J. E. Sawyer on Armor classification in New Vegas:



My question is what does he mean by "movement penalty"? The most obvious interpretation would be movement speed, but that doesn't seem to be enough to dissuade the player from being a walking tank (at least not by itself). I wonder if "movement penalty" doesn't translate to overall Action Points, Action Point regeneration, Sneak and other skill usage or even melee attack speed? What are your thoughts?

Yes, you will move slower with Medium compared to Light. And it better not reduce my AP. Otherwise I'll get grumpy. :swear:

Heavy armors in FO3 had the -AG stats, movement speed AND agility penalty.

It would be a little funny if a 1 STR character can't support a PA and falls flat on the ground.
But movement penalty?
Slower movement speed?
Maybe you can't jump as high?
Walking backwards can make you trip easier?

I wonder if STR and/or AGI will have anything to do with this as well.

For what Mr. Sawyer is talking about to hold true, simply inhibiting movement speed does not seem like a adequate deterrent from using Power Armor, especially if you can just hotkey the Power armor, hit your hotkey button to un-equip when running and instantly re-equip in combat situations.

Hrm as a thought, the heavier the armour the slower the AP regen might be.
Also in the traditional Pen & Paper RPG's with AD&D being the main protagonist in this respect, the heavier the armour the lower your characters movement rate was, so to use that as a basis let us say your base movement wearing just clothing is a maximum 30 feet per round, in light armour you could still move up to the 30 feet, in medium you could move up to 25 feet and in heavy armour you could move up to 20 feet.
As for other penalties or bonus's that would probably vary depending on the exact type of armour you are looking at but as a rough guideline you can probably safely presume the heavier the armour the greater the penalty/bonus will be.

In oblivion I couldn't switch rings, amulets and armor/clothe pieces if I were in combat.
Should be that way in F:NV as well.

Aye, likewise it's usually been that way in most of the RPG's I've played, out of combat you can switch at will but in combat you are stuck with what you were wearing when combat started.

True, but even with that implemented, this being an open world RPG, you can typically see the enemies coming and before enganging in combat, still giving you time to tap a hotkey.

I would say it's movement speed. Would be logical to tie it to agility, as they wanted to make stats matter much more in New Vegas than they did in F3. Thus, judging from F3, they might go with tougher armour reducing A - or just make it a separate stat.

Well, maybe hotkeying stuff should only be available for drugs, weapons, changing to special ammo while not being available for clothes/armors and food?

I don't understand why you would have a movement penalty in a Powered Suit, I understand a Stealth penalty or something along those lines but it shouldn't affect your movement at all. Its powered by a miniature fusion reactor so in all honesty you'd probably move faster, be stronger, the whole nine yards with the armor on. Considering the only reason anyone would wear the Power Armor would be to enhance one's abilities and also to have the benefits of being encased in armor that provides protection from a wide variety of weapons and battlefield conditions.

Yes you'd be a clunky bastard who'd couldn't sneak to save his life but you wouldn't be some slow moving tank, if you were a slow moving tank in it I don't think anyone would even consider using it. :tops:

EDIT: At the very least you should be able to move exactly as you would normally, You have to take in account the armor supports all its own weight because of the fusion reactor powering all the movement of the suit itself and effectively doesn't put any pressure on the user itself. (At least if my understanding of Power Exo-Suits serves me well.)

Should being the operative word. Hardly a guarantee, though. I'd be curious to see how this pans out.

while it powers the suit, I don't think the suits gears are as flexible as our own joints, and speed is majorly factored by joints (as in running, check out some olympians training info)
so while it doesn't cause the user to spend any energy to use it, you are stuck with the stats of the suit.. better armor, yes, better strength, yes, bad joints (less speed), yes...

I hope that just means that your movement speed and jump height will be lowered since an AGI hit would mean fewer AP points, which is just ridiculous. Your ability to use VATS shouldn't be diminished by your armor choice. That's just stupid, especially since AP ties in more to AGI now. It's like they did the exact opposite of what I would have preferred. They made Intelligence have less of an effect on skill points and made Agility affect AP more. I'm kind of disappointed, but the game is still going to be awesome. Not too happy about only having 15 perk choices though.

You probably shouldn't be able to jump in Power Armour. In my opinion.

So, there will be less punishment in store for you this time around if you choose to wear snazzy clothes rather than high powered armor?

Sounds nice, especially if there are less defense beefing up perks like toughness to help you with light armor around this time.

Sometimes I just like to strap on a vault suit and take on an entire enclave hellfire squad.

I thought we just wear snazzy clothes knowing we're going to look like Swiss cheese when we try to go in running & gunning? :tops:

Logically it doesn't even seem to be a legitimate issue with Power Armor ~just conventional types.


As with many D&D games over the years.


And here is the kicker, if they would just implement an AP cost to access the Pipboy while combat is active.... wouldn't it be a long long step in the right direction don'tcha think?

True enough, although that would be one of the 'perks' of using powered armour, although depending on the speed of it's servo's you may not be able to move your limbs as quickly as you could outwith the power armour which could be an at least semi-plausible reason for an agility penalty whilst wearing it.

We move slow enough in Fallout as it is. Takes FOREVER to get anywhere, even with 10 AGL. Slapping a decent penalty on that will slow the player to a crawl, and that enough should be balancing.


Want to be a walking tank? Good, because you sure as hell ain't gonna be a running tank in that armor...

I'm not sure that a movement penalty would be an adequate deterrent. I think powered armor needs to be attractive to certain character builds. In fallout 3 it was just too useful for all character types to pass up for any reason other than aesthetics. Powered Armor should be the goal for a heavy STR/END built characters. The powered nature of the suit should aid in tasks that require raw strength and endurance like swinging a power sledge, or lugging around a mini-gun. Though i'm not sure how they would do that now they have grouped big guns with small guns.

Really? I never used power armor cause it took up too much weight. I was a pack-rat and that hampered my looting abilities. I used the Ranger Battle Armor, lighter, plus almost as good as power armor.

PA is useless for Sneak-based characters, and a movement or agility penalty makes sense in that regard.

Despite the dissolution of the Big Guns skill, big guns have high strength requirements to wield. I assume PA will give a Strength bonus like it did in Fallout3, so it will provide a benefit to characters using miniguns and melee.

Aesthetics were a nice side effect of not using it but I shunned the power armor for the basis that it's bloody heavy. Between the PA, my jet pack(Which is another 45 pounds or so) and my 85 pound M2 Browning I could barely steal a pencil without getting overencumbered. And that's with a 10 STR. Oh and it slaughtered sneaking, which is my primary method of play. Especially when my skills aren't fully developed.

Turns out I didn't really need it anyways due to how sneaking and sniping broke Fallout 3's difficulty curve. Or, should I say shattered? CSA + Silenced assault rifle + 100 sneak + 100 SM Guns = final mission of Broken Steel is a joke difficulty wise.