Limitations of Powered Armor

I've been wondering...

How, exacty, does someone stop a couple hundred dudes in Power Armor, with top-notch military training, and particularly well equipped (plasma cannons, squad machineguns that carry .50 rifle armor piercing ammo, a few Awesome Personnel Carriers with even more high-tier weaponry...)

from just steamrolling through the opposition?

The only thing that I've come up with that can reliably threaten them is the Swarm, and that's because of sheer numbers.

Is there any way I could get them to be less of a Juggernaut?

First there's the obvious limitation: energy.

He better have a nuclear battery attached to his suit, or he'll run out of power pretty quick.

They'd also have to worry about overheating, which would limit how fast/often they can attack and move.

Are they (at least partially) computer-operated and linked up through some sort of network? Hacking or viruses may be an option.

edited 1st Jun '11 12:10:47 PM by melloncollie

^^^ Mechanized forces. And air support.

edited 1st Jun '11 12:11:16 PM by MajorTom

The other side could be armed similarly. Even with powered armor, these guys probably aren't able to carry enough armor to withstand enemy tanks and turrets. The enemy soldiers can lay cunning traps or employ man portable explosives. How are they against electromagnetic pulses? Perhaps the enemy soldiers are superhumanly strong?

Also, remember that when you get into "powered armor and plasma cannon" land, the strength of the various armies becomes pretty arbitrary. Plasma cannons are only as strong as you make them; if you don't want them to be an unstoppable juggernaut, then let the other side stop them!

EDIT: TRIPLE NINJA'D!

edited 1st Jun '11 12:12:50 PM by Durazno

I'd imagine power armor would be really hot and stuffy, and the air would probably be stale.

I think the giant pauldrons on Samus's Varia suit are supposed to be air conditioning units to make the armor more comfortable.

Each suit of powered armor provides up to two weeks of continuous operation before loss of charge forces it to shutdown.

Sometimes, the opposition has powered armor too... But, typically, only special forces or highly specialized shock troopers wear the high-tier stuff. Grunts wear cheap B-grade powered skeletons under standard combat armor, that run for hours instead of weeks.

Except when they fight it out whith the Swarm or the Omega Squadrons (extremely elite State Sec) they barely break a sweat.

Hmm, if I dropped the plasma cannons' rate of fire to once each 2-3 seconds, and if I downgraded the amount of Gatling Good that the average protagonist is capable of deploying...

edited 1st Jun '11 12:20:17 PM by SavageHeathen

When I consider Powered Armor'd troops, I always think of the severe tactical limitation of having so few. I mean, sure they're nigh invulnerable, but they can only kill so many enemies at once.

(knowledge of Fire Emblem necessary for next paragraph's example to work)

Imagine playing Fire Emblem, and in a given mission, you have 12 characters, all of which are level 1, except Awsm Mc Badass, who is second tier, level 20. Awsm can only kill one enemy per turn, but there are probably at least 20 of them. It only takes a couple to get past Awsm to ruin his army, and without backup, it doesn't matter how invulnerable he is, he won't last long.

I realize that's kind of a stretch, but applying this to the topic at hand, the objective of any given army is almost always either protecting a group of people, or making life better for said guys. So you have a planet based military fighting against Zerg-y alien baddies. They are trying to defend the nearest city until the civilians can either leave, or erect defenses, or whatever they need to do. If the aliens just charge at the city, the Powered Armor'd soldier couldn't even put a noticeable dent in them before they get past him, and kill the civilians. For the same price to the Humans in this scenario, they could deploy several thousand G.I. Joes, who could defend the city far far better.

TL;DR, or I didn't make my point clear: Powered Armor on a battlefield isn't ideal, pretty much ever. Powered Armor should really be used for infiltration, sabotage, etc. In this case, most weapons aren't very useful to the objective, as equipment more subtle, suited for stealth would probably be better.

Or I'm dead wrong, which is more than likely.

• Electromagnetic weaponry
• Area-denial weaponry
• Pure-energy weaponry
• Air support

All of these will be, AFAIK, very effective against mechs, since there's still a squishy human on the inside.

I imagine simple molotovs thrown at the ventilation systems would suck pretty hard for those inside. Kill It with Fire.

They can't swim, they have no camouflage and they're heavy and get stuck in the mud.

Plus, when they go to the bathroom, it takes like 20 minutes minimum, and that's under ideal conditions.

^ That's still much faster than some people can do.

Who are they fighting, anyway?

Depending on the episode. Law Enforcement, Military, Gangs, other PM Cs (those are tough), State Sec, Insectoid Aliens...

Savage: Troops in powered armor of that description are going to be significantly larger targets than unarmored troops, and likely slower to. Giving your troops armor piercing rounds and training them to aim for the head (or other weak points) rather than center of mass would help, but having similarly trained and equipped troops would help even more. Of course, the best way to tone down a Sci-Fi idea is to make it realistic, or at least closer to the hard side of mohns scale.

Plasma weapons make absolutely no sense in real life for one, at least not in the capacity they're used in fictionland. With energy considerations, powered armor will need to be quite a bit smaller than space marine armor for example. They'll also likely have weak points on the face, the back of the neck, and parts of the body where it's hard to apply armor. Unless you want powered armor to be exclusive to the best troops, expense becomes an issue, sure it's nice to make your soldiers tougher than space marines, but is that even remotely affordable? Hell no. Economically designed powered armor won't be as much to stop bullets as to improve the users mobility and carrying capacity. While it'd be better than a kevlar vest or whatever body armor is made of now, it won't make you invincible.

Power armor is also not at all subtle. Even if they don't operate in space, the heat a suit will give off will easily be detectable, and thanks to the suits size, it would make them easy pickings for snipers carrying dedicated anti-powerarmor rounds. Of course, at the level of technology you're describing, it's completely feasible that laser weaponry will be accurate enough to hit human sized targets from orbit, or at least come close enough to vaporize them. Hence the power armor's heat output and large size gives it even more liabilities.

edited 2nd Jun '11 11:57:58 AM by Archereon

An opposing army of Power Armour Soldiers could work.

If it's limitations in general, a good solution is to work around the energy powering the suits, they could require cooling down after big attacks and maybe certain enemies have a way of draining energy from the suits,

this would then make it easy to "take people out of the fight" without actually killing, them simply when the power runs out the suits collapse on the ground as if unconscious.

edited 2nd Jun '11 12:10:00 PM by Qehb

Are the suits airtight? If not then teargas would probly do just as well, yeah?

Cover the ground in an inch of water and then light them all up with a high tension wire.

Combined arms is the most obvious in a ~symmetrical fight.

Making the footing bad for power armor (something the heavy peep sink in or are too heavy to use) works as well.

the biggest limitation to powered armor is that it's wrapped around someone.

the second biggest would probably be the armor itself, since it has to wrap around someone, so going after the electronics could work or just overpowering the systems.

I've probably been ninja'd but Mecha-Mooks for the win.