Funny enough, Fallout 4's loading screens still call the T-51 the pinnacle of pre-war PA technology. Of course, they also say that the APA was made after the war despite one suit being in a blatantly pre-war case in Nuka World...
Either way, I think there was just a miscommunication or something. They wanted the T-60 to be a BoS development and retrofit of the T-45, but then it became their "signature" armor for the game, and it needed to be on the cover, and all over the trailers and stuff... But the trailers and gameplay footages heavily featured the pre-war sequence, so the T-60 had to be in there, consistency be damned, and so it became pre-war. I guess it's exemplary of how the rule of cool can trump any consistency if needed.
I would have liked more variety with the power armors, btw. Different frames, for starters, that can only fit certain plating. A frame for T-45 plates, a retrofit T-60 frame, a T-51 frame, an APA frame. The T-45 frame needs energy cells (or fusion cells or whatever), but for the T-60 retrofit the BoS added an onboard reactor like on the T-51. But the onboard reactors of the T-51 from before the war have run out, so the player has to reload those first before using them, which is a more complicated process, but then you'd not have to worry about power running out. The (extremely rare) APA is of course still freshly loaded and generally the best. Add more modifications to the frames as well. Improvable energy drain for the T-45 frames, for example, more speed, that kind of stuff. Could have been a great system and even a plotpoint (dunno, have a stash of mint T-45 or T-51 armors in some sort of old army bunker that the player learns about, have the factions fight over that), but what we got was a bland linear progression system tied to leveling lists. Just one example on how Fallout 4 had a good idea, but managed to make it boring by saying "Eh, this is kinda hard work, let's not do that".
Either way, I think there was just a miscommunication or something. They wanted the T-60 to be a BoS development and retrofit of the T-45, but then it became their "signature" armor for the game, and it needed to be on the cover, and all over the trailers and stuff... But the trailers and gameplay footages heavily featured the pre-war sequence, so the T-60 had to be in there, consistency be damned, and so it became pre-war. I guess it's exemplary of how the rule of cool can trump any consistency if needed.
I would have liked more variety with the power armors, btw. Different frames, for starters, that can only fit certain plating. A frame for T-45 plates, a retrofit T-60 frame, a T-51 frame, an APA frame. The T-45 frame needs energy cells (or fusion cells or whatever), but for the T-60 retrofit the BoS added an onboard reactor like on the T-51. But the onboard reactors of the T-51 from before the war have run out, so the player has to reload those first before using them, which is a more complicated process, but then you'd not have to worry about power running out. The (extremely rare) APA is of course still freshly loaded and generally the best. Add more modifications to the frames as well. Improvable energy drain for the T-45 frames, for example, more speed, that kind of stuff. Could have been a great system and even a plotpoint (dunno, have a stash of mint T-45 or T-51 armors in some sort of old army bunker that the player learns about, have the factions fight over that), but what we got was a bland linear progression system tied to leveling lists. Just one example on how Fallout 4 had a good idea, but managed to make it boring by saying "Eh, this is kinda hard work, let's not do that".
