Classification of Exosuits/Power Armor/Mechs

Alright Veeky Forums i just had a realization. All mechanized exoskeletons in all forms can be grouped and graphed very easily. See pic for examples.

Type 1- Can not have armor, that is basically all that separates it from a Type 2. These can be called exosuits, exoskeletons, frames, whatever.

Type 2- Has armor. Yeah really, that's basically the only improvement from a type 1. Strap some tungsten slabs to a type 1 and boom, you have a type 2. Call it powered armor, power suit, even an exoskeleton, whatever floats your boat.

Type 3- Now your suit has gotten so big and fat, your arms and legs basically reach only partially into their respective robotic counterparts. You can probably use your legs the same way, but your arms will either need to work some levers or have some kind of interface between your hands and your robot hands to work. This, i dont even know what to call it. Megasuits? Strongfats? Whatever you call them, they exist.

Type 4- Finally, the "true" mechs. Congrats, you own a fuckhueg robot. You're enclosed entirely in a cockpt of some sort, and either have your brain hooked up to it, going all powerglove, or pulling some levers and other unfun shit. Hey, it may be more work and not as cool as directly punching your enemy in the face with your own metal covered fist, but you have a huge fucking robot, you shouldn't give a shit.

Now another thing, Type 1s are type 1s regardless of size. Yes, that means Dreadknights are type 1s. Yes that means a Grey Knight is wearing a Type 2 inside of a Type 1.
Any improvements to the chart? Clarifications? Make it look not so shitty?

If type 2 is just type 1 with armour, isn't it just a variant of type 1? Like if I put a jetpack on type 1, I doubt it becomes a whole new type.

I'd type it:
>basic powered frame (Elysium, Edge of Tomorrow type thing)
>actual suit
>larger suit that extends beyond your body (your type 3)
>piloted suit (your arms no longer operate the limbs)
>mech (piloted from a cockpit somewhere on the body)

Amount of armour, life support, etc. are just variations on the types. Like you can have a mech with an open cockpit and no armour. Or a basic frame with armour plates and life support (like you wear a space suit with a powered frame and plates attached to it).

What's the benefit of not differentiating type 1 according to size and method of operation? That seems to be a more important distinction than the presence of armour. Even an unarmoured suit would provide a little protection, so it's more about the "intention" of the suitmaker, which makes the system vague.

An alternative is to classify according to size/operation and add the subcategory armoured/unarmoured to each size class.

Yeah but if you're just wearing a type 1, you are just a very strong guy. In a big type 1, like the dreadknight, you are a very strong guy on stilts.
The plating turns "nigga loading boxes, and might pick up a minigun by himself before getting mulched by enemy fire" into "nigga picking up cars as bludgeons while getting shot at."
and i dont see a difference between your "piloted suit" and "larger suit that extends beyond your body" because once the arms go beyond a certain length, namely the length of your arm plus a half foot or so of tolerance, you cant directly operate that arm like you can just punch a dude in a type 1 or type 2.
And in my opinion, if a mech has an open cockpit, what is even the point of it? You have no protection whatsoever, you are basically just wearing a big version of a basic powered frame, like the Dreadknight.

this is supposed to be a war machine kind of ranking. a powerloader from aliens wouldn't really fit into a specific type since it's mainly just a strength enhancer like a type 1, but you control the limbs like a type 3.
I think anything made for fightan an' winnan all follow the same guidelines, mainly "biggest weapon you can wield effectively, wins" and "dont get mulched by your enemy's biggest weapon they can effectively wield."
If you just want an army of dude weilding miniguns and flipping cars for cover, you want everyone loaded up with Type 1s.
If you want an army of dudes who can cross a no man's land of dudes wielding miniguns and then smashfuck everyone to paste or blow them up with the equivalent of a fucking portable howitzer, you want your dudes loaded up with type 2s.
If you want to smashfuck type 2s and probably buildings too, you want something thick enough to deflect the fuckhueg guns the type 2s are carrying, and strong enough to then smashfuck/rip open the type 2.
And finally, when you just want to smashfuck the entire city you're in, you go for a big ass Type 4 with a minigun with a caliber the size of an elephant's cock
until one side runs out of money to build these massive fucking beasts

>Yeah but if you're just wearing a type 1, you are just a very strong guy. In a big type 1, like the dreadknight, you are a very strong guy on stilts.
>The plating turns "nigga loading boxes, and might pick up a minigun by himself before getting mulched by enemy fire" into "nigga picking up cars as bludgeons while getting shot at."

Then you better start making types for suits with flight capability, types for sealed suits, etc. Because you can have a mech with no armour and no environmental sealing. So how many types do you get when you tally up all those variants. What type is a powered frame with armour, jetpack and that's environmentally sealed?

>"piloted suit" and "larger suit that extends beyond your body"

It's the difference between a Centurion and Crisis suit.

In a large suit you still have your arms and legs in the limbs, but your hands aren't in the gloves and your feet aren't in the boots. A piloted suit has you inside the torso, filling most of it, and possible your head inside the suit's head. It's more of a small mech, but not a proper mech. Like you don't sit in a cockpit with sticks or whatever, you still wear it to some extent.

