game). the glass allowing a 360 view may not be much of an issue since small arm fire can't cut through it. rebels did create energy weapons like the tau cannon (pretty much a super strong railgun using a quantic particle as the penetrator) but let's be honest they probably never manufactured a sufficiently high amount.
nothing to disagree with about in the rest. pretty funny video, since the big stars of hl2 (the synths) are more akin to alien heavy soldiers than actual vehicles.
I actually have seen the Combine Gunship use it's belly cannon a few times while playing vanilla Half-Life 2. Although it was random and I don't know how it was triggered. Has it been disabled in the code? Did it activate in my game due to a bug?
I fondly remember seeing it use it's belly ray like the HL1 Xen Manta Rays to kill the rebel up in the lookout tower on New Little Odessa where Cubbage gives us the RPG. And again in another place in Highway during that E3 demo segment it used it on the road.
It seems to be one of those rare moves that only happen under the right circumstances. Like the Strider using a leg to impale rebels. It happens so rarely that some people thought it was a cut behavior.
@@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive the doxa's clear on that part: it has never been seen in action at any point in the campaign, from main game to episodes. i also never saw such thing despite dozens of playthroughs.
the function is however still there and afaik it is used through scripting, much like the strider cannon. as such, people can feature it just fine in their own source content without a need for extensive modding.
now i have not dug into the code to see for myself, therefore i cannot say much about why you would see it in your hl2 playthroughs.
The APCs do indeed use guided missiles, and their accuracy has haunted me since HL2.
3:15 Uhh... They are missiles. The projectiles fired out the front will track the target in flight, as seen in HL2's chapter Water Hazard.
am pretty sure he didn't play hl2
I'm gonna address some criticisms regarding the vehicles and synths.
-Why does the Construction Strider need an operator? I don't think that is an operator. The person on top isn't controlling the Strider. You will often see them just holding on to the railing while the Strider moves around. My guess is that the person on top is just using the Strider as a mobile scaffold. The Strider is still autonomous, but obviously it could not do everything on its own. Somebody is needed to help do the fine tuning work, so they have a person hitching a ride on it.
-In regards to ground pressure. Even though its legs are not optimal for weight distribution, the Strider itself could not weigh much anyway, so it doesn't actually need much weight distribution. It may be tall, but look at how small the body is and how thin the legs are. And of course, it's composition probably does not consist of incredibly dense materials. It's not made from steel. It's made from a combination of organic materials and advanced alien alloys that are probably intended to be quite light. The Strider is modeled off of crustaceans like the Japanese Spider Crab, which has similar bodily proportions, so lets do a little math to estimate its weight. The Japanese Spider Crab is at max about 20kg. Now let's scale it up to the size of a Strider, and estimate its mass using Galileo's Square-Cube Law. The results I got is 1040 kg, so about the mass of a car.
-The criticism regarding the Strider's eyes is weird, because you're just making baseless assumptions about how they work. We don't know what the eyes actually see, and you don't need some 21st century cameras to achieve infrared vision. There are plenty of animals that can see beyond the visible light spectrum with their own organic eyes.
-Why not just use mechs instead of Synths? According to Half Life 2 Raising the Bar, some unique characteristics of the Synths, is that they are self repairing, self replicating, and self evolving. I think having a weapon that can heal its wounds, reproduce to make more of its own kind, and evolve over time without any outside influence is a HUGE advantage over any machine they could build.
-The APC machine gun I believe is able to raise itself. We never see it do that in action, but at beginning of Half Life 2, we do see some idle APCs, and the turret is notably raised upward above the canopy on some of them.
-I think the high ceiling of the transport vehicle is due to the fact that it isn't just for transporting prisoners. We see some of these transport vehicles later in the game housing artillery weapons in the back.
On the APC, the rocket tubes fire guided missiles. In the "Water Hazard" section the missiles are guided towards your boat and don't fire directly.
The strider's massive cannon is for buildings and other large targets. If you've played HL2 EP2, you'd know how they wrecked shit in White Forest. I'm also guessing the posterior vents are not just for heat, but also for taking air in as an artificial respiratory system. Synths are still living, after all; just so ingrained with their cybernetics that it's hard to tell what is organic and what isn't.
I'm pretty sure that Combine APC can extend its MG upwards with piston to get angles on right side.
yep
1:45 Ah so it appears you never faced a fully operational strider. There's a mod for that, and I can tell you, the gun is totally worth it. It literally fires black holes (or something similar. Anyway it *SUCCS* anything nearby the impact zone).
