I remember watching an episode of joe when a bat fell out of a plane, into a barn, and impaled himself on a pitchfork, still walked home.

Now I see in some other episodes, one shot dead, one hit from slaughter, dead, one tap and they fall down like dominos.

So I'm curious, in your verse, mind, or whatever, are they unstoppable killing machines or what?

I was reading AV's universe assunder, heck, in his world, they destroy everything, eventually.

So thoughts?

_________________

I like to think of them as unstoppable but flawed. They're like Terminator but there are key points they can be shot to stop them. A single shot from a gun in a certain spot of the head or chest area, a place on the back that can be hit with the back of a gun, or a good bazooka blast that'll core out the majority of all these spots.

_________________

Heck, even on their filecard it says if you just hit them right in the back they burst into flames.

Not too tough in my estimation.

_________________

It's a psychological advantage. Your typical person sees an army or robots come at them, shrugging off bullets, they freak out.

I've always seen them like the Star Wars Battledroids. Their strength is in their numbers. If nothing else, they'll bury you in their wreckage.

_________________

I see their armour being some kind of kevlar reinforced alloy. It would take several clips of normal bullets to take them down. You would need AP or HEAP rounds to take them down quickly. The only weak spots I see are the joints, but unlike a human, with a BAT if you take off an arm, they keep coming. Even if you take off both arms, they could still keep coming and detonate a pound of C4 in your face as a last resort. They could even act as a shaped charge against heavy armour.

edit: the chest panel could also act as a form of claymore mine.

_________________

The "numbers" game definitely comes into play, IMO. In the Marvel Era, Cobra troops would just kick them out of helicopters, despite the height. The damage of the fall would usually just be cosmetic. And if any of them were completely wrecked... so what? It cost less to build one than to train and maintain a Viper.

So from an economical POV, you can have a massive number of BATS, because they cost so much less than having a battalion of regular troops.

Then you just keep throwing them at the enemy... they lose limbs, sometimes their entire lower half, and just keep crawling toward their target.

For my money, taking out their head just nullifies their visual tracking. They can still use sonar, track electronic signals, and have a modest AI program that can keep them on course for a short time. Their central computer is located behind the bogus panel on their chest, which (in my world) is rigged to explode when shot at, making it seem like the BAT has been taken out. Then when the Joes have passed over the "dead", they rise up again, and catch them in a crossfire.

In my own Joe-universe I'd say they were somewhere between Cybermen and Termintors.

Like the Cybermen that showed back up in Doctor Who they can be damaged and that damage can take them out. So they might shrug off a few pistol rounds but they are little robot bits if they took something like a RPG to the chest.

Sort of like Terminators though in that they can lose bits and still function just not as well so if say Snake Eyes did something really cool and ninja like of taking one's head off it would just be firing at random without the tracking systems in the head.

Guess Battlestar Galactica has also been a bad influance with the Centurians.

About 20% of a BAT is the parts needed to keep it functional. It can take about 80% damage as long as none of it is to the critical computer elements (which I guess are right between it's shoulder blades rather than in it's head, to make them easier to work on).

Since shooting it in the center of mass (like most soldiers would) or in the head wouldn't take it down, and you have to get behind it to do any serious damage, I'd say that they are pretty damned tough. The question is though why not go the whole 9 yards and put good back armor on them?

The answer, I figure is that the Cobra brass wanted an easy way to kill them themselves if they ever went completely out of control.

I also really never understood why they didn't wire the things with C4 and make suicide bombers out of them... Maybe resolute could play with that angle.

- R

_________________

I think it depends on the B.A.T. Now, setting aside for the moment that there have been multiple types of B.A.T.s over the years, I consider it conceivable that within any one version, there might be some "cannon fodder" B.A.T.s whose strength is in numbers, but individually aren't worth a whole lot and aren't going to withstand a lot of abuse. And yet, within that same version, there might be the occasional "tough SOB" that is intentionally built to be more durable and take a lot of punishment before it goes down. Obviously such a B.A.T. would be a lot more expensive to build, so Cobra isn't going to make a lot of them. The "pitchfork" example you cite is a good example. So might be the prototype B.A.T. that still looked like a version 1 B.A.T. that the Joes and Dreadnoks fought around issue #12 of the Devil's Due comic. This also gives the B.A.T.'s a psychological advantage over the Joes. Are these things all going to collapse like a bunch of aluminum cans or do we have a few in here that are going to give us some serious grief?

Several BAT models have carried some sort of flame thrower and those need fuel to work so if the storage tank was somewhere in the back that could also explain why some types go up in flames when hit from behind. You wouldn't want to put the tanks in the front knowing the Joes are going to attempt to shot up the BATs and since the BATs don't have very advanced programing they are likely to go with a frontal attack of some type.

I like this explanation!

Some are fodder and built with cheaper parts.
Some are sent on specific missions and are built with better/more expensive parts and are much tougher.

_________________

To me, that one tidbit was enough to make BATS useless in my Joe world. As a kid, I had Sgt. Slaughter beat them...which was the ultimate insult in my childhood collection. But, that bursting into flames pretty much made BATS useless since the Joes would just get behind them and simply turn them all into quick fireballs. Thus, the figure still has little relevance in my collection to this day.

_________________

I guess it depends on if you think they burst into flames and then explode into pieces, or if they burst into flames and then keep walking toward you, still firing a gun, but now also ON FIRE. Because that would be pretty damn scary.

_________________

I mostly use them as sentries because unlike humans on guard duties they wont get bored or tired and become less vigilant. The control room personnel can connect to the camera in their head to see whats happening.

As an offensive force, I see them fighting until their main processor is shutdown. They'll keep on walking, crawling and moving forward until they reach the objective.

I consider them as very costly units though, thus explaining the need of keeping that many soldiers around.

_________________