Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-14138255-20140815002519/@comment-209421-20140815145746

Except his methodology is unsound. You are aware that the U.S. military actually considered building a 'mech, right? A walking combat vehicle controlled by a single man capable of traversing landscapes and environments that a tracked or wheeled combat vehicle couldn't? They declined it. Why? Too much power in a single person's hands. Sure, they look cool, but the sheer power of a mechanical combat unit is not for a single man to wield. Ironwood's designs imply otherwise.

In the case of Ironwood, remember that this isn't reality. Robotics might be cheap and relatively quick to produce, but remember that the enemy is organic and intelligent. Grimm seem to be capable of communication and coordination, which implies that they learn. What is something computers don't do automatically? Learn. What happens when you have to reprogram your entire combat force, since these are not Star Wars styled "droid hub" units, but basic AI, because the monsters that they were trained to fight

Penny is different. A full A.I. with an "Aura". I'm assuming by Aura she means a protective force field, unless she once was organic. But, consider the cost of reproducing hyper-advanced learning AI, complete with synthetic flesh and the ability to compile and create new procedures from memory in the same methodology as humans. The costs for such a program would be EXTREME. Sure, it'd be faster than training humans to fight monsters, but at the same time, you're restricted by the cost and rarity of the components used. Besides, from what we've seen, Penny isn't self-repairing, which would truly make humans irrelevant to combat. She doesn't 'heal' on her own, so she can't operate alone for extended periods of time. Meanwhile a trained Huntress could probably survive almost indefinantly, as long as she had time to heal from minor wounds alongside access to food and fresh water.