Also could you look at Mortal Kombat vehicles? In the last installment, Mortal Kombat 11, we actually get to see a lot of the Special Forces equipment during cutscenes, including atleast one tank, a buggy and a truck.
I was gonna say, the warp cannon is arguably the main gun, we just see it used less because you play as infantry. The nose gun is kind of ambiguous in terms of "caliber" because of how HL handles damage so it could be equivalent to anywhere from a 7.62 to a 30mm (fire rate is also a bit inconsistent between episodes- that one at the end of Episode 1 caught me off guard with how fast it shot) but it's definitely dwarfed by the big gun, which is presumably what it'd use on tanks and structures.
Spoiler-ish: the one in Alyx does use it a bit to break down cover and if you don't kill it with the mounted gun in time. Interestingly, it also seems to have its firerate buffed for the nose gun like in E1, but maybe not as much.
@@northropi2027 The inconsistency in damage and fire rate is because of how the AI was programmed. Earlier Striders would intentionally miss all but the last few shots, with those few shots being incredibly damaging. Later ones instead acted more like normal enemies, and hit their target more consistently at the cost of damage per single shot.
It doesn't fire black holes. A black hole would suck things in instead of disintegrating them.
Ever see the Strider model from HL2:EP2 after DOG rips its head plate off? It has an absolutely massive brain with what looks like thousands of neural links/transmitters. My guess is that the Combine found it easier and probably cheaper to use the biological aspect of a Strider to control its numerous mechanical functions, rather than developing completely different control circuits. This would make it much more resistant to external factors and probably provides it with limited regenerative capabilities. The heat vents on its aft end are likely for its armament, especially the pulse cannon. With biological control you're essentially eliminating all of the separate control systems required to make a tripedal being into a stable fighting platform. Just hijack the brain, figure out your neural inputs and outputs and have at 'er.
I'd assume that bio-mechanical beings are easier to maintain since they'll have the ability to heal wounds. With a robot, you're going to need to oil up gears and perform a lot of different maintenance over it's lifetime, especially if the thing's operating in harsh conditions. Aside from feeding, I doub't you'll need to worry about oiling up a strider's joints or replacing some moving parts every few months. In a huge inter-galactic empire like the combine's, these things are probably being deployed on a bunch of different planets in a variety of remote locations, so keeping maintenance at a minimum would probably be vital.
The vents are likely for the singularity cannon, not the pulse cannon. Also remember that the synths are _not_ actually organic; they are very elaborate robots that merely appear biological. That brain likely has no actual cells or nerves, it's just inorganic circuitry shaped like a brain.
@@jjl772 Organisms require sustenance and appropriate environmental conditions to operate on. They also have potentially limited lifespans and are much harder to repair if damaged. The ability to heal isn't really worth it unless it is extraordinarily powerful. Organisms also require constant attention even outside of combat since they need to be kept alive, whereas a machine can just be turned off. The synths are also described as "self-replicating robots that evolve", so they likely already possess some degree of regeneration without the need for biological components.
I do have a bit of a counter point to your comment on the strider's eyes, In real life there are organisms that can see things in the infared and ultra violet spectrums, who is to say that the organism that was modified to make the strider did not already evolve this kind of vision, thus making the addition of FLIR esc thermal optics redundant, it would be like replacing a cat's eyes with white phosphor night vision optics.
Those armor car launchers are for missiles yeah, remember the canal sequence where you're dodging their missiles in the boat? There was that epic chimney collapse scene and all.
think he using only HL:A
the gun on the combine apc can can be elevated to aim to the other side.
it has a hidden extendable rod.
The practical reason for the prisoner transport vehicle being so tall is so that players can stand up inside it. The APC's body is kinda aesthetic, but yeah the guns and suspension and whatnot don't make much sense. I wonder how much the strider actually weighs? I kinda understood the Strider's feet to intentionally be able to dig in for firing its main gun. That's why it's got the feelers higher up on the spike.
"The practical reason for the prisoner transport vehicle being so tall is so that players can stand up inside it."
Yes, we tend to forget that things in games are designed conveniently for the game's sake more than anything else (realism, or practicality)
Man hasn’t played through half life 2 and it shows
The biggest problem with your criticism is that we have NO IDEA how heavy the striders actually are. So maybe there's actually no problems with ground pressure at all!
They arent really that big, I doubt ground pressure would be a big issue.
