At what point does power armor stop being power armor and become a battlesuit?

I'm partial to Appleseeds Landmates and Infinitys TAG's. It just seems like a armor design that makes sense.

Power armor is worn, mecha are driven.

That's how I separate the two, anyways.

Me and a few of my friends had a long-ass conversation on this a while back. We ended up deciding that there are a few fundamental 'thresholds' on the ladder towards mecha.

>Armour is entirely worn over all extremities, and just extends outwards from the skin
Power Armour
>The pilot doesn't reach the extremities such as the feet, thighs, hands and forearms, but otherwise is within the limbs
Heavy Power Armour / Battlesuit
>Pilot is contained entirely within the torso
Battlepod / Light Mecha
>Pilot is contained entirely within a small component of the robot, such as the head or some vital area of the torso
True Mecha
>Pilot is so small relative to the robot that their cockpit would be substantially smaller than the head if it was placed there
Giant Robot

My apologies for the image, it looked like more of a mecha related image from the thumbnail.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

That's actually a pretty good classification of them. In a perfect world it would be this clear-cut, but alas Japan and pretty much everyone else has their own nomenclatures regardless of how much they make sense.

I still don't fucking get why gundam calls them "mobile suits"

Purportedly the 'mobile suits' thing from Gundam is a contraction of 'mobile infantry powered armour suit' by the author, but in universe is because 'mobile suits' were from a development standpoint just huge versions of 'mobility pods' that people used to do space construction work.

Does it matter? ZoE calls their mechs "orbital frames".

Call it whatever you want, Mobile Suit, Orbital Frame, Knightmare Frame a mechs a mech.

The actual scale they represent is quite different, hence the need for clarification. Knightmare Frames for instance are manlets compared to the other two you just mentioned.

Hell, there are ostensibly mecha shows where the mecha are barely more than armour.

Originally the Gundam was supposed to be about 6 or 7 feet tall (Literally an armored space suit), but it got changed in pre-production because giant robots were popular and they wanted it more toy-friendly.

This is a good breakdown.

Only area for clarification I can see is multiple people within the machine. Multiple "seats" automatically kick it out of PA or HPA and in to Mecha for me, even if the "primary" pilot location would qualify the machine as HPA.

This came about because of a creation much like the 3 gnomes/kobolds in a trench-coat. There was a "pilot" who had their legs mostly in the machines legs and a "gunner" that was pretty much piggybacking the "pilot" with their arms and head in the machines arms (mostly) and head.

Well, i'll just replace the mecha with big robots/walkers actually, mecha is..... a rather large genres.

Especially if you live on eastern countries, they have a large takes on the word. For them, it can range from dinky drones to 90m Jaegers, as long as it was robotics. Everytime you talk about mecha, they always ask "What kind?"

>Agreed. I'd say at most you can have limb extensions in power armor, but some part of your limbs has to be in them.
Agreed. Thus Appleseed Landmates are still armour, but Tau battlesuits...are...
Anything smaller than a Broadside would still be a suit, right?

You mean like a stealth suit? I'd say that falls under power armor.

>Armor that turns into a motorcycle

Oh Robotech, how I've missed you so.

Also technically power armor as this version is supposed to be for elite troops and fills out most of the basics you'd expect. Powered suit that provides protection; fully sealed to work in a vacuum, integrated comms suite, auto-injector for medical supplies, cool collapse-able helmet. It's got everything!

Yeah, I call them "suits" as in, they're worn. Of course they're power armours.
You see, I never abbreviate words. Battlesuits are battlesuits, never just suits.
I like the whole concept of a foldable faceplate, even if that reduces structural strenght by a lot. Also, when the helmet doesn't have the outline of your face so it doesn't transmit the blow easier.

It also help that the history of mecha start with non-piloted robots as well. Several of the first and the earliest mecha show was Astroboy which is an Android, and Tetsujin 29-go which is a RC drone. And theres also Cyborg 009 and Doraemon, also Madox 01, Red Eye, JingRoh, all of them are considered mecha. The first entries of piloted mecha only started by Mazinger saga, which was started later at 70s.

>But, wikipedia says...

It was taken from western side of view, which was in fact has limited exposure on the genres. Their exposure to Gundam and Robotech as one of the first experience into mecha genres doesn't help either.

Considering that the original Battlesuit was based on Landmates, with a bit of quirk...

And they were technically worn, minus the hand control because GW either to retarted to recreate the master arm, or triying to OC Donutsteel their stuff....

Yeah they we're a suit.

I'm onto your thinly veiled attempts to make threads about your power armor fetish, OP.

Keep going

So TAGs are essentially battlesuits not power armor? And where do Nanosuits fit on this armor tier list? Light power-armor? Hardsuits from ME would be heavy power armor and Exosuits from Jovian Chronicles Light Mecha? As would strike suits from Strike Suit Zero? Heavy Gear and power suit from District 9 would too be variants of heavy PA / Battlesuits?

>only wearing a simple exoskeleton
>has a hip mounted MLRS
That seems wrong on so many points

can't remember the proper Watsonian reasons for the name, but one of the Doylist ones is that in the earliest stages of Gundam's development it was originally going to be very heavily influenced by Starship Troopers, with Mobile Suits being power armor

How so?

You wear Power Armor, you pilot a Battlesuit.

This is still my favorite pic of power armor

It has to be ridiculously over designed to actually work. The only plausible and non-completely useless way for it to work is that the hydraulics raise up, then lock the launcher on the soldiers shoulder where it can be fired. From all the fancy shit on him and no visible triggers and sights on the launcher, I'm also assuming it's operated and aimed by the hydraulics. I'm also assuming it's not recoilless, because firing a volley of projectiles would probably fuck up your brain if it was.
So assuming all that, the hydraulics have to be extremely durable to even survive all the shit infantry has to go through, fast enough to switch from both positions relatively quickly, flexible enough to be aimed, advanced enough to interact with the soldiers fancy tech, "understand" what it has to do and then do it and finally, strong enough to somehow absorb all the recoil and weight in general without fucking up the soldier. And even if it can somehow do all that, at which point it's retarded why don't they use that kind of technology on other more useful weaponry, the soldier is still running around with a giant tube full of explosives at his side. Even if the exoskeleton mitigates the tube flailing all around and destroying the soldiers balance, it's still a a giant fucking tube filled with explosives that impedes his movement, cover, changes his silhouette... I mean you can't even go through a door with that, unless you shoulder it.

It was probably the artists idea that it would be cool to have an RPG that you can fire in moments and is always ready, if you get ambushed by a tank or some shit I guess. But he ignored all the stuff the soldier has to do to get to that position to get ambushed.
It would be cool if they'd be like overwatch support though. Like just standing up on a hill overlooking their target, just suppressing/sniping enemies with the scoped bullpup while the launcher can immediately deal with vehicles or large groups of infantry.