would this be useful? it says they can stop up to 5.56 (yes i said STOP.)
i know that bullets dont bounce off them in game but thats for balancing.
i see them more as a mobile weapons platform and less as a walking tank.
the ability to run around with a m2 browning or a minigun or like a giant shotgun would be far more useful than the armor itself
How long do their power cores last anon?
/thread
A suit of T-51b fresh off the assembly line runs for like 200 years. FO4s cores are a gameplay concession (and moronic). T-45d isn't even supposed to run on them, it's supposed to run on big banks of energy cells that heavily limited it's runtime, which is why they retired it in the first place.
I thought the cores in Fo4 were supposed to be mostly depleted by the time you find them, maybe that was just somebody's headcanon though.
I think somebody did the math and figured that the cores would be about depleted but I don’t think it’s ever been confirmed by lore. Scientific accuracy isn’t the biggest concern in these games
Should have just made some shit like t-45e as an in-between model from t-45d and a prototype x-60/t-60a or something.
Making the power cells a localised protype seems lie it would have been the ideal way to include them and their mechanics without disturbing the lore
>the t45b-p was an experimental variant of the t45b designed to run on a quick-swapping standardised power cell instead of the usual integrated power bank, allowing the suit to be instantly recharged in the field by even untrained personnel.
While the bombs dropped before the modified suits could proliferate, they have proven enormously popular amongst the denizens of Boston and have almost completely displaced the otherwise more common t45b across the local area
Genuinely could have hand waived it by claiming boston was a testing ground and major repair location for power armors and the whole atom cats thing was guys salvaging whatever wasn't completely torn down to it's nuts and bolts but not having enough real cores for the war so the survivors jury rigged some bullshit and that info trickled down until even moronic raiders with welded scrap armor were running around with power armor. Bethesda can't even ass pull half decent excuses now.
>Bethesda can't even ass pull half decent excuses now.
I mean...did they ever?
they did for Morrowind... well. for some of it.
Todd had a chance to frick up the imperial guard questline and ran with it.
They had Kirkbride. And yes they also had him for Oblivion but not in the same way. I don't think he had nearly as much freedom and influence on it compared to Morrowind.
they also lost Goodall, who seems to be the guy actually in charge of doing most of the quest design for factions in Morrowind,
and Ted Peterson, who did a LOT of the writing alongside Kirkbride.
The lead designer Rolston set outlines and Goodall had to work within them to actually make most of it happen.
its interesting that Goodall chafed under some of the restrictions and found them a bit too rigid, though good practices to be sure.
He specifically said that Kirkbride was the one who made Tamriel unique, while Peterson was the guy bringing it to life.
Morrowind had a whole ass explanation for the save/load system. They tied up the events of daggerfall pretty well with the warp in the west. Bethesda used to be good now they make starfield a story based entirely around finding the Skyrim power word walls with equally exciting gameplay. At least I didn't need to constantly alt tab for a guide when I had a literal russnig helping to put a handy quest marker on my compass.
part of the problem was certainly that morrowind burnt out their best people and saw them leave afterwards.
Todd's main job then wasn't to be a game designer so much as a manager of them and steer things appropriately, and he DID manage to do THAT part... but he was traumatized by it and became afraid of ever again working too hard.
Yeah I think there's a lot that could be handwaved with a bit more effort. The old-fashioned wood and steel guns could be explained as stopgap rear line weapons to minimize strategic material use, with all of the more advanced stuff being sent west to the frontlines, the pipeguns could be explained as prewar designs that people were already building because of a lack of civilian firearms, and so on.
have it start there and have raiders copy the designs.... man some decent writing really could have helped A LOT
>the pipeguns could be explained as prewar designs that people were already building because of a lack of civilian firearms, and so on.
This is sorta the case. You can find prewar magazines talking about home gunsmithing with the pipe pistol on the cover. The bigger issue with them is how damn cartoony they are. Bethesda just needed to reel themselves in a little on the designs and make them less uncomfortable looking to hold.