Spookston's point is that the blades that support striders would cause high ground pressure. Many heavy tanks had large tracks so that their weight force was spread across a larger area, decreasing pressure(and preventing the tank from getting bogged down that much). Pressure = force(weight in this case) x area of application. The Strider has pretty substantial weaponry, and can take 3 hits from the RPG without dying(on hard, it might not be the same case on normal), which blows of the turret of an Abrams in HL1 with a single shot, plus it can't be moved by the gravity gun so it must be at least half the weight of an MBT however, it has more than 20 times less area which supports its weight which would equate to 10 times more ground pressure than a generic MBT like the Leopard 2 at a very low estimate. You can't realistically find out the exact magnitude of the ground pressure problem but I am pretty certain that striders would have a very serious problem with ground pressure IRL.
@@oliverhill9986 The combat strider is also only ever seen in cities so ground pressure isn't really an issue on concrete. There is no reason they couldn't give the thing shoes in other environments.
@@comradecommissar1945 What about the White Forest assault, though? Striders were going on the soft ground here.
The combine don't need 100% militarised weapons so to save resources for a war effort with another species what we see in the games are more for policing the planet then fighting a war
The strider is mostly designed to carry something heavy high up (its warp cannon and the watching platform) there is also the crab and mortar synth which do similar rolls but are much shorter and possibly slower
The combine APC is a fast response car mostly used by the metro police its rockets are laser guided and don't need to be turreted and have a drive, gunner / rocket operator, 4 - 6 passenger seats the rockets are more used for unarmed cars or boats there are models for a tank that looks like the merkava and an IFV that looks like the warrior in the 2nd game and ep 1 but these are no where to be seen in game
The carrier is large because it could also be used as a troop transport with it being able to carry the combines other synths like the mortar or hunter I could also be able to bring manhacks or scanners aswell since they are not nice thing to have up in ur face and maybe they can carry larger species earth and zen aren't the only planets so larger species could be transported
Ah. Half Life. It's been a long time since I finished EP 2. ( Not play Half Life Alyx yet. Too cash strapped for those fancy VR)
Tbh though, we will never be able to find out why Combine vehicle is the way they are. Because the one you see in game is locally build for the occupation force, not the Combine military ( That's why the Resistance are scare shitless when they see the portal in the ruin of the Citadel).
And oh, the mystery of the Combine itself is also the fear factor ( Or at least I think that's Valve intention). Even until the ending of Half Life Alyx, the series never reveal much to the player about the Combine ( What are they looks like? What is their gorvernment structure? What is their military? How vast their territory are?... etc). And I think, story wise, is what make The Combine intimidating and fearsome.
2:03 thats actually an organic part its where they breath. So basically lungs are inside.
Edit: 2:33 Bullet proof glass. Also at 3:12 the rockets are guided by the driver so he doesnt have to aim it towards an enemy. He sees the rockets destination on a screen and the rockets wont explode until collusion.
As for the APC, it does fire guided missiles and the machine gun can elevate, allowing it to fire over the other side.
Could you do a "everything wrong about" the giant robots in the map origins (black ops 2/3 zombies)
APCs do have missiles
did you not play hl2?
About the apc part. Its pretty likely there is a driver and a gunner.
It can actually fire on both side, apparently the turret can elevate upward to shoot on the otherside.
And the missile is actually apparently able to track target. Although theres no way for me to tell how. The apc on its own is pretty resillient to damage. Either that or the rebel doesnt have a very strong anti vehicle techology. However it is pretty clear that the apc machine gun has a very limited range as it is not used until the target get relatively close to it.
On the other hand there is a second variation of the apc. This one is never seen directly in combat but is indeed seen in half life 2. Try looking at it.
The strider warp cannon is in the game. Used to destroy building and clear out fortification. Also probably as anti vehicle solution.
To be fair we wouldnt understand the combines vehicle design due to them being a interdimensional empire with thousands of different planets full of different lifeforms and resources we don''t know how to make or find!
A lazy answer but still, a valid one.
the striders have a vent because they have a secondary big gun, it can basically wipe out entire buildings, i assume it makes a ton of heat
Tell me you've never played half life 2 WITHOUT telling me you've never played half life 2:
*this guy* :
The APC does use missiles instead of rockets. It was shown in the Water Hazard Chapter in HL2
As said before but still worth pointing out. The Strider's warp cannon is meant for destroying entire buildings which it demonstrates across all three Half-Life 2 games, particularly in "Our Mutual Fiend" in Episode 2 where it'll destroy outposts along the way to the rocket silo.
