A thought on the design of Fallout Tactics PA helmet.

Ave-H

Ave-H

First time out of the vault
The other week I had a random thought on why the FoT PA helmet looks the way it does. When starting the game's first mission, the Brotherhood has been in the area for two years now. Slowly expanding it's sphere of influence and taking in recruits from the region. A lot of them being from tribal villages and what if it's these same tribals that influenced the design of the helm. Skilled tribal recruits who had their repair and science skills enhanced with Brotherhood training. Deciding to give the helmet a horned look for an intimidating effect against raiders, tribals and other wasteland riff raff.
 
I would scrap the Fallout Tactics PA helmet design entirely if I could and replace their armours with the regular T-51s. The Tactics armor look very cool and parts of me would like to redeem the design as a special Enclave power armour. The other part of me favours the kill your darlings approach and just scrap it. The intro to Fallout Tactics features the original design anyway.

However if I were to explain the design as part of Fallout lore then what you suggested might be a fine idea.
 
I don't think it makes sense, the Midwestern Brotherhood is too new for a tribal to make up that high to become a repair expert and then start tweaking a model of Power Armor.

I think a far more reasonable answer is that this is a stock of a different model of Power Armor. One which the Brotherhood found somewhere, perhaps in Chicago. We have no idea what is the background of Bunker Alpha and Beta - we know the last two are brotherhood bases, barely bunkers. Maybe the FOT PA was an unknown new model from before the war stashed in Bunker Alpha for reasons - perhaps some company was competing with West Tek in making Power Armor.
 
You have a point, two years isn't enough time for a tribal to be trained up in those skills and there to be enough helmets to be at every base and equipped to the best squads. My theory only works if there was a group of tribals that we're technically inclined, similar to the Ciphers from Van Buren.
Heck FoT PA could be modified T-51b suits, Tactics needed more time in the atomic oven.
 
Two years is more than enough time. They took retards in the Army and taught them how to fix multi million dollar equipment in three months. And I do mean ignorant motherfuckers like myself. I think my friend learned how to fly and repair UAV's in a little over 6 months. It might have been more. So yeah not much training on a suit of armor with buttons that you walk around in. Basically teach them how to read the manual.

Proletären said:
I would scrap the Fallout Tactics PA helmet design entirely if I could and replace their armours with the regular T-51s. The Tactics armor look very cool and parts of me would like to redeem the design as a special Enclave power armour. The other part of me favours the kill your darlings approach and just scrap it. The intro to Fallout Tactics features the original design anyway.

However if I were to explain the design as part of Fallout lore then what you suggested might be a fine idea.
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Why? It's the only unique helmet they have at this point aside from the Enclave one and the NCR one.
 
TorontoReign said:
They took retards in the Army and taught them how to fix multi million dollar equipment in three months. And I do mean ignorant motherfuckers like myself. I think my friend learned how to fly and repair UAV's in a little over 6 months.
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And how long did it take them to draft plans for and manufacture those UAVs from scratch at high levels of quality?

TorontoReign said:
Why? It's the only unique helmet they have at this point aside from the Enclave one and the NCR one.
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It's just an overly epic design with little thought and no justification behind it. The Fallout 3 Enclave helmets make more sense and are better design (granted of course they are heavily basedon the Tactics helmets)
 
Hardboiled Android said:
And how long did it take them to draft plans for and manufacture those UAVs from scratch at high levels of quality?


It's just an overly epic design with little thought and no justification behind it. The Fallout 3 Enclave helmets make more sense and are better design (granted of course they are heavily basedon the Tactics helmets)
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I don't think that the power armor was made from scratch was it? I also think the Scribes would have the schematics to help with that. I got the impression the armor was the way it was due to scavenging. It didn't feel like a brand new type of power armor just one that had a cape and a new helmet on it. Then again it's been awhile and I don't care about the lore much these days.
 
I can't find anything about if it was a new design made from scratch, scavenged resources or just a modified design. I'll keep digging around to see if anything can be found. The intro slideshow has what looks to be either two versions of T-51b or the one is just dismantled partly for the classroom. The FoT PA looks completely different from what we get in game as well.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/a/a3/FOT_intro_slide6.png
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/2/28/FOT_intro_slide7.png
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/9/94/FOT_intro_slide12.png
 
From my gathering it is modified stuff. The Enclave helmet looks like an Enclave helmet. All that tech holds the data required to fabricate shit like that. Not like the tribal grunts would be doing much of that though tbh. It isn't like all the vets died as soon as they got there.
 

In the intro sequence you can observe a shift in the PA design. They have the regular T-51s in the beginning but after having stranded in Chicago they have the new design.

As I said I would go with the lore friendly kill your darlings approach. Most things in Fallout Tactics are re-designed in a different way comparedwith Fallout 1 & 2, they even have furry Deathclaws (might be good during the cold winters up there). Even though some of the re-designs are cool and the new armour looks cool, there's no believable explanation you can come up with to explain it in a lore friendly way. It will always feel shoehorned. If you want to save the new design of the PA then the only way I can think of is that it's a special armour within the Enclave. The BoS is about preserving pre-war tech, the Enclave however know how to make their own, we have already seen the advanced PA, and it could be one of their designs.

A mod that adds classic designs from Fallout 1 & 2 into Fallout Tactics and replaces the new ones would do much good, I think.

e: A reason I think most people would like to include the Tactics PA re-design in Fallout canon is that there's a lack of armours in classic Fallout compared to fantasy games and newer games.
 
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Proletären said:
A mod that adds classic designs from Fallout 1 & 2 into Fallout Tactics and replaces the new ones would do much good, I think.
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Swear that I've seen a Tb51 sprite for FOT somewhere here.

Proletären said:
e: A reason I think most people would like to include the Tactics PA re-design in Fallout canon is that there's a lack of armours in classic Fallout compared to fantasy games and newer games.
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That is true. Personally I like the FOT PA and it's such a part of FOT's visual identity that I think it should be kept.

I think something simple like it being a different armor the Brotherhood found before the game started works best.
 
I recall seeing T-51b sprites for Tactics as well, can't recall which mod it was.
I would love to see T-51b armor be in the game, especially it being worn by higher ranking Paladins at the various bases. I also agree that the Tactics PA is just ingrained with the visuals of the game to much to have removed. I do wonder what the alien queen headdress and wires everywhere design would look like as a sprite as well.
 
Sorry for double post but I just replayed Fallout 1 and the BoS are actually much more technologically advanced than I remembered.

I thought they were just hoarding pre-war tech but they are actually making their own updated designs. Like constructing better laser pistols. I also thought that they inhabited pre-war military bunkers but they can construct their own.

So it's not unfeasible that the BoS eventually were able to construct their own updated version of the Power Armor. Even Miles in Adyton can improve the Power Armor and turn it into a Hardened Power Armor after having read some chemistry journals.
 
As I recall... the BOS were only able to maintain the existing armors, not design their own. It was a signature advantage of the Enclave that they could design, and construct new power suits.
 
TorontoReign said:
So were they like unable to think or what?
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Presumably lack of specialized tools, and manufacturing facility. They didn't create the suits. Even today, there are many people who can fix a machine—yet might not able to engineer a comparable one of their own from scratch.
 
Gizmojunk said:
Presumably lack of specialized tools, and manufacturing facility. They didn't create the suits. Even today, there are many people who can fix a machine—yet might not able to engineer a comparable one of their own from scratch.
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What kind of specialized tools do they lack that would repair the armor they have but not help them fabricate new armor? Fallout New Vegas ruined this plot device by adding hologram tech that shits out anything you want. They don't lack supplies. It's a dumbass plot device. LOOK AT WHAT THEY ARE RUNNING. They need tools to run it. At this point they would have found a pre war factory and started fabricating armor or the armor would probably just not exist anymore anyway due to falling apart. Those suits aren't lasting a couple hundred years I don't care what they say.
 
Gizmojunk said:
As I recall... the BOS were only able to maintain the existing armors, not design their own. It was a signature advantage of the Enclave that they could design, and construct new power suits.
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Thatd make sense. Plus im sure Fallout Tactics is set a good 40 years before the events of Fallout 2. So i dont think the BOS knew of the Enclave's existance at the time to even take a page from their script to design their own
 
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