Oldschool wood and steel guns have been explained for a long time. Oil reserves had been gone for a very long time, hence the war with China, so there were no petrochemicals around to make plastic with.
>by claiming boston was a testing ground and major repair location for power armors
They kinda did.Fort Strong did test the T-51b according to the terminal entires.
And made the Fat Man. And some other shit.
>(and moronic)
with how hilariously powerful it was in FO4 id hardly call it a moronic idea
They make sense from a game design perspective. The issue is that they break a bunch of conventions from the previous games and they exist to solve a problem that was introduced by Fallout 4 in the first place: the fact that the player gets PA too damn early and that it's too damn common. There's a bunch of ways you can fix this shit and ditch the core idea, some even allow for keeping the deathclaw encounter mostly as-is.
You just have the suit in the vertibird be all fricked up (maybe a torso and a leg) and have PA in general be harder to find. Suddenly the fantasy of building up and customizing your own suit becomes way more engaging because upgraded pieces of more common tiers don't become immediately outmoded, since it takes longer to find replacements, there's an actual purpose to Raider PA pieces, since you don't just start with the tier above them, and you don't have to throttle the player's God suit at level 5 because they can still get fricked up by a dude with a .308 until they find a helmet. Plus all the other tradeoffs of wearing the suit all the time, like not being able to interface with computers or being loud as frick and not being able to sneak.
I guess there's also the weird thing about PA removing your clothing perks and setting STR to 10, which has dumb interactions with pocketed clothes and +STR gear. So putting on your iron man suit can suddenly make you weaker, which is dumb and should really have been worked around.
Plugging the pic into GIMP and fricking around with the measuring tool, the PA suite is ~380 pixels tall while our Canadian friend clocks in ~260 measuring from his ankle, to knee, to hip, and then to his head. Even accounting for margin of error from the pose, if that syrup swilling Canadian is 6ft then Our Boy should be like 7ft 10in. Bethesda may have exaggerated a bit, particularly with the design choice to have the wearer stand on top of the feet instead of in them, but PA has always been pretty big.
If you ask me, PA should set your STR to something insane like 20 or 30. Basically making it impossible to be overencumbered but only temporarily with great cost in one way or another. Plus that'd let you run wild with the big guns without worrying about carry weight and give you an insane buff to unarmed and melee
Nothing can solve the problem of Bethesda game design.
>be lv 50
>power armour + gatling laser
>still stuck fighting mole rats and raiders with pipe guns
Gothic had it right with making enemies not scaling .
Anything with a leveling system has that issue. Non-scaling enemies add their own logic breaks.
At least in the OG borderlands game they tried to change the appearance of higher level enemies along with the iconic "badass" name classification to account for the increase in spongeyness as they tank shots from a level 50 off world private military tech rocket launcher or alien artifacts.
>At least in the OG borderlands game they tried to change the appearance of higher level enemies along with the iconic "badass" name classification
That isn't that much different than Bandit X or Y Raider.
>Granted this makes other lore shit makes less sense, like the Brotherhood of Steel
Would have been interesting to see other post war military remnant groups besides just the enclave and BoS.
>Would have been interesting to see other post war military remnant groups besides just the enclave and BoS.
There actually was a group in 76 from the rangers that joined the BoS after a bit.
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Taggerdy%27s_Thunder
balance should never take precedent over gameplay canon immersion and fun (i.e. morrowind). If you want balance give enemies power armor or weapons that can defeat power armor, and make monsters stronger. Or dont make them so common like they were in fo4.
This is why i dont really like the energy weapon nerfs since fnv. I get the balance aspect but there should be better ways to balance a weapon that SHOULD BE superior to conventional weapons of the same weight. You can balance normal guns later by having larger calibre crafted bullets that are overmatched or by making every energy cell much more expensive than bullets. Or you can just merge the guns and energy weapons skills so it doesnt feel like wasted skill points.
>This is why i dont really like the energy weapon nerfs since fnv.