The APC does appear to fire guided missiles rather than rockets because of the way they steer toward their target after leaving the tube and even slightly home in on the airboat in Half-Life 2's "Water Hazard" chapter.
This is a tough topic to comment on as Valve has never really gone into the lore very much. So we don't know what the role of Striders are in the broader society. They could be plentiful and expendable, making them cost effective for the combine to just throw into battle or to only function for a short while. I think the armoured car was a bit limited in what they could do with the game design back then, but if memory serves all the rockets that we encounter in HL2 are guided by the operator which could excuse the fixed firing positions. As for the prison transport... I dunno, it is bizarre. Just part of the aesthetic I guess, a lot of combine tech is tall and angular.
Overall the Combine designs, in my opinion, are designed to intimidate given they are an occupying force.
The APC fires guided missiles.
Pretty good guided missiles I might add, they can do a 360 turn.
2:26 the MG raises up on a pole when traversing to the other side, so it does have full coverage
And about the APC. I think you misunderstood its purpose. It *is* an armored car. It's not meant for large open combat situations. The gun is slapped haphazardly, and that's kind of the point. Same way that it is slapped on dropships.
On the radiator thing:
Consider that even humans need to get rid of waste heat, which is usually done by having air around us pick up the heat of the body and transport it away. But if it starts getting too warm or we build up too much internal heat, our body can pump the heat into sweat, which then acts as liquid coolant when we secrete it.
For Striders it may just be a lack of sweat to get rid of waste heat, so they get those neat vents instead, allowing them to keep cool even though they are doing heavy-duty work.
Sad bionic-gunship noise
The Apc has Guided Rocket launcher, and the machinegun can rottate 360° With the hydraulic piston
next do "everything wrong with Gunman:Chronicles vehicle design". there are like 2 tanks in ir
It is possible that the Striders see through sensors mounted on the pulse gun, as the black dots are not on the hl2 versions, this is also supported by the gun moving when idle, like looking around, and I think the ventilators are more like gills, given that the Strider has no other breathing ways, and is intended for battle not only on different terrain types, but also entire other dimensions. On the APC, the machine gun actually lifts up like a periscope when firing, making it able to shoot 360 degrees. In game, the rockets are laser guided, or maneuverable through some means, adjusting for player movement.
Most of the problems are basically "the combine really don't care about you or what you feel"
The stryder is basically psychological horror, its saying "if you disobey us that's what you will become"
The APC is like "did the pilot and personal died ? Lol just send more like i care about their lives"
I do enjoy these videos and how you have a pretty knowledgeable thought on a lot of vehicle designs, however I will point out that I think you missed the gimbal pulse gun on the Strider is it's sort of "head", as seen in both HL2 and Alyx, the gimbal rotates in a manner of looking around for hostiles.
This is more easier to see on the construction and combat varients of Alyx, as the construction varient has a unique camera/sensor array in place of the pulse gun, and as a side note, Combine don't care for collateral damage of citizens, which can explain why the construction varient doesn't seem to care about smashing the buildings to scale them to attach those cables at the start of the game.
(SPOILERS AHEAD)
As for the combat varient, when encountered in the Alyx Campaign, it actively hunts for the player, using the gun to look for you, there is an amazing scene where it walks right over and is completely unaware until the gimbal looks down to spot you hiding under it.
It would be cool if you could get to reviewing the vehicle designs from foxhole!
Y E S
The apc’s machine gun has some sort of piston under it that raises it over the canopy when it turns to the right
Someone probably already said it, but the Combine APC does shoot missiles. I haven't played Alyx so I don't know if we ever get to see it there, but in HL2 the APCs sometimes fire missiles at Gordon's airboat.
Brother, you should really see what the Strider cannon is capable of by checking it out in the other half life games. It was designed to absolutely obliterate all opposition.
You clearly haven't played the earlier games since you don't know or are uncertain how certain things work. Or you just never payed attention to the smaller details. The missiles for the APC are shot out the front from those tubes and then immediately turn upwards and a laser guider then points them in the direction where they need to go. The Pulse gun on the APC can also be elevated to shoot over the cupola to hit things on the other side.
How are they laser guided?
@@ksavierkrajewski716 Well there is a laser pointer mounted on the APC?
