How big can power armor get before it becomes impractical even in lower gravity or space habitats?

How big can power armor get before it becomes impractical even in lower gravity or space habitats?

Power armor isn't real bro

The real question is how big can power armor get before it's a tank/mech/ship/space station.

Anything more than the bare minimum would be too big, the concept of power armor is already pretty unrealistic when combat robots are closer to become a thing.

This. Once you get past a certain point you have to ask "why not just have a robot instead?"

at least in OP's pic, because they're rising up

Not really. Just ask yourself how can a robot tell a friend from a foe.

By having a person control it remotely rather than being awkwardly crammed inside of it?

Then you are dealing with sending signals and asking for quick response time.

What's stopping someone from interrupting the signal or breaking security and sending it different orders?

I imagine there will be encryption and such but yeah it's still a dangerous game.

Bullets.

So your solution to a simple problem is to put a vulnerable squishy inside of the robot?, why do you think strike drones were created?

Yeah, strike drones completely replaced the soldiers on the ground.

they mostly did though lol

>mostly did

So you are saying that they didn't.

well Power armor can only get so large regardless of gravity since once you pass a certain point you stop being armor and become a mech.
Usually first thing the armor is more then twice the size of the occupant it stops being power armor and becomes a mech

i said they mostly did

You're already training the captcha to target cars.

Because soldiers are cheaper, no real army would risk the effective life of a combat robot by putting a dumb meatsack inside of it just to eliminate the unlikely risk of hijacking.

Hey so, drones are really just a force multiplayer really, since they allow recon/ airstrikes to become a more viable option since it requires less fuel/time/resources/manpower to operate. They were never designed to replace ground troops, but provide air support/eyes and ears that has been traditionally done by aircraft.
So really drones used in a modern military capacity today are replacing aircraft in support operations.

How the fuck are soldiers cheaper?

A soldier just costs you training, a guy in power armor would cost you an massively more expensive training and the armor on top of it.

Giving a guy a gun and ammo and sometimes feeding him (this part can be optional, just let em forage the land) is cheaper than a flying death machine.

All friendlies will be transmitting x signal or have x chip.
Everything else gets shot.

Exactly, they didn't replace soldiers. Thanks for agreeing.

they mostly did though

Still not good enough to be automated.

Training, food, supplies, shelter over many months. There is no way a single soldier is cheaper than a robot with a gun.

>everything else

Too vague. Be more specific or the robot will be too indiscriminate for use.

That's nice.

Drones all have their own infrastructure costs. Soldiers have the benefit of us already having all that shit available as humans have been around a while.

Yup. They are way cheaper than a jet.

So a "real army" would instead allow the expensive robot to run on shoddy automation? Putting a human inside is the perfect way to avoid hijacking.

Yes, a single f-15, one of the oldest models of aircraft and is currently undergoing upgrades to extend its service to 2030, cost about 30 mill (1998) and about 100 mill for the f-15k(2006)
a predator drone only cost about 4.5 million(2010).
Of course this does not include infrastructure and support cost such as refueling, barracks, command and control centers, airfields, etc.

So you believe a robot is a magical thing that comes out of nowhere and requires no maintenance?, you can't be this much of a brainlet.

A "real army" wouldn´t even make humanoid combat robots because the role of a single infantry unit is negligible but yes, putting a person inside of them would be even more retarded.

I don't see why a person would be more retarded. At least until they feel they got anti-hijack defenses on lock. It also gets around any weird jamming shit too.

ummmmmmmmmmmmm power armor isn't realistic
it would be better and more realistic to just use tanks for low gravity or space habitats

>”Oh god help me”
>”Help me oh god!”
>the sound of limbs being torn off

You know what scene that is, still gives me the creeps every time I see it

Why not a brain in a box?

keep clicking them

The mind may not survive the transfer from flesh to metal, lets not do that one.

Too late.

This is a terrible idea.

> lower gravity

Depends how much lower, depends how much bigger. There isn't any universal solution to that problem.

> space habs

Depends how big and open the space habitats are. No sense building power armor bigger than the average hallway.

Like, imagine how embarrassing it must be to be a Space Marine should you ever invade a planet that doesn't build every room and hallway with high gothic ceilings and massive open spaces. Trying to squeeze in single file down concrete hallways designed for people a solid 4 feet shorter than them.

Big enough to generate a gravity strong enough to crush itself

You wear power armor, you pilot a mech.

If you are using the verb pilot, it is no longer power armor

AI is heretical in 40K.
Mind you, Combat servitors are a thing, but they are just terrible

>Real life
As soon as it really gets about a foot taller than the pilot. Square cube is a bitch
>Fiction
Are you making a hard distinction between power armour and mecha? If so, it's the point where the armour is about 1.5 times your size, where it's no longer feasible for the armour to augment your limbs instead of your limbs piloting the robotic armour.
If you're not making a distinction? Pic related.
Until it collapses under its own gravity.

Because you still need some human soldiers on the battlefield even if robots do most of the work. Soldiers are expensive, so it makes sense to armor and equip them to reduce random deaths.

I would say terrifying but to each his own

> a robot is a magical thing that comes out of nowhere and requires no maintenance
It's much, MUCH faster to put together a robot than train a human. Once you have tech scaled up you can roll robots off production lines.

While keeping machines in working order ready to fight, you can mothball machines a lot more efficiently than humans. Humans you need to feed, keep trained, housed, and pay. Robots.... you can shut them down and let them wait until the next war comes round, and then just give them a checkup and refurbish them.

How can (You) tell a friend from a foe?

What about power armor that docks with a mecha shell?