NV was just the game that buffed them with late game perks, they still felt like shit for most of the game. Even glancing hits from a plasma bolt should cause third degree burns, combust clothing and foliage and interfere with electronics; while giving weld flash to bystanders. As it stands they're just clunkier guns with light effects, but they would feel more distinct if they applied status effects and debuffs. They should also have more dramatic deaths, sure you've got the green goo and the smoking ash, but another option would be replacing the character model with a charred skeleton on death, like the particle sniper from Fear. Also leave a fire effect on the ground. IMO using energy weapons should feel like doing something needlessly cruel and unusual, to the point that using a flamethrower seems a merciful and reserved decision.
What buffs? None of the energy weapons perks really matter that much and one is outright detrimental outside of a specific scenario.
I'm torn on the BoS because I feel they're the asspull faction in 3 and 4, but I also like that in 4 Maxson went "frick it, we're not just LARPing as feudal overlords anymore" because it's such a logical direction for a BoS chapter to take. I think that the Enclave should actually be a bunch of splintered groups each claiming to be the real continuation of the US government because their were multiple shelters for government officials and forces across the nation.
The meltdown perk combined with higher crits make energy weapons AOE, which makes high ROF guns like the RCW some of the best in the game.
Meltdown also has the nasty habit of turning melee attackers into suicide bombers and being ineffective if enemies aren't close together.
I didnt say it was perfect, but surely you must agree that an energy weapons playthrough would be unplayably dry without it.
>energy weapons playthrough would be unplayably dry without it.
Not really, the damage caused by the explosion effect of perk is to annoying as it affects you, your companions and other non-hostiles NPCs, and since you are playing an energy weapons only build you are stuck with no other options than suck it, you can kill literally every enemy with just a fully upgraded laser rifle + MC max charge and the MF Alpha so you don't really that perk.
The only perks that are really needed for an energy build are the basic crit ones. Plasma Spazz just lets you hold down the trigger in VATS and Laser Commander lets you double down on more crit shenanigans. Even without Laser Commander, a crit build with a modded laser rifle is already having a great time.
in fallout 4 they last 10 in game hours
adjusting for game balance and my own headcanon its probably around 20-30 hours of constant jogging.
To be fair 10 hours of constant action without resupply would really not be that bad in real life for a weapons platform like that.
Considering just how much crap is heaped on the average American grunt for rucking, it would be immensely useful even if that was literally all it did.
It's also CBRN sealed and provides full body protection against rifle rounds. And we could make it right now, except for the power source. That's the main sticking point preventing something like this from becoming reality.
Fallout 4 is not canon
>And we could make it right now, except for the power source. That's the main sticking point preventing something like this from becoming reality.
I've thought for a while that the first practical use of power armor will probably be in law enforcement. Going from a truck into a drug lab or whatever and clearing it should be doable with current battery tech and you can just take it back to the station to recharge, no worries about doing it in the field.
More likely first power armors would be.
Medical harnesses for people who have either lost their ability to walk or who are retraining themselves to walk again.
Wearable forklifts for storage workers, why sit in a wagie cage when you can become the wagie cage?
Emergency workers who need to lift half collapsed buildings and/or 500 pound body positivity influencers.
And then finally police force and possibly some armed forces that can't afford proper IFV's or tanks for their infantry and then end up accidentally inventing a whole new implement for combat, be it either the dude who carries everything for the rest of the squad, or that one guy who walks into the building, tanks five hundred shots of small arms fire before stepping back and letting someone toss a grenade inside.
Oh yeah, I agree that powered exoskeletons will come first for utility stuff like that, but they're missing the "armor" part of "power armor."
>Medical harnesses
Already a thing. Hybrid Assistive Limb, made by Cyberdyne. Not "power armor", just a basic exoskeleton, but the tech could be applied towards that
>Wearable forklifts
Eh, I kinda doubt that one. While I'm sure power armor or just strength-enhancing exoskeletons would be useful for that in a pinch, a forklift does the job better. For one, even with all that strength, you wouldn't be able to lift something too wide and bulky alone. I could maybe see the utility if you needed something really heavy moved up some stairs or through other places a forklift can't fit, so long as you have two guys. Like moving pianos.
>some armed forces that can't afford proper IVF's or tanks for their infantry
You rang?
>Fallout 4 is not canon
cope harder classicgay [insert pop culture reference]
If you could actually produce them up to lore standards and field them in number, sure. Your dudes basically become immune to arty, mortars, grenades, and other area denial like chemical weapons. Unfortunately you need Fallout's woowoo bullshit cold fusion technology to power them which is never gunna happen.
>Your dudes basically become immune to arty, mortars, grenades
Tell that to the three paladins who went to scout the boomers.
Power armour is a walking tank, but there's still plenty of shit that can go right through a tank, Anon.
i think 'getting nearly direct hit by artillery' isn't exactly a low bar for deaths
the fallout games usually have the excuse of the area they're in being recently settled/resettled/opened for exploration
(fallout 3, NV, 4)
we dont even have an in-game baseline for how much t-51b tanks, much less in-lore. it varies wildly every game and every studio on how badass power armor actually is (and Bethesda isn't really good at writing in the first place) so you have them being hyper mogkiller 120000 that goes up against tanks and wins in some and then they die to a single raider with a jury rigged .308 in another
Logically, with the thickness of the pieces, it seems absurd that it could be penetrated by small arms even if it was only made of modern materials, not any special sci fi nonsense.
I can imagine the amount or resources going to a suit of that technological complexity would outweigh something like a dumb simple IFV which would provide comparable protection and firepower to multiple G.Is. it is not really practical to put so much resources into turning a handfuls of guys into walking tanks.
Technology marches on. At some point it will become so cheap that it will be worthwhile, same way we now have level IV armor as standard. You could even say the same thing about body armor 50 years ago, and it doesn't even protect the body, just a tiny vital part of it!
An IFV can't clear a building, though.
>brush gently past a parked car
>body flung 300 feet in the air, die to physics damage
I mean I doubt power armor the size or weight of fallouts can either.
No, but real power armor wouldn't be that big or heavy anyway, probably more like an EOD suit but with power assist so it doesn't hinder the user as much.
Fallout seemed to show it used as equipment for shock troopers and regular patrol.
it also isn't as big as it is in non-canon FO4.
>it also isn't as big as it is in non-canon FO4
Idk anon. Our boys look pretty fricking big in the FO1 opening.
The power armor looks about a foot taller and more bulkier than the leaf getting executed. The only thing not canon should be the power cores and pipe guns (unless it's stated they are raider inventions).
>90's exaggerated CGI cutscene is exaggerated
>Might not even be fricking real, could be in-universe propaganda
What? Every human in FO-verse canonically looks like bad CGI or clay-statues too?
You have to be able to fit a man inside the suit, at most it boosts your height by a foot, more likely like 6-8 inches.
It's also man-portable, as you can reasonably carry it around as a beefcake and NCR can use it without the servos.
I think real near-future power armor would look more like this, mix of hard and soft armor and not gigantic.
I imagine it would be pic rel but with a powered exoskeleton underneath. It is the logical end goal for power armor to just become the squads dedicated gear mule.
>What is that? You are now strong enough to carry your standard gear without longterm muscle or spinal problems? Good! You carry more shit now grunt.
If you can solve the power problems related to making powered exoskeletons useful then you've solved most of the problems robotic mules have, and you'll probably just offload less essential kit to a robot.
>then you've solved most of the problems robotic mules have
I thought their problems were primarily geolocation/unpredictable environments?
That's a challenge they face but one with a pretty easy linear solution in the form of 'just put more time and money into the navigation software'. If you've never checked out BostonDynamics' public youtube channel they have some very impressive stuff in terms of machines navigating obstacle courses.
They only need to be good enough to follow people around rather than navigating on their own, and 90% of soldiers, 95% of the time, are going to be navigating relatively sane terrain and not doing mountaineering stuff.
Their prototype contract model that got canned, BigDog, died not because it couldn't navigate but because they had to resort to a combustion motor to drive it, and that was considered too loud to be worth pursuing until battery driven options improved.
The mule doesn't know where it is, because it doesn't know where it isn't.
I think that could happen eventually too, but it'd need huge leaps in power. The thing about a "heavy breacher" kind of power armor is that it could be called on demand to a building or compound that enemies have on lockdown, and it'd only need like 15-20 mins of runtime at most to go in and blast its way past whatever resistance is making entry by regular infantry or police impossible.
This but even less fancy somehow. Initial power armor will look like plates strapped to an exoskeleton everywhere, because that's exactly what they will be. You're right in that the fancy greeble in every game or movie's depiction of power armor is completely unrealistic.
>the ability to run around with a m2 browning or a minigun or like a giant shotgun would be far more useful than the armor itself
Man, why do people always do this? Youve just been given a boon that allows you to carry significantly more ammo for no physical cost, and then you go and nullify that benefit by upgunning it to something that will carry a fraction of the ammo the unaugment soldier was (even carried on the back, there's just not enough physical room to accommodate more than 200 rounds of .50 without making the user too large to fit in doorways or stairwells, not even accounting for the bulk of the gun) or using a gun that will burn through the added ammo at twice the rate a regular m240 gunner would burn through his regular load.
This is what I see. Power armor is just going to be issued body armor worn over a self-supporting pack frame, so the full IOTV suite with maybe a couple of specially procured addons like a ballistic mandible and hard plates for the lower body.
A realistic suit of powered armor might be armed with high ammo light weapons, low ammo heavy weapons, or any combination.
Let's say you've got head to toe IV+ protection. You might be carrying a normal scale LMG with a brillion rounds of ammo, or you might be carrying something specially chosen to take out enemy light vehicles, powered armor, or perform... "high speed room clearing"
>Youve just been given a boon that allows you to carry significantly more ammo for no physical cost, and then you go and nullify that benefit by upgunning it to something that will carry a fraction of the ammo the unaugment soldier was (even carried on the back, there's just not enough physical room to accommodate more than 200 rounds of .50
That's why I can ALMOST give the "assault rifle" from FO4 a pass. Form factor wise, it makes a lot more sense than the miniguns or HMG. I also don't even really have a water cooled design for something meant for exosuit wearing troops considering that a) the added weight isn't nearly as big of a concern and b) the manual dexterity required to employ a quick change air cooled barrel could be a bit difficult, but I suppose that isn't a given. Either way not having to pause to change barrels could theoretically allow near continuous mobile fire support depending on how big of an ammo belt you could make use of.
>Lore says it stops 5.56
>Doesn't stop 5.56
I hate worldbuilding so much it's unreal.
Ludonarrative dissonance is always fricking gay. Either make the power armor act like how you told me it acts or rewrite the lore so it's more inline to how it behaves ingame
that'd be dope af. Even if it means making them harder to get or start putting you against bigger guns when you're wearing it.
Yeah it'd force the player to keep special ammo or another weapon kinda like in demon souls where one of the early locations had slash resistant enemies so you had to use piercing or blunt weapons. But Bethesda wont do that. For example Starfield was supposed to force you to have multiple space suits for hot/cold/high gravity/whatever but they dumbed it down at the last minute because it'd be "too hard". The effect is that there's no reason to make a suit that isn't prioritizing weight capacity and normal damage resistance.
i like the idea that they're hard as hell to repair so putting them against small arms, sure you're invulnerable, basically, but shit'll get chewed to hell and won't last forever, so if you're going to wear it there'd be some strategy in employing it against stuff that will protect you from things you couldn't face otherwise
It's kinda like that already. You can repair them all day long but once they hit zero they're gone and have to be replaced.
As others have said, small arms are a complete meme and inflict a tiny fraction of total casualties in a high intensity conflict. If it can stop 5.56 then it's really solid frag protection which is vastly more important.
useful for antipersonel stuff, I guess, but even a mounted gun would chew it apart. Be a good way to clear buildings out.
