Fallout 76 (GAME) - Interesting Chinese Power Armor Concepts

Breadbox said:

I must apologise on going off a tangent, but since it's military forum+fallout power armour so I really need to get this off my chest, power armour in fallout are stupid as a concept all together, a dead end, worse than useless concept even if the technology for it exists(IMO).

Heavy power armour(bulky walking tank) will vastly decrease the survivability of an infantry man, an infantry's greatest defensive tool is to not getting seen, second greatest is not getting hit, only a distant third is his body armour(this applies to all combat arms of the military). Throwing the first two completely out the window for the third is pure sucide, it's like the F35 shedding its speed and stealth for an up armoured fuselage. Utter lunacy.

You will frequently see tank crew man bail and abandon their vehcle at the first hint of trouble on the modern battlefield. Anti-tank weapon are prolific and auto cannons even more so, armour could no longer have its ways with infantry like in the olden days.

It's funny how in the lore Power armour is the deciding factor to US victory, let's leave a side the fact the lore is basically another Wunderwaffe wins the war story. It's not even a wunderwaffe with a valid concept like ME262, V2 and Fritz X, it's the Maus, Nazi Germany pushed back the Allies.... by mass producing the Maus.....

While it's certainly iconic, but I can scarcely find a scifi military equipment concept that sounds less credible to me.

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Biscuits said:

I think one of the point of fallout lore is that it's a heavily unreliable narrative. The anchorage simulation dlc was explicitly a simulation that was implied to be quite if not completely inaccurate.

Power armor could have been greatly useful, or it could have just been the desparate attempt of a North Korea like state to cobble more firepower before being forced to launch nukes.

We know extremely little about Fallout China, sorta like how we know nothing about other countries outside Oceania in 1984.

A pretty fascinating thing is that the only example of Fallout PLA stuff that isn't seemingly made from captured equipment we see are the stealth armors. The art style on them is jarringly different from almost everything else in the game, being more cyberpunk than diesel punk like. They also had electric swords and an anti material rifle that (IIRC) is the prototype for the American gauss rifle in fallout 4. Also the Yao guai

So I'd almost guess that if there could be found examples of fallout PLA power armor, it would look different.

Ironically, IRL China is (afaik) the only country that uses a bit of power armor, just for lifting heavy objects. They're mainly for firefighters even.

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Breadbox said:

I remember playing Operation Anchorage and be acoustically assaulted by the Chinese Colonel speaking complete gibberish at the end, It sounds like the audio line being played in reverse or a horribly botched imitation of some dialect if I were to approximate it to intelligible speech.

Does anyone know what the devs intend it to be originally, rather not look it up due to how horrible it sounds.

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AssassinsMace said:

Power armor working like what people fantasize is not realistic given a world of the same level of technology. It's romanticized like "knights in shining armor". Was full plate armor actually practical? It's a case of envy where people just wanted the same thing for themselves for vanity's sake because it wasn't impenetrable. You can't move quickly in it and if you get knocked down, you couldn't get back up on your own. Why did the Vatican ban the crossbow? Because they knew it was a game-changing weapon that would shift the balance of power. The crossbow would easily pierce through the armors of the time. Someone without full body armor can fire a crossbow from a distance to hit someone in full body armor. How fast can a person in full body armor do the same? We don't know what a modern naval battle would look like. What happens if the world finds out that aircraft carriers can easily be taken out by todays anti-ship missiles? The aircraft carrier would be seen as a big waste of money but they only exist for vanity and everyone just wanted to have them because others have them. Why would power armor be any different?

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measuredingabens said:

I wouldn't say it's totally useless as a concept, but it is very niche. Power armour of the walking tank type would be useful in urban warfare and especially in clearing out rooms and buildings where it's difficult to bring heavy firepower to bear. That said, I agree that power armour of that type is nearly useless in open terrain where it's much easier to bombard units with explosives.

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