I've seen it mentioned several times that the lack of tanks was due to power armor basically replacing them. However I don't see that being practical.

Although power armor has its great upsides, such as increased strength, the armor, targeting systems, air filtration, etc, for the individual soldier. I dont see how they could actually replace tanks. They can fire a 5mm Gatling gun like it was nothing, but can they fire a tank round? Can they withstand a tank round?

Tanks offer MORE armor and a much heavier hitting main gun. Something power armor cant do. No matter how I look at it, I just cant see power armor actually replacing tanks in any way. A great addition alongside tanks, however.

What are your thoughts on this?

It's a common misconception. I believe that the point of the Power Armour was to replace the functionality of the tank.

What do tanks do? Fight other tanks or provide infantry support. Power Armour allows only one man - as opposed to like four - to weild an effective anti-tank weapon whilst remaining a much more mobile and difficult to hit target and obviously carry 5mm miniguns and such for very good frontline support.

You are taking it too literally. A tank would easily crush a guy in power armor, between the rain of machine gun fire, and the canon.]

It replaced tanks, because tanks used a lot of fuel, they were large, so that makes them less manueverible and harder to transport.

on the logistics of fuel and and size it make sense, what doesnt is how in the war powered armor regiments were apparently invincible, and that one powered armor weilding soldier was able to level an entire town( surely to have been filled with chinese soldiers spraying him with everything they had), but post war the brotherhood is getting wiped out easily just becuase of numbers, even though the armor is supposed make almost every round they have useless outside AMR and missile and fatmans.

It's because bethseda nerfed power armor. In the originals if you got t-51 you where nearly indestructable.


Also compared to a tank a man in power armor is much harder to hit

By 2077, the gas prices are $1450 per gallon and $8500 per gallon of premium.

Tanks would be rather expensive to run.

I think they would change them to nuculear fission(fussion?) or whatever the cars use

I would imagine that their mixed unit tactics had main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, power armored infantry and standard infantry. The first two, aside from having greater firepower, also have superior speed and manueverability. They are supported by both types of infantry with the PA troops serving as shock troops, hitting where fighting is the fiercest and standard troops cleaning up after them.

It has been said.

Fuel was running out and tanks use alot of fuel.

Power Armour lets one man pretty much become a walking tank.

Tanks svck in urban warfare and China has alot of really big cities. An army of men in suits that turn them into walking tanks would to much better in urban warfare then tanks

I doubt tanks were completely removed from the battlefield but would have been reduced to nothing but mobel artillery.

But wouldnt they be running on a nuclear reactor like the cars and... everything else?

Im not saying power armor is worse then a tank, because I agree, conceptually they are an amazing piece of tech. But again, they practically can not stand up a tank toe-to-toe. A single tank round on a power armor user, never mind if the armor can take it, but the person inside would have all his bones shattered from the shere force trying to be absorbed. Conversly, a power armor user couldnt realistically weild much more then a fatman or missile launcher to combat a tank.

Being used along side one another, yes, I can see that. That is why in reality we don't use APCs in place of tanks, because tanks have a heavy hitting gun and vastly superior armor. They are designed specifically for taking on big things.

"The most advanced pre-War model, T-51b power armor is fitted with a back-mounted TX-28 MicroFusion Pack which generates 60,000 Watts to power the HiFlo hydraulic systems built into the frame of the suit. Made of the poly-laminate composite, the T-51b shell is lightweight and capable of absorbing over 2500 Joules of kinetic impact. The 10 micron silver ablative coating can reflect laser and radiation emissions without damage to the composite subsurface."

The power supply can last hundreds of years.

Lore wise a person in T-51b power armour can go toe-to-toe with a tank. Fallout and Fallout 2, power armour on a BoS or Enclave is a very deadly thing. That and those guys often were armed with the best weapons like Missile Launchers and Plasma weapons. (Note I know Enclave were not in Fallout)

T-51b power armour broke the back of China's military and allowed America to invade China.

It's only in Fallout 3 and New Vegas that power armour became super nurfed and that is because players wanted it to be lootable and common. Which it is not in Fallout, Fallout 2 and Tactics.

A suit of power armour can be made with less Material. Tanks use to much fuel in a time where there is little to none left. Tanks can't fight well in Urban warefare and like I said before, America was invading China at the time of the Great War. They made it all the way to the Yangtze River.

Is power armour better then a tank? Tanks are much faster, have weapons a man even in Power Armour can't carry.

Power Armour, good for urban war and allows men to carry really powerful weapons and take less meterial to make and I am guessing cheaper. Easy to ship and lore wise can hold its own against tanks. Just not repeated direct hits.

Tanks would still be around and would be used to fight in open fields and against other tanks but their main role would be as mobile artillery.

Another Key thing. It is very safe to say China ran out of fuel and no longer could field alot of tanks and therefore America did not need tanks as the main weapons anymore. Like Germany during WW2. They ran out of fuel and their tanks became all but useless.

I like to think tanks were still in use by the Sino-American War. Perhpas their numbers were decreased, but I think its possible the tanks that weren't phased out switched to nuclear power.

This, because fuel is in scarce supply after the war. It's also why cars aren't around any more.

Vehicles are still around in the Fallout Universe. Just rvery rare and run on other fuels like powercells, steam and very likely ethanol.

Tanks are large targets, their turrets turn slowly, and they are useless in urban warfare against a well equipped enemy. Power armor makes a foot soldier almost immune to small arms fire. You'd need anti-tank weaponry just to take one down, and it'd take something like a direct hit from a missile launcher. And unlike a tank power armored soldiers are going to be pretty hard to hit with missile. The only time a tank is going to be better than power armor is in the open, but then the tank is just sitting ducks for planes in the area.

Also, I'm you could probably make five or six sets of power armor at the same cost of money and materials as it would to make one tank.

on the note of fusion cells, what if tanks ran on them and fielded more than standard tank shells, wouldnt it be possible that some used gauss, or laser technology, or even nuke carrying shells, or artillery cannons that used nuke shells? so many possibilities to go unexplored!! :pinch: