Fallout 3 Power Armor

O

Ozymandias

First time out of the vault
Hey I found some powerarmor [spoiler:87f3234a1c]on a brotherhood of steel paladin I met in that train station, [/spoiler:87f3234a1c]but it says I need instructions to use it. Anyone have any ideas on how I can get these?

...I wonder if that guy needed to be alive for the quest i was supposed to be doing...

-w
 
Apparently just do the main story line, not sure though as I have yet do progress that far, don't really care about Dad.
 
As soon as you get access to the Citadel (the BoS headquarters) through the main questline, you can ask them for permission to be trained in it's use.
 
Or if you also think it's ridiculous and figured out the main quest is utter crap and don't want to touch it ever ever ever again - pull down the console (^) and enter the following:


setpccanusepowerarmor 1



Works like a charm.
 
Why you'd need a Perk to wear PA is beyond me... Wouldn't it stand to reason that you'd need a similar perk to wear any other type of armour as well? ie: Bandit Amour training, etc? Silly design decisions abound.
 
rcorporon said:
Why you'd need a Perk to wear PA is beyond me... Wouldn't it stand to reason that you'd need a similar perk to wear any other type of armour as well? ie: Bandit Amour training, etc? Silly design decisions abound.
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Oh for fucks sake.

POWERED armour operation is quite different from simply wearing Bandit armour. It's a good decision, as I always wondered how in Fo2 a tribal knows how to operate a suit of Advanced Powered Infantry Armour from the get-go.
 
Mikael Grizzly said:
POWERED armour operation is quite different from simply wearing Bandit armour. It's a good decision, as I always wondered how in Fo2 a tribal knows how to operate a suit of Advanced Powered Infantry Armour from the get-go.
Click to expand...

While I agree in principle, the way they executed it was kind of lame. It would be better if there were ways to get the training without pursuing the main quest, like helping some of the other BoS you meet in other places, and then being granted permission to go get the training, or perhaps getting training from the outcasts after gaining favor with them (yes this would be a bit contradictory to their attitude, but let's assume you did a bunch of favors for them first), or even simply having a high enough science skill.

Locking it to the MQ punishes the explorer who will eventually acquire a suit and simply feel frustrated by the inability to use it. My brother for example just got a suit and gave it to Jericho to carry, and was rather peeved to see him simply put it on.
 
Mikael Grizzly said:
Oh for fucks sake.

POWERED armour operation is quite different from simply wearing Bandit armour. It's a good decision, as I always wondered how in Fo2 a tribal knows how to operate a suit of Advanced Powered Infantry Armour from the get-go.
Click to expand...

I also wondered how a tribal could easily use an energy weapon just by "tagging" a skill. But I looked past it, as it was just the way it was.

I think that wearing PA would be similar to wearing plate armour from the middle ages. You were simply a walking tank, with no specialized training required.

In FO3 it just seems like an arbitrary way for the game to prevent me from wearing it too early on.
 
rcorporon said:
Mikael Grizzly said:
Oh for fucks sake.

POWERED armour operation is quite different from simply wearing Bandit armour. It's a good decision, as I always wondered how in Fo2 a tribal knows how to operate a suit of Advanced Powered Infantry Armour from the get-go.
Click to expand...

I also wondered how a tribal could easily use an energy weapon just by "tagging" a skill. But I looked past it, as it was just the way it was.

I think that wearing PA would be similar to wearing plate armour from the middle ages. You were simply a walking tank, with no specialized training required.

In FO3 it just seems like an arbitrary way for the game to prevent me from wearing it too early on.
Click to expand...

thats retarded, knights who wore plate in the middle ages trained for years... :roll:
 
Thanks for all the input, fellows. I am similarly frustrated by the fact that I need a perk to use the PA, but I see how it "fits" with the fallout 3 reality. Just wish there were some paper instructions I could snag in some town or off some person.

[spoiler:d22e52b9e4]How I got it? Well in the train station the NPC BoS guy who wasn't Hoss was standing too close to a car when it got shot by a supermutant and exploded. Great strat to get some power armor early on. Now I just gotta haul it all the way back home. . .

By the time I get trained, I'll probably have my own power armor. *sigh*[/spoiler:d22e52b9e4]
 
Pokill said:
thats retarded, knights who wore plate in the middle ages trained for years... :roll:
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While they may have trained in swordplay and on how to ride a horse, I can guarantee you that nobody ever had to tell people "the chest piece fits on your chest, and the helm goes on your head."
 
OMG... Come on of course you would need training. Think about Deep sea diving suits or a space suit for god’s sake. Cripes the HUD in the helmet would take some explanation. Maybe there is some kind of neural implants or sticky pads like an EKG that have to be applied properly.
 
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.
 
Panpiper said:
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.
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This is something that had always bugged me even in the original FO. At the very least men and women shouldn't be able to swap PA but that would have severely limited what a female PC could use. As you said, allowances need to be made for game play.
 
I think a great irony here is that while realistically there should be training required for it, gameplay wise, training should only be required if power armor has a significant impact on gameplay.

Why is it irony? Because power armor has virtually no impact in Fallout 3, since it is little better than regular armor, but in Fallout 3 you need training. Whereas in Fallout 1 and 2, power armor is almost godlike in it's protective abilities due to damage thresholds but in Fallout 1 and 2, no training is needed.
 
I haven't been trained in wearing PA in FO3 yet but I was appalled at how easy it was to lay waste to a patrol of Brotherhood Outcasts. Small arms and melee weapons?

I figured it had to be crappy equipment on their part so the next time I saw an BoS soldier I capped him in the head with a combat shotgun and the result was much the same.

Please tell me the T-51b armor in FO3 is the PA I remember and love from FO1 an 2?
 
There is already a mod out that addresses the wimpiness of power armor in Fallout 3. Unfortunately the download server is undergoing a DNS change and may not be browsable for the next 24 hours. I am sure it won't be the only mod to address this.
 
rcorporon said:
Pokill said:
thats retarded, knights who wore plate in the middle ages trained for years... :roll:
Click to expand...

While they may have trained in swordplay and on how to ride a horse, I can guarantee you that nobody ever had to tell people "the chest piece fits on your chest, and the helm goes on your head."
Click to expand...
It's more than that. You need to do crazy weight training to handle the heavy plate mail while still being able to swing your weapons. No matter how jacked you are you still need to practice how to fight with restricted movements and how to endure being slowly baked inside that metal oven.
 
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