Better Power Armor

the lack of strength bugs me as well but i'd like it to have the old 45% rad resistance I mean you are in a self continued mobile suit.
 
Self contained mobile suit with a gauntlet replaced by a fingerless glove you mean :roll:
Maybe that's why it offers crappy rad resistance.
 
Something I've been really wondering about is this:
How does normal DR differ from Laser, Explo, Flame, Plasma and all that? Is it all the same or is there a difference? Oh, and Bethesda are stupid.
 
Magnus said:
Something I've been really wondering about is this:
How does normal DR differ from Laser, Explo, Flame, Plasma and all that? Is it all the same or is there a difference? Oh, and Bethesda are stupid.
Click to expand...

Good question.

I have a laser pistol and even got a rifle in that fort full of Talon Mercs. But why should I use them? My energy weapons skill is low and they don't do more damage than my best guns. And my best guns aren Hunting Rifles and Assault Rifles
 
Recusant Cataphract said:
I'm playing a melee fighter who only touches guns when he's picking them off the flaming, dismembered corpses (Shishkabob: Great melee weapon, or greatest melee weapon?) in his wake and getting ready to sell them for more Stimpacks and Med-X to patch himself up in anticipation of another suicidal dash through bullets, missiles, shrapnel and body parts hurled by my enemies who all apparently suffer from the worst strain of leprosy imaginable.
Click to expand...

Greatest Melee weapon - seconded.
 
there is an alternative to waiting... cheating! yes there is a console code that allows you to use power armor at any point in the game. even before meeting the BOS and gaining the perk manually.

The code is: "setpccanusepowerarmor 1"


hope i helped
 
realism to power armor really is what should be explored.... suggestions include:

1: when power armor(the suit not the helmet) is equipped its weight is scripted to drop to 0, this is because the armor is activated and because it now has a skeleton(you) its mechanical muscle can support its own weight.


2: part of a larger scope of modding bring back different damage types. for example against the average raider's armor the laser rifle was an excellent weapon in the previous fallouts but against shiny metal armor it largely lost effectiveness. crushing, cutting, bullet, laser, plasma and pulse energy damages should be added, each armor should have a certain effectiveness against each type. like leather armor would protect against sledgehammers somewhat(softening the blow a little) but be surprisingly effective against sharp weapons and have little usefulness otherwise.

3: keep the negative in agility. the problem with power armor is that because you dont have to have some implant so it can read your nervous system it obviously has to read your muscle movements and thus your intentions. modern tests into exoskeletons such as that demonstrate that massive increase in strength is easy but there is always a lag between wanting to do something and the suit actually responding. thus users tend to be a little clunky as they take longer to respond to anything. there is some question of weather or not someone in such a suit would run faster or slower however.... its just that it would be a hell of a lot easier for them to trip when running fast.

4: practical radiation imperiousness. i know it wasnt really something that showed up in any fallout but in the original fallout reading the diary entries in the glow we know that the suit is a highly sealed protective system. in that plot line at least the user only died from radiation only after his suit got damaged.

5.allow the player to reach strength comparable to that of a super mutant. 18 or so by what i remember from fallout tactics. even in fallout 1 and 2 lore it allowed bos knights to actually face super mutants in hand to hand and compete.
 
the negative to agility makes no sense, agility is one of the only useful stats. the weight of the PA itself offsets the str bonus (which is useless otherwise because it has little effect on melee weapons, which few people use anyway). so why would anyone want to wear PA if it has an agility penalty?
 
oihrebwe said:
the negative to agility makes no sense, agility is one of the only useful stats. the weight of the PA itself offsets the str bonus (which is useless otherwise because it has little effect on melee weapons, which few people use anyway). so why would anyone want to wear PA if it has an agility penalty?
Click to expand...

lol i explained why the suit would effect your agility. the suit is not part of you, its trying to read what you want it to do by reading your muscle movements. in other words you have to try to move your arm, it takes the machine a moment to realize whats happening and then it starts moving its arm. this happens with modern exoskeletons as well, its a very minute lag but its there and in terms of fallout that would mean a reduction of agility, aka a reduction in ability to react and move quicker then everyone else.
 
ceacar99 said:
oihrebwe said:
the negative to agility makes no sense, agility is one of the only useful stats. the weight of the PA itself offsets the str bonus (which is useless otherwise because it has little effect on melee weapons, which few people use anyway). so why would anyone want to wear PA if it has an agility penalty?
Click to expand...

lol i explained why the suit would effect your agility. the suit is not part of you, its trying to read what you want it to do by reading your muscle movements. in other words you have to try to move your arm, it takes the machine a moment to realize whats happening and then it starts moving its arm. this happens with modern exoskeletons as well, its a very minute lag but its there and in terms of fallout that would mean a reduction of agility, aka a reduction in ability to react and move quicker then everyone else.
Click to expand...

The slight lag happens with MODERN exoskeletons.

With power armor made in 2077, there would not only not be any lag; it would probably react FASTER than your body would.
 
how is a suit that reads your muscle movements and amplifies them supposed to react faster then your body would? if your body isnt moving then teh suit has nothing to detect... now it would be a different story if the suit read some chip transmitting commands from your nervous system, but everything in fallout lore states no such thing, it sticks with the muscle movement amplification. sorry buddy but there is going to be some sort of a lag there, especially if you mean to have enough null zone in the suits controls that your natural respiration doesnt cause the suit to move around.
 