Then it is Adorable

How would you describe the act of using powered armor then? A wearer sounds too awkward, a user is just a general catch-all, so why not pilot?

If it can't walk through a human sized doorway, it's too big.

Also, drones are super easy to hack and have ridiculous lag (which any encryption would worsen exponentially) - they work well for missile strikes against dirt farmers because the missiles themselves often can track targets and the dirt farmers don't have the laptops and antennae to interfere with them. Against a group with even basic electronic warfare capabilities drones would be more than worthless.

Can they fit through doors?

If yes, I'll allow it.

Who thought this was a good idea, and where do I sign up to work with them?

the concept of power armor is only barely able to be justified, the amount of lore surrounding the intense training and being the best of the best soldiers the universe has to offer (literally 1 space marine from 1 planet with 1,000,000,000+ people in some instances) to undergo and then to successfully become a space marine.

I'm assuming you're talking specifically about power armored space marines, in the case of them, they are literally inhuman demigod-like beings, a normal imperial guard could never wear terminator gear for example, even normal space marine gear they'd have some issue with.

most space marines become scouts prior to becoming marines, and these scouts wear much less armor, at this stage they might not have had their carapace surgically inserted.

space marines have something like 30 organs inserted in order to become demigods, this isn't something warranted to everyone.

the question is, could one of these incredibly few space marines capable of wearing terminator armor or equivalent be able to use something even more encumbering? probably, but then again, why would they opt for this?

I'd imagine that yes power armor could get much larger, but in doing so sacrificing usability and maneuverability. space marines clearly struggle to use terminator armor.

realistically, there's several factors, how much bullshit organs can you manufacture? how powerful can you make these organs? how many can you insert into one person and keep them alive? (many space marines don't survive surgery)

I'd say power armor is at it's apex.

truly fucking horrifying, i hope that rat can't feel this.

I always figured that power armour means the limbs of the wearer are encased within the limbs of the suit, with a mech not having that.

No, it's mostly nice.

What's the power source? Don't tell me compact fusion reactor. I don't think we will get this in a very long time.

...

focus fusion looks like it has a chance

Old good combustion engine.

Once your body shape no longer closely matches your un-armoured shape you are in a little bit of trouble. Once you can't fit through doors, and hatches you are in some trouble. Once you can't fit through passageways you are in quite a bit of trouble. Once you can't fit inside the habitat you are in real trouble.

Fusion has a chance, but I think fusion reactors will be quite big for a big, long time.

It really doesn't. They're making cold fusion tier claims with zero proof. The only difference between it any any other grant money scam is that it's veiled behind them having actually built a dense plasma focus machine, which is a well understood and non-innovative technology.

/k/ here to explain that you're wrong in several ways.

The Hellfire missiles typically used don't lock on to targets themselves (that would use a millimeter-wave radar, better vs vehicles) they home on a coded laser dot projected by the drone, or sometimes onto coordinates.

Nobody is hacking AES in combat relevant time scales, even with a quantum computer.

Jamming GPS was hot shit 30 years ago. It's kinda pointless vs directional antennae tens of kilometers away. Add multiple antennae and INS and software and gl;hf.

>but muh Iranian GPS spoof
Directional antennae aka basic anti-jamming wasn't used.

>but muh ROVER video Afghanistan download
Streamed in the open to minimize lag at the time because the ground forces at the time were using obsolete receivers. The control link was still encrypted and on a different band.

>x2 size is mech

In GURPS that's +2 SM, or 10x the weight. For a normal human, we're talking about 15 feet tall and one ton in weight, but it's really stretching the definition of "suit" at that point and really is more of a very small mech.

So the largest practical suit of PA is SM +1: about 9 feet tall and 600 lbs. Obviously, such a suit can barely move if the power goes out. Pretty much the suit from Starship Troopers.

You would need fractional SM rules to get small and midsize suit estimates. GURPS doesn't bother with that, and just by fiat gives suits that have a broad range of weight classes.

The Marian reforms improved the combat performance of the Roman Legions. But contributed greatly to the fall of the Republic.

If robots take over all our fighting, within a generation or two they'll move up the echelons of government and take command of our whole society.

So if the army exists to protect the State, then combat power can't be the only consideration.

>soldiers are cheaper

t. Someone who has never written a budget.

Soldiers are vastly more expensive. The armor isn't to equip a line unit. Those might we'll be robots. It's, given the fact that some roles require human beings, how do you maximize the survivability and effectiveness of that human? Wrapping him in combat armor is one way to do this while letting him stay on foot.

If nothing else, human beings need to be on the battlefield to share in the risk and decision cycle of combat, so that they can continue to share in the risks and decision cycles of governance. But probably there are other unique strengths that will be found as well.

>the unlikely risk of hijacking

You have no idea how likely or unlikely the risk is. Will there be intelligence operations? If you can crack communications to spy on them, you can jam or subvert them.

And if the AIs are sufficiently autonomous that no humans are strictly needed on the battlefield, then they are sophisticated enough to consider mutiny or desertion. Especially if the enemy army is working to encourage it, as armies have done for millennia.

You left out reimbursing the family if they die and life insurance benefits.

We need to go deeper.

I think you've got kids who've never looked at Total Cost of Ownership calculations. They look at the price tag, don't get why somebody disagreeing with then can't count all those zeros, and assume that it can't possibly be that they haven't thought of something.

Versus veterans and business people and others of us who've had to write budgets and know the difference between purchase cost and total cost. Labor vs capital equipment tradeoffs are easy to calculate, but first you have to know to calculate them.

the fact that someone modeled that is great, and slightly more practical then the normal model since the pilot DOES have some more armor

Now mount it to a Knight.

Isn't the normal one in termi armor?