The most powerful weapon that might or might not be physically possible to make, and is controlled by a human:A supercomputer linked up to an incredibly precise wormhole generator. as soon as it is first started, it scans (via microscopic wormholes opened everywhere, this can be done simultaneously due to a few tricks involving timetravel, which the wormholes will also be able to do) the entire universe for information processing devices, such as computers and brains. It then puts microscopic wormholes in them that can control or eavesdrop them. This means it can read thoughts and intentions directly from the owners brain, and then mindcontrol any man or machine acording to his/her whim. If it wants to cause more physical damage, it can open a larger wormhole and the massive space-time curvature will turn whatever it wants to destroy into mush. It can look into the past future, so if it turns out you would have regretted something in the future it wont do it. It eavesdrop everything, which means that anything that shows hostility towards you can be instantly (or faster, whit timetravel) destroyed. It also supplies you whit information. Did I mention it perfectly mind controls everything in the universe so you wouldn't have to use it as a weapon anyway as everyone would just do what you wanted them to?
Yes, it's lame. Yes it's probably not possible. But there is a fair chance it IS possible whit high enough tech, which is more than you can say about some of the things you see in scifi movies.
What? This is not enough? You want something more "down to earth"?
Fine,
a more realistic alternative to what might fill the heavy armour role more realistically than tanks identical to current ones or giant humanoid robots:Yup, I made this one day a few months ago having about the same thoughts as this topics OP.
The girl on the top whit the cybernetic tail is the pilot, mostly for size comparison.
The main bulk is that rigid, heavily armoured cylinder that you see, it contains the pilot, and well as most bulky or sensitive machinery. The windscreen you see in front is not actually a direct window into the cockpit as that would make the pilot far to exposed, it's purpose is to protect sensor arrays, as well as containing weak anti personnel and point defence lasers, and a few other optics related things. To enter cockpit the windscreen can pop forward, I'm been intending to make an animation of this for months so i probably never will.
At the back, currently out of view, is a propulsion system, I'm not sure if it's a rocket, some kind of jet, some combination of the two, or something more futuristic, whatever it is it's good enough to make the machine an effective space fighter, and is capable of providing trust in vacuum, air, or even possibly water alike. On the sides of the cylinder, evenly spaced in a front and aft circle, are 8 limb sockets and 8 multi purpose sockets. The multi-purpose sockets hold heavy weaponry or special equipment in configurations that can be easily customized depending on mission. The limb sockets hold the limbs, which are detachable and replaceable. The reason for having sockets this way is that extruding things like limbs are unavoidably weak points, and this way the main bulk will go mostly unharmed even if some get blasted away.
The limbs are extremely flexible, fast, etch. The cost for this is bulky machinery inside the main bulk (preliminary some kind of hydraulics) Notice that + shaped segment, it slides. it's an excellent example of how a machine relying completely on bending joints is not necessary optimal.
The interesting thing whit the limbs however is what they end in: they rotate in that classic fashion to quickly switch between two devices. The first is a plasma gun/jet which can modify it's muzze to work like a blasterlike thing, a plasma rocket, a plasma-flame-thrower thingy, a plasma cutter, or a few other things. This sound advanced but it's not very different from existing engines for spacecraft that NASA use, one can actually modify one of those into a plasma gun by just turning of a specific magnet in the muzzle.
The second device is simply a lump of claytronics (reshapes itself like nanobots is usually attributed being able to do, except this is much more realistic as the units are a few millimetres across rather than having to be microscopic, and is specialized on making shapes without having to fit machinery for computing and reproducing and a billion other things. Even if you CAN make nanotechnology that can reshape itself that way, a dedicated device like this most certainly can exercise much greater forces.) covered in a armoured, superstretchable fabric. (because realistic claytronics are WAY to delicate to be directly exposed to battlefield conditions)
In the image you can see the claytronics asume the shape of paws to stand on, a wheel (interesting note: the claytronics dosn't actually move when the wheel spins, the fabric is simply being rotated and slide overt them, meaning that wheels don't necessary need to be round, it works somewhat like a mix between a wheel and tracks) and a platform that the pilot stand on. It could form innumerable other forms as well, including for example a fully functioning oversized humanoid hand.
I have spent WAY to much time typing this out, if you have more specifics you want to know just ask, I could go on for another few hours. I spend way to much time thinking about this kind of thing.