Type 1s don't seem meaningfully distinct to me.

And if the entire point of it is to remind us that Dreadknights are stupid you don't need to worry, we already knew that. We don't need charts to back it up.

Some mechs like going fast and rely on that for protection, or are designed for carrying artillery or whatever. A howitzer on legs and a Tom Cruise suit don't really belong in the same category.

iirc the Starcraft marine armour has that going on, your hands don't actually reach the end of the suit's arms.

>A howitzer on legs
user, you're not thinking big enough.

Yeah, but things that big will usually be armoured anyway. Something smaller may not be.

joke's on you i'm always thinking about metal gear

i dont know user, i think Centurions and Crisis suits operate basically the same way. You know in a centurion suit the marine's arms are folded over their chest and operate the arms by a link through their black carapace?
That kind of control of the limbs not done through actually moving your arm seems to be the same concept to me, whether moving the arms through a mental link, or moving the arms with some handles in the upper arm

>something smaller
fuck me i just got the cutest mental image of a guy piloting a howitzer on legs, firing once and getting knocked back, and then having to ask a passing soldier to help him back on his feet.
like a midget with a blunderbuss

>usually

But not always. Which is why I don't think "armour" should be a determining factor in categories. You can have a tracked military vehicle with anti-tank capabilities and no armour.

I feel like something is missing between type 3 and 4.

>Centurions and Crisis suits operate basically the same way

Marine's legs are in the legs of the suit, but the suit's legs extend beyond his own. A tau pilot sits fully inside the torso. Also .

>That kind of control of the limbs not done through actually moving your arm seems to be the same concept to me, whether moving the arms through a mental link, or moving the arms with some handles in the upper arm

Then I guess SM power armour and SoB power armour are nothing alike, since SM use a mental link while SoB do not.

Walking gun platforms should be a separate type.

I mean, with every other type, it's basically lift more, bigger guns, bigger armor. Every single one of them, if you wanted, could be entirely melee. A walking gun platform is just that, a gun platform on legs. It's nothing like all the other things, so it should either be a new type, or this chart should only refer to things that are basically big metal humans.

>since SM use a mental link while SoB do not
SM armor is enhanced by the mental link, not entirely controlled by it.
SoB and Inquisitor armor is the same as SM armor, just without directly interfacing with the nervous system so their armor has more of a delay than an SM for who the armor arm moves along with the meat arm due to their shared connection

I've seen some spots that imply a Tau's limbs extend slightly into the battlesuit's though I might be remembering wrong.

Either way, OP's list covers that with Centurions being 3 and Crisis suits being 4.

3 is the midstep where you aren't wearing a suit of armor fitted for you, but you also aren't in some tiny bubble piloting the thing. Your limbs still have a place within the suit's limbs, they're just much larger than yours.

>since SM use a mental link while SoB do not.

SM black carapace allows them to better interface with their armor, but it's still type 2 because their limbs still fill the entirety of the space

You don't need a subdivision for every category, and the ones OP gave are pretty clear. Category 1 is the only one that could be argued to be out of place, though I can understand the desire to separate an exo-suit that only helps in lifting with a full set of power armor that does all of that but is also contained within armor.

someone make the chart look better
it looks like shit

what would you call that type?
Type 1-G? Type A?

>lift more
>bigger guns
>bigger armour

Then I guess ones with no guns are their own type as well.

well then mr smartypants, exactly what category do walking gun platforms fit in?
can't be type 1, cant be type 2, cant be type 3, and MIGHT be type 4
but they're fundamentally different from everything else in that chart. Everything else is basically human wrapped in metal, or big metal human control by tiny meat human.

Entire point of the carapace is to make the armour an extension of the user's body, so that it'll move without any hindrance to his own movement. If he has to move the suit physically himself, then it's going to hinder him movement.

>"Connectors on the interface link up to the Space Marine's armour, equipment controls or monitors. This allows the Space Marine to control an armoured suit with all the speed and precision of his own body."
>"links a Space Marine’s nervous system to the neural controls of his power armour"
>"These plug-in points mesh with Space Marine power armour, linking the wearer’s nervous system to his suit’s mind-impulse controls, turning the suit into a second skin that moves with all the speed and precision of the battle-brother’s own body."
>"It is this that allows power armour to move and react instantly with its wearer, turning the otherwise cumbersome plate into an extension of its owner’s body."

No, classifying according to size/ operation, but just for the armoured version doesn't make sense, even if it's intended as a list for war materiel. It's like putting motorcycles, cars and buses in the same category and calling them type 1 tanks.

The difference between a suit-like and a mech-like exoskeleton is huge. The difference between a fully armoured one and an unarmoured one is also huge. So why not make a system of classification that captures both of those differences for all configurations instead of just the armoured ones. Otherwise you will run into the problem of defining exactly how much armour is required to change a mech from your type 1 to type 4. Adding a single plate somewhere won't do it, and likewise removing a single plate from a type 4 won't make it a type 1. Which means that you'll have an arbitrary point where you jump from type 1 to type 4 for two very similar mechs.