Although I’m not sure if it’s part of the actual vehicle, the Combine APC can actually fire 360 because when the gunner aims at a target obscured by the port, the gun goes upward by a piston pole that makes it aim over the gunner’s port.
about the apc's rockets:
didn't you play half life 2?
the rockets are controlable
the operator could be the one controlling the tools and such and help command on where the strider can go, the strider would be the transporter and would move to do whatever.
dude the apc lets you shoot rpgs at any angle because its guided missiles
Also, the combine APC uses guided missiles with a super sight turning arc. You can see them used in multiple sections of the half life 2 campaign.
Spookston your commentary aggravates me deeply.
As a few others have pointed out, the mount for the APC's gun raises and lowers to clear the height of the canopy. The rockets appear to be some sort of guided missiles, since they can redirect midair and chase after your vehicle during the airboat chase in the canals in HL2.
As far as the prisoner van, I'm not sure why they're so ridiculously tall. I guess it's maybe more of a gameplay thing designed to help curb motion sickness or prevent players from feeling claustrophobic inside a vehicle? who knows.
When we run out of vehicles, will you take a look at Crossout?
Joking, but would be funny...
Love your content, keep it up
The missiles in the front of the Combine APC are guided, which can be observed in the Half Life 2 campaign.
"1 minute ago" Wow
Ikr
"10 months ago" Wow
What if the combine geneticlly engineered the strider to have flesh that could withstand the insane amounts of heat that the generator could produce, and the the vents are more for the generators sake instead of the striders. Could be a thing lol
I subbed just because of that last clip. VR and HL Alyx are amazing
You got the gun on the APC massively wrong.
It can shoot in all directions (360)
You just never noticed that the gun actually extends upwards for it to shoot above the windshield.
Construction Strider carrying a human worker makes perfect sense. A huge creature like that has limits on what it can do. You still need someone to perform complex labour like welding, operating machinery etc. We also don't know how smart striders are. From what we've seen so far, they are basically animals.
I mean to be honest the sword legs actualy works, striders are big and they have blind spots. İt must be so easy for a enemy to run under the creature and use its blind spot for its own advantage, so turning legs into weapons for enemies came to close… its just makes a lot of sense, cheap, for effective
And probally work very well in dirty enviorments
um yeah the strider sees through it's main gun, that's why it's always sporadically moving around
If you wanted to look closely at the prisoner transport, you could've do the spin glitch :P
You just spin around near something in you can go past solid doors/walls etc.
how is the bottom gun on the strider useless? if it's used to destroy cover/walls/buildings and flush out targets, i think it would compliment the main gun very well. as for the radiator, i don't think striders are powered by mechanical engines, they probably use something biological. it may be used to cool the strider's mechanical augmentations, or it could be part of it's respiratory system.
Iirc the APC's machinegun is mounted on some kind of telescopic mount and can rise upwards to aim over the canopy.
Impractical? Yes.
Overcomplicated? Absolutely.
Hope you enjoyed HLA Spook. It's a masterpiece I don't have the opportunity to play for some time to come yet.
Actually some people think that the strider sees out of the top gun, you can see it kind of looks around
The apc's gun is actually funny looking in action because it is on a telescopic pole that well extends over the glass.
Great video!
However, whether you did this on a whim, not really caring to put effort into researching it (which is fine, it's all in good fun), or whether you seriously believed these points/ researched them, I would like to point out the things you got wrong.
The big gun on the strider is a warp canon, it's made for heavy destruction, for destroying bases, walls, and other objects.
They can also be used to attack infantry, but that's mainly a waste.
The combat strider has those legs to pierce anything below, meaning it's not mean't for just killing people who get under it, but for vehicles and buildings as well.
Also, the strider, though is very tall, is possibly not that heavy, allowing it to move around on those feet.
And for autonomy, the strider most likely has the intelligence of an animal.
One of the things showcased in episode two is it's ability to work with hunters, fast, scout like creatures that run around, scouting, protecting the strider, etc.
The hunters appear to be very intelligent, like dogs, but with modified intelligence to possibly understand military tactics, this will allow the hunters (with their communication devices) to communicate to the striders and give them commands.
The vent on the strider is also made for the guns, as the guns get very hot, especially the warp canon.
Also, the striders are organic, and were probably designed with a special mucus inside to help cool off the mechanical systems.
For the APCs, there are a couple of things as well.
With suspension, these things were modeled in a really old game, and were also not made to be right next to.
This means they most likely didn't find it worth it to model in suspension.
Also, if you've seen the APC move before, the wheels do move like they have some kind of suspension.
The rocket tubes on the front are actually for special guided missiles, and the tubes point up like a mortar, firing the missiles that then guide towards your car in half life 2.
