Of course there is a solution that resolves everyone's issues at the same time. You have a tank to start with, but allow the weapon systems to be mounted on folding supports so if needed it could for example lift a weapon above the height of a building and still fire while in cover. Then just take that a stage further and build in articulated supports that can fold out to lift the entire vehicle off the ground in cases where needed, say like crossing a river when it is too deep for tracks and you do not have time to wait for a bridge, or simply crossing terrain that has undulations far to uneven for tracks to cope with (something like a boulder field).

Problem solved since what you actually have is now a mech, that also is a tank and can perform the roles of both. If we had the metallurgy technology and ability to create speed and agility of movement then I could see it as a natural evolution of a tank as they would no longer need to ask for things like bridges or airlift support for most tasks. Yet keep all the functions of a tank with it's inherit benefits.

I was in the signal corp and mostly drove one of these (BV 206) loaded with communication equipment around. A quick google says that they are similar to your example. Other units in the company used MT-LB and CV90 as well as some terrain cars and trucks. Sadly I never got to drive anything but my 206 but from what I saw during basic driving training they had no problem.

As for tanks, we had Leo 2s but mostly for the bigger exercises and we never had any basic training together. Only really saw them when we where both in for rest or supplies and since the exercises only really happen during winter, well they can handle snow at least. Those I talked to said that you had to be a bit careful but as long as you dont stop it is probably fine.

Interesting.  The BV 206 is exactly what I was thinking of, although I couldn't remember the name (or that it was originally Swedish).  I'm not sure I'd want to take a Leo 2 (or an M1) into a swamp, but it looks like I underestimated their mobility there.  I may poke around and see if I can find documents on this.

I think we are talking about different things, or using different definitions of the word. I did my military service in northern sweden and there is plenty of marshes and swamps around that we had to move through. And to move through that in full gear on foot is incredibly slow and tedious while the different tracked vehicles hardly noticed as long as the driver was not stupid.

I think those are the specialty vehicles I was referring to.  I used the M29 as an example because I'm not all that familiar with Swedish military vehicles.  Did you do it with tanks?

Actually we are, as long as you are comparing walking up to a slow jog. Since most other mammals are set up for efficient running.

I'm not an expert in biomechanics, and I'm working from memory of one book I glanced through a couple times, so it's quite possible you're right.  In any case, I'm not sure how much of this efficiency is in the basic bipedal locomotion, and how much is in the finer physiological details, which aren't relevant to the case at hand because I'm positive that the best solution for a mech of any size is not the same as for a human. 

But I seriously doubt that a track is going to fall in the middle of those two.

You doubt a tracked vehicle is going to be more efficient than a person walking?  Right.  Time for some math.  According to wiki, a 68 kg person walking at 4 km/hr gets the energy equivalent of 360 mpg, which we can then normalize to 24,480 mpg*kg.  (Yes, I know I'm mixing imperial and metric units, but I just don't care.  We're interested in relative magnitudes here.)  The Abrams (also wiki) has a fuel capacity of 500 gallons, an operational range of 265 miles, and weighs 61,676 kg.  So we get 0.53 mpg, and 32,688 mpg*kg.  This is 33.5% better than the person, at significantly higher speed.  And I believe that 'operational range' isn't really a good metric for the same sort of conditions that the person is in, namely good ground and an economical speed.
So the bottom line is that if you really care about the environment, you'll take a tank instead of walking, because it's more energy-efficient.   

In general, I think people dont understand what a tank is designed to do. A tank (or rather, a tracked vehicle) is basicly a gun delivery platform made for off-road usage. A tank is incredibly wasteful on any surface that can support things such as wheels. So places such as swamps are actually a tanks home ground since what you need to do to traverse the area is what the tank does naturally ie spread its weight as much as possible.