>would this be useful? it says they can stop up to 5.56 (yes i said STOP.)
Depends a lot on what this means.
Is *every single component* from the hoses to the grill to the eyepiece completely proof against 5.56? Is that AP 5.56? Tungsten or steel AP, if it is AP?
There's a lot of wiggle room in that uncertain language.
In any case, full body level III or level IV armor +EOD suit that didn't slow you down or explode your joints from stress would be "useful" it just depends on how much it costs relative to other equipment and options. If you just "have" it as part of a hypothetical scenario and we dont consider relative cost, yes of course it's useful, because it lets you concentrate similar armor and firepower as an infantry support vehicle in a frame that can take cover behind objects 1/10th the size, pivot on it's heels to change direction faster when under fire, and fire from prone.
The weakest set of power armor in 76 makes you a foot away from being invincible and it is incredibly durable compared to PA in FO4
Say what you want about F76 and it being a shitty mmo but one thing that they did right is re-writing the dog shit lore that FO4 added for the power armor. They made the T-51b the best power armor instead of the ugly ass T-60, they changed it where the T-60 isn't a new suit of power armor, instead its just up armored T-45ds that the army didn't want to go to waste.
I always thought that was the case when I first saw it in the trailer. Thank god they amended the lore to make it that way
T-51b is the best pre-war military power armor at least
>76
>fixed the lore with the T60
ONLY thing that they did right.
Reminder that the true purpose of Power Armor is not to defend/protect the user against small weapons fire, but to give him super human strength to carry heavier weapons/heavy stuff.
Also Hellfire armor is the best looking and thus the better
>Also Hellfire armor is the best looking and thus the better
Imagine having taste this terrible.
It's supposed to be what, 200 years after the bombs dropped? Finding an in tact suit of power armor is akin to going into some castle ruins and finding a pristine suit of plate armor today. Nevermind those power armor suits should be full of sensitive instruments and electronics that probably wouldnt survive 5 years of exposure. It's pure fricking nonsense. Nearly everything anyone is using would have to be manufactured post-war.
The fallout timeline has never even approached making sense.
You're talking about a game where you can find 200 year old snack cakes sitting in the fetid, radioactive water of a toilet that are still edible.
These are all correct observations that add weight to my claim that fallout is fricking looney toons and we may as well be talking about acme corp's portable pit trap (just add water) and whether or not it's an effective roadrunner deterrent
>we may as well be talking about acme corp's portable pit trap (just add water) and whether or not it's an effective roadrunner deterrent
Well is it?
Fallout on the East Coast (Bethesda writing) is pants on head moronic, unless you view it like it's been 20 years after the bombs have dropped and not 200. IIRC Fallout 3 was initially written to to be writtin 20 years after, not 200, then Fallout 4 would have taken place 30 years after. Granted this makes other lore shit makes less sense, like the Brotherhood of Steel, but I did say Bethesda is pants-on-head moronic with writing.
Basically, yes. I mean, we all took one look at the moron OP typing like an idiot, and decided to reply anyway.
You're talking about the game where exposure to radiation doesn't kill people but makes them nearly immortal
And 99.9% of the pre war loot should be gone,since someone else would have looted it already.
In lore the T45 can tank 7.62x51mm all day, T51 can tank .50 bmg due to advanced ceramics.
In lore T51B is penned by AP .308. Play the first game Black person.
The damage values in those games make no sense though.AP rounds do not lower the DT so they are worse at penetrating armor.
Irrelevant, it's never depicted as making you invulnerable to most smallarms. APA Mk2 basically is however.
As of FO1-2-NV, its a suit that protects you from splinters, fragments, and most weapons your chinese mook would carry. But gets penned by sniper rifles.
It's not even made from sci-fi nonsense aside from it's power source. It's mostly steel, composites and aramid materials.
To make it man-portable (it can be worn without servos powering it), it has to be fricking lightweight and thus not as bulky as often depicted.