Everything else you mentioned about the APC I can agree with.
If there's machinery inside striders that needs radiators, why do you suppose it requires some serious thermal insulation? You say you think it's cooking from the inside constantly, but nothing points to a possibility that current radiation isn't already doing its job at keeping it cool. Insect are exothermic (cold-blooded), which means they cannot produce their own body heat.
3:17 BECAUSE THEY ARE, PLAY THE PREQUELS FIRST
Last time I was this early, the 7 hour war was still going on.
I hope you one day return making these types of videos
did you even know what they are? striders have ventilations because they are basically synthetic or cyborg meaning their insides are mechanical and machinery.
and the APC actually uses guided missiles
well the striders dark energy cannon would be very usefull against rebels inside buildings since the pulse machine gun apparently uses the exact same callibre if u can even call it that as the AR2, i guess you could also use it as a pretty effective infantry support weapon since the rebels dont seem to like being fired at with a thing that can vaporize you in mere seconds, also forgot to mention that the strider was used in the invasion of earth, so i believe it was really effective against armored vehicles.
"Wouldn't it be cooking from the inside-out constantly?"
The human body uses incredibly inefficient means to warm up and cool down, but not only is that from a purely theoretical standpoint, the variety do the job well enough. I imagine the strider has both organic and mechanical redundancies as overheating in the sun killing the brain of the creature while the mechanical parts remain fine would be pretty awful due to the time investment in making organic vehicles as opposed to inorganic ones.
As for the intelligence, I assume that this isn't straight biomechanics i.e. producing organisms, but instead, taking an existing organism and breeding them along a path towards subservience and the understanding of complex tasks, then performing invasive operations on said creature to effectively turn food and water into what would normally take huge amounts of complex parts. The chief of which is a computer capable of incredibly flexible if simple orders. Hence, a lack of independent intelligence and something more like a servant race.
Easiest way to get a permanent off-world relocation
To be fair, the Striders probably have undergone some augmentations for weight reduction that allows for blades and high ground pressure, probably something like hollow but reinforced bones, or just the fact that muscle is much lighter than steel. Just a thought tho
You should check out Battalion Wars series tanks, particularly Battalion and Wars 2
Well for the strider, my assumption is that it was very light, the combat varient uses very little in terms of armor, only a cannon and lmg, the rest looking more natural. And as for the combine tank, it uses guided missiles and the combine structures use a weird black metal, and who knows what theie properties are.
The stand on the construction strider, is for a person to stand on, and the person is making a look-out for unfinished work for the strider.
I'm still putting in my vote for the vehicles of Deserts of Kharak. Could even make 2 videos, one for each faction if it gets too long
you cant deny the strider looks pretty awesome during gameplay
The top part on the construction strider if for transportation of the worker version's of the combine
The things I heard for a while now was in regards in ground pressure and in correlation with the difference between Mechs(the more realistic in size that are less than nine meters in relation to the square cube law) or in this case the Strider and AFV's Tracked and wheeled variants.
The Things is, Mechs and AFVs(Tanks) that are being compared due to ground pressure and flotation sometimes forget that both use different kinds of locomotion. The difference due to the latter only have a 2 dimensional movement and getting stuck in a mud is a problem yes?
Example being a soldier and an M1 abrams having almost the same ground pressure get stuck in a knee high swamp? Of course the soldier can get unstuck by lifting his foot out of it one step at a time while the Tank needs to be towed or an equipment to get free.
Ground Pressure is a major problem only for vehicles that uses track and wheels, while Mechs(mini mechs) and in here Striders can get stuck for a few seconds before lifting up the stuck foot into a better pavement as they don't have the same limitations of simple locomotion 2d movement, they are bipedal(tripedal?) vehicles which have more versatility in 3d(if they are capable of climbing like Titans of Titanfall, Heavygear and etc.) movement and traversing more difficult terrain and quicker recovery due to having mimic us humans by having hands(manipulators) as leverage.
APC wise ,Most certainly missiles,look in the airboat chapters where severaltimes they face you side on to fire tracking missiles
Strider wise ,Augmentation seems to be a strong suit of the combine ,but less work is needed to make a strider platform than a lift ,also allows you ti have a guy do more precise work
I get that it is important to realise how flawed the strider is for that type of work but at the same time I doubt Valve are too focused on realism or what works tbf
About the strider, it has the large cannon to destroy buildings in a war
setting, as it is mainly used as a heavy combat unit in most situations not civil unrest cases.