Sort of.  Most tanks/tracked AFVs aren't that mobile in serious swamps.  I'm not sure I'd call them incredibly wasteful.  Yes, if you're only going to be fighting in areas with reasonably stable ground, you're better off using wheels, but military operations tend to involve a lot of mud.  Tracked vehicles tend to be a bit less mobile than people over soft ground, but much better than wheels.  There are exceptions where tracks are better than people (M29 Weasel), but they're rare.

A human, in contrast, is designed to be able to do a decent speed at an incredibly low energy cost. A fit human can jog for days with little rest. We are the only specie that can hunt by following the prey until it is to exhausted to defend itself. Something that, imo, is rather awesome (in all the meanings of the word).

"Incredibly low energy cost" is taking things a bit too far.  Yes, humans are pursuit hunters, and we have good endurance, but that's different from 'low energy cost'.  The basic efficiency of human locomotion isn't, IIRC, that different from, say, horses or other running animals.  Evolution wants efficient locomotion, because that means you need less food. 

If you can copy this in a mech you could have a force that is capable of independent action for a lot longer then a tank will ever be as long as the ground can support it. Heck, if you then give that mech a bicycle (another thing that has insanely good efficiency) and you would have speed as well.

Actually, the bicycle is the disproof of this point.  A human on a bicycle is much more efficient than a human walking.  Something like a factor of 4, IIRC.  (Interestingly, this is about the difference in efficiency between a human swimming and paddling a canoe, too.)  A tracked vehicle is going to fall somewhere in the middle. 

Also, you can, today, with present tech, build a mech as long as it has more then 6 legs.

And yet nobody bothers.  I wonder why...

Have you not seen the fancy armor they are testing now? Just slap some optical camouflage (something else being worked on now) on that and you won't see that until its too late. Now put that on a mech, how hard would that be?

I'm not sure that would work very well.  Thermo says you have to get rid of the engine's waste heat somehow.  It's basically impossible to hide that in all cases for long periods.  Yes, if you're standing in a river it can be done, but it doesn't help when you're in a desert.  Or the arctic.

And yes, the entire point of a tank is to be a gun platform that is decently well protected. It's also not meant to operate on its own but as part of a combined arms force - as is every other branch of the armed forces. Also, a tank can hide in terrain, a Mech can't. Well, it can but it becomes way more difficult when you're that tall.

Have you not seen the fancy armor they are testing now? Just slap some optical camouflage (something else being worked on now) on that and you won't see that until its too late. Now put that on a mech, how hard would that be?
I've seen a better video of this somewhere where it turned into a family van on thermals as it drove around

Wait, are you really suggestin a mech on a bicycle?

Hell NO! Spelling ####! <Smile>. Do not play the validate your argument by a spelling/grammar test, I am not playing that game (because I will lose, I am terrible at spelling and grammar, but not bad at everything else <smile>. I found your posts to others opinions to be condescending (happy) that is what got me fired up. But calmer now.

I wasn't invalidating your argument based on bad spelling.  I just found the malpropism amusing.

I am sorry, but I think the greatest combat weapon platform, is a bipedal, AKA the human being. Now if you give that human being an armour exoskeleton, to protect it from small arms and a weapon that is capable of engagement range and that human being witht he same fluid of movement as human does without the suit. Then IMHO it would be better than a tank as a weapons platform, the articulation and view and movement responsiveness to acquire and engage a target would be far faster then a metal box with a rotating turret.

That's actually a really good insight into the mind of the meca believer, but I don't think it holds up.  Big things are slow because they are big, and it's really hard to make them move fast and fluidly.  Tank turrets slew at the rate they do because it's the best mechanical compromise.  If you get better mechanisms for your mecha, I can put them in my tank, too.

Now the size of that armour exoskeleton, may only be double that of a human to deploy a weapon system capable of knocking out that coffin box.

Have you ever heard of the Javelin missile?  You don't need an armored exoskeleton to deploy that, and yet it hasn't made the tank obsolete.

If that platform has the ability to climb, step over objects, crawl,  surprise and flip over your turtle tank, in close combat, grab the turret gun in urban combat and bend it.