I am a huge fan of the idea of power armor in reality, not just in games. And unfortunately the reality of the powerarmor response time is a damper on my enthusiasm. Ceacar99 is entirely correct that if a suit is limited to reading actual muscle movement for it's movement signals there is going to be a small lag caused by both the time it takes to measure the movement and the time it takes to start the actuators in the suit. The only way to avoid this is to measure the brain's intent 'before' it sends the actual movement signals to the body's muscles. We are in fact working on this now, but progress thus far has been slow.

I would simulate this in game by having differing levels of armor quality. Power armor would have armor values much higher than non powered armor (the whole point behind power armor is that the power of it allows one to carry significantly more armor {and weapons/gear}). The armor values and even strength values of powerarmor however would likely be rather similar amongst the various qualities of powerarmor (only slightly favoring the most advanced armors), with the armors having between a minus 3 agility to minus one. I would however also include a quest that would allow one to install a 'Neuroinformatic Interface' into the highest quality powerarmor that would remove the agility penalty all together.

By the way, I posted a related article on another thread which I'm appending here for the sake of completeness.

*

I have built three suits of plate armor for use in the Society for Creative Anachronism (having previously worked as a knife maker). I spent seven years sword fighting while wearing the stuff. I have also been enamored of the concept of power armor ever since I read Starship Troopers (by Heinlein) at the age of nine, forty years ago. Since then I have read everything I could find on the subject. I am intimately familiar with all current work being done by DARPA and others on power armor (more properly, 'exoskeletons') and am very conversant with armor technologies on top of that. I was recently invited to be a panelist on the topic of power armor at a local science fiction convention. This does not make me any sort of expert, there are no experts at the moment, but I likely do have as good a conception of the impending reality of power armor as anyone might.

You do not need training in order to simply wear standard plate armor. It is helpful if someone who has worn the stuff before is present the first time you put it on, but anyone with a modicum of intelligence could figure that part out fairly quickly. There IS interestingly enough a learning curve associated with it. Gaming wise it would be appropriate to put an agility penalty on someone wearing plate for the first time and let them work it off. If one is training in armor twice a week for a couple of hours, it would take roughly three months to become completely acclimatized to moving in it without handicap.

Power armor in reality would be another story. Putting on power armor would in all likelihood, not be anywhere near as simple as putting on plate. Putting on plate is a matter of realizing that you need to put on the pants before you put on the torso and doing up straps. Putting on power armor will require knowing how to 'pop open' the various pieces and close them up again. It will require hooking up connectors and hoses, how to power up systems and how to monitor and use those systems. So a training 'perk' in order to use power armor to me makes a lot of sense.

That said this is a game, not reality. All sorts of liberties are taken for the sake of playability rather than realism. It is not realistic for instance to assume that just anyone can pick up any suit of plate and use it just like any other. A 'realistic' game could reasonably give a size to plate armors and apply an agility penalty to a wearer equal to the difference in the player's size and that of the plate armor. Furthermore, there should be an additional agility penalty applied for wearing 'any' plate armor that was not custom built for the player.

Similarly with regard to power armor, the game takes major liberties with reality. In reality, any deployed power armor (as opposed to simple exoskeletons) will inevitably be custom built for the individual soldier. It simply will not be possible for standard models to be issued to soldiers. The mechanics of movement will require that each suit be exactingly constructed to match each soldier's particular body shape and size. In Fallout, we can wear power armor we find. In reality, we would have to find a functioning factory and have a suit custom built.
 
Nullifidian said:
With power armor made in 2077, there would not only not be any lag; it would probably react FASTER than your body would.
Click to expand...
How? Reading "brainwaves"? This is Fallout, not Battletech or GitS. You have not direct connection between your brains and suit.
Power armor is just amplifier for strength, not for reaction.
It may give some bonuses for perception may be (integrated in helmet IR and UV goggles, termographic camera, sound diapason enhancing and filtration, may be even echo-locating underwater, etc).
You can run longer without fatigue, swing really BIG guns like a toy, you can have sophisticated targeting system, protection from poison clouds etc. But NOT improved reaction, not in Fallout.
Oh, wait... May be some Commonwealth Power Armor with some sort of "Wired reflex" can improve your reaction and make "nobody faster then you"? ;-)
 
Panpiper said:
Similarly with regard to power armor, the game takes major liberties with reality. In reality, any deployed power armor (as opposed to simple exoskeletons) will inevitably be custom built for the individual soldier. It simply will not be possible for standard models to be issued to soldiers. The mechanics of movement will require that each suit be exactingly constructed to match each soldier's particular body shape and size. In Fallout, we can wear power armor we find. In reality, we would have to find a functioning factory and have a suit custom built.
Click to expand...

I always assumed the T-51b's were adjustable to a degree.
 
Abyrvalg said:
Nullifidian said:
With power armor made in 2077, there would not only not be any lag; it would probably react FASTER than your body would.
Click to expand...
How? Reading "brainwaves"? This is Fallout, not Battletech or GitS. )
Click to expand...
You left out 40k, but I'll understand. Space Marines? That's plain overkill. 8-)

Also, something occurred to me today. Wouldn't the motors (servomotors?) in the armor help stabilize your arm and stuff while you're holding a gun, increasing your accuracy?
 
Magnus said:
Something I've been really wondering about is this:
How does normal DR differ from Laser, Explo, Flame, Plasma and all that? Is it all the same or is there a difference? Oh, and Bethesda are stupid.
Click to expand...

I believe you've got your standard damage resistance stat that encompasses all of the above, and then separate poison/radiation resistances.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top