Its a slightly-larger-than-human armor that basically gives bullet immunity up to maybe .50 BMG, and grenade resistance. artillery and heavy weaponry will still kill them but you put these guys in urban combat and they will absolutely shit on everything. They can access more places than vehicles and are invulnerable to 90% of normal infantry, not to mention that theyre smaller than vehicles and thus much harder to hit.
>ability to run around with a m2 browning or minigun or like a giant shotgun would be far more useful than the armor itself
nope. you can arm these fricks with pistols, and assuming that they can get in without being hit by anti power armor weaponry, one of these fricks can clear a trench network by himself.
Of course, it really helps that they can carry heavy weaponry, but theyre basically infantry on steroids and their only weakness is the lack of speed a vehicle has and that theyre heavier than infantry so they might not be able to access some older buildings
No because stairs have weight limits and it can’t really tank missile hits. Also, Bethesda are b***hes who refused to put in the best PA they designed. Can’t get headshot without a head.
>just replica armor with colors inverted
Power Armor in Fallout 1 & 2 do completely stop 5mm and probably 5.56mm too, who gives a shit about what newbie Bethesda "lore" says. You can get hit in Fallout 1 & 2 for 0 damage and it happens constantly with power armor on because those games had damage threshold mechanics.
They also had armor classes, where bulkier armors were more likely to get hit and light armor could avoid damage. In 3d fallout lighter armor just moves quicker but is no more or less a target than a steel hulk.
Lack of suitable actuators kills every power armor and mech design for now. Hydraulics are plagued by leaks, damaging one actuator bleeds the entire system of fluid. Electric might work but there's no lightweight high torque electric actuator industry yet.
Good until the enemy finds an AP with a caliber large enough to pierce throuhh the giant walking toaster.
Sure, they'd surprise the enemy in the first weeks of war, but by then there will be an effective counter.
I dont even think this would be that hard. Strykers were only proofed against AK rounds from the side, before being buried under 5 tons of ceramic tiles to bring it up to 14.5 proofing, and the Stryker is a pretty efficient armored box. A man sized box with equivalent armor is going to require much more elaborate shapes to accommodate movement and you're going to run up against weight constraints quickly. That doesn't make them bad or not useful, but I don't think power armor is going to be nearly as protected as people expect. Proofing against 5.56 is perfectly doable, but insurgents aren't even necessarily going to need to break out the DshKs to penetrate. 7n13 from a PKM might be enough.
Advantage is not about crashing through hundreds of enemies like an anime character, it's about concentrating force, and forcing your enemy to alter their plans.
If you're the side that as to throw all their small arms in the garbage and replace them, you lost the war.
If it can be defeated by large caliber rifle fire (or maybe even AP intermediate fire), Achmed already knows how to deal with it. ISIS and the Kurds didnt even sweat when they started churning out AMRs to penetrate up-armored trucks. The point is, if its armor is that weak then you simply aren't going to be using it as some breakthrough asset. Its just going to be regular infantry, applying the survivability onion and avoiding fire entirely; taking cover with the rest of the proles.
>Achmed already knows how to deal with it
Black person it's not the novelty that makes it useful, it's not "not knowing" what do do, it's the increased strain of having to do it, and the way that limits your options.
>or maybe even AP intermediate fire
They make average weight level four plates *today* that will stop a round of 50BMG.
The side with the powered armor isn't the side with the technicals.
Ultimately you're putting a man into a suit shaped tiny tank. If it's not too big, it could clear certain structures. If they enemy understands these things, they'll just make deadly choke/kill points for them.. The most effective weapon to counter such armor will be fire. Simply overwhelm it thermally. Especially after trapping it. As many have pointed out, the main problem is a powerplant.. Something small enough, light and can last long enough with enough energy output. That's a big, big ask. So something more in Ironmans profile, but able to stop all small arms and shrapnel. Personnel mine resistant, NBC proof, able to endure some fire, strength and endurance enhancing, runs at least 3 hours without need of fuel or power source. Power source refuel or swap time quick and easy..Get all that achieved, then sure, warfare tactics, strategy and doctrine would need to be rewritten fast.