If instead you'd classify size/operation systems, let's call them types A, B, and C corresponding to your types 2, 3 an 4 except without the armour requirement. You could then classify armour as none, partial or full and have a more complete and intuitive classification system. With this you could even differentiate between your two different kinds of type 2 (sealed or unsealed), which your system ignores.

>! Writing all this about mechs and the having to check "I'm not a robot"for the captcha is immersion breaking.

>what category do walking gun platforms fit in

Well, genius, clearly the chart didn't think it through, if a walking artillery piece and mech that doesn't use guns can break the system.

I don't think the shape, size of the armament and the amount of armour should be a factor.

yeah, but it's still basically "lift arm, suit arm moves", it's just instant in the SM because it's connecting directly to his nerves. In a non-SM armor, it's still moved with servos and other shit, it IS still powered armor, it's just they have to move their arm, then a millisecond later the suit recognizes the arm has moved and moves too

>It's like putting motorcycles, cars and buses in the same category and calling them type 1 tanks.
personally, i'd think the motorcycles would be type 0 tanks, and cars and buses would be type 1 tanks.
a car and a bus are literally exactly the same in all but size.
but then again, a better descriptor would be "type 1 APC" because the main function of cars, bikes, and buses are troop movement. the main purpose of a tank is putting a big gun into position at the speed of a car, and a car is different from an APC because, well, it's an ARMORED personnel carrier

>it's still basically "lift arm, suit arm moves"

Except you're not physically lifting the suit's arm, the suit's arm is moved by synthetic muscle bundles and servos via your mind. In a non-SM suit, as you said, you have to physically move the suit's arm to get it to move.

>the powerloader from aliens wouldn't fit
Well it's a pretty shit list then, isn't it.

I'm with , it should be simple size or weight classes, and they go hand-in-hand with control mechanisms. If you move it by physically pushing your limbs into those of the suit, it's fundamentally different to a suit where you move a control rod and the suit mimics. These are exoskeletons and dreadknights respectively, but as you said by this definition they'd be the same class, making it a terrible definition.

so an exo skeleton and power armor would both be type 1s, but with different levels of armor. Probably change name to Type EP, for enhanced personnel.
type 3s would be mobile heavy ordinance like a tank is to a cannon. probably change name to type FA for fatass Forward Aggression
and type 4s would be massive fuck yous to the building, the building's block, and probably the block's city. Probably change name to Type SE for Scorched Earth

FOOL

IT GOES

EXOSUIT
POWER ARMOR
MECHA
MECH
GIANT ROBOT
TITAN

what's the difference between a mecha, a mech, and a giant robot?

EXOSUIT

POWER ARMOR

MECHA

MECH

GIANT ROBOT

TITAN

type 1
type 2
type 3
type 4
type 4 witha very fat ass

i guess titans really should be their own category considering how FUCKING HUGE they are

Goddamn I wish there was an affordable toy version of this motherfucker.

the difference is scale and pilot methods.

Exosuits and Power armor are worn like suit

Mecha are worn like suits but are large enough to require extension

Mech are piloted like vehicles, generally under and up to a building in size

Giant robots are piloted and are building sized

Titans are piloted and are skyscraper to mountain sized

galaxy class shit like demonbane and TTGL have their own slot

Exosuits/Power armor human suits
Mecha up to 1m
Mech up to 30 m
Giant Robo up to 60m
Super Robot up to 100m
Titans 100m+

*Mecha up to 10m

How affordable are we talking here? I bought the 1/100 version for like 60€ when it came out.

I mean toy as opposed to model, I can't make or paint models for shit.

>it's
FUCK

(You)
(You)
updated chart

Size range only makes it more confusing, and now powerloaders and dreadknights don't fit anywhere on the scale, instead of being 1s.
Armour means jack shit, if you took the pauldrons off an imperial knight it would still be an imperial knight, but by the scale it would cease being a war machine, despite still being able to carry shittonnes of guns, even more now that armour isn't weighing it down.

You just cut the pieces out and snap them together. No glue nor paint required.

yeah i only put the sizes there because that's a shitload of empty space and i didnt want to make the Titan too small to make it out

And with different types as suggested earlier

better?

I feel like there needs to be something between your 1 and 2. Somewhere between "Frame" and "Armor". Like the difference between the Crysis suit and Space Marine.

crysis suits are a type 3 tho m8

ITT: autism

>measured in feet
What are you, a fucking caveman?

No.
I'M AN AMERICAN

why is that the funniest thing i've seen all day

Fugg

Is it worn like a suit of armour? It's power armour. Is it controlled from a seat or mo-cap apparatus inside the machine? It's a mech. No need to over-complicate this shit.

>what's the difference between a mecha, a mech, and a giant robot?

Despite of all claim in this thread user, the truth is :

Mecha is a genre, mostly about robotics (shortern from 'mechanical')

Mech is a "werternification" of the word mecha

Giant robot is one of the mecha's subject.

t. /m/

what about an exosuit?
is it still power armor even if it has no armor?
What about something like a Hulkbuster, is that a mech or power armor?