The last two are really big asks.  Look at armored recovery vehicles.  They're not small and dainty.  This mech shrinks or grows as needed for your argument.  Sketch one size, and we can do actual work on it.

yeah you may have straight speed and possible range on the mech, but put that into a urban or close quarters environment. My money is on the Mech you can have your turtle.

I'll gladly take that bet.  You can have your awkward vehicles.

This whole bogging thing, thinking a mech would be worse in a bog is incorrect

What can a Mech do that a tank cannot, it can lay down and still get forward momentum by using it arms and feet, much like a human . So it may sink then it would hit a form of solid ground at some point. When that solid ground is too deep so it will fall forward, and then use arms and legs to extract itself. What will a tracked do when it get bogged oh yeah wait for it recovery vehicle to pull it out.

I'm having trouble seeing how this would work.  People work on a rather different scale from your proposed mechs.  And a mech that's mired in mud is a really good target for anyone with an ATGM.  So's a bogged tank, but I would generally try to avoid such places.

I am really not sure what your mech looks like in your head or the ground clearance it has over a tank, but I am imagine mine to have more ground clearance then a track vehicle. Even swamp at some point has a hard bottom, also extracting a foot out of the ground to move forward after hitting solid ground, take less effort then a tracked tank.

And that's why it's easy to move through waist-deep mud.  Oh, wait.  It isn't.
There's a reason why swamps are generally not militarily useful terrain for anybody.  It's too hard for infantry to move through them, much less vehicles.  We have made vehicles which work better than people in swamps, but they didn't see much use.

Let look at the War or the World mechs, they hard three legs, are you telling me that it would get bogged, with those narrow spindly legs, imo that the type of mech I would be sending to a swamp world not tanks.

No, you don't get to praise bipedal mechs in one post, then switch to tripedals in the next.  Pick one.

I know this was a joke, but let call humans those 38 million mech that died in the mud in WW1 they were at the hands of other million of mechs, tracked or wheeled due to numbers did cause many deaths. Also those mechs aka human traversed the grounds where those tracked/wheeled could not go. My money still on the mech in wet/mud terrain. So I felt it was not a good point for tanks.

You are aware that the earliest tanks were explicitly built for the exact terrain in question, right?  Yes, they did sometimes bog, but they were still tremendously useful.  I can't see a scaled bipedal form working better.

I figure power armour in real life is going to be used less for making the infantryman protected like a tank and more like making him armed like one.

That's a point I've never seen brought up.  That said, there's a big gap between modern infantry and tanks. 

Armour-wise, I don't imagine power armour (if actually genuinely trialled today) would give that much protection over the armour that infantry usually wear aside from having greater coverage.

Actually, the problem appears even when you limit it to armor equivalent to that worn by soldiers today.  I did my scaling from existing armor plates. 

One big benefit though is that you can use the exoskeleton to put far heavier guns on the guy, and the optics to successfully engage targets with them without need for a second man to spot for you.

The advantage to the second man is that he's another pair of eyes hooked up to another brain.

With stairs though, it really depends.  If I'm going to be using powered armour I'm going to probably make all of my buildings and fortifications out of fairly solid stuff to make up for it, so defensively we're okay, and offensively it mostly depends on whether or not he's using it as well.

But why would you bother?  The other side loads up with slightly heavier weapons, rendering all the money you spent on improved armor useless.

What? Can you imagine the government setting a mandate that all homes and offices have to upgrade their stairs to let supersoldiers use them?

I actually cant imagine highly advanced armies caring that much about cities in this context.  If you are fighting enemies that are wearing nuke proof plating then you aren't really going to notice concrete structures or whatever.

How would that even work?

With stairs though, it really depends.  If I'm going to be using powered armour I'm going to probably make all of my buildings and fortifications out of fairly solid stuff to make up for it, so defensively we're okay, and offensively it mostly depends on whether or not he's using it as well.

What? Can you imagine the government setting a mandate that all homes and offices have to upgrade their stairs to let supersoldiers use them?