[quote name='Erebos' date='12 November 2010 - 02:39 PM' timestamp='1289590770' post='16670950']
Yes power armor should be better, but the drawbacks for using it should be a lot bigger. For one all power armor should be faction armor.
Think about it, if an NCR soldier saw someone in T-51b power armor at a distance, the first thought should be ”That is a BOS Paladin!” and the second should be ”Better call for back up”.
The same can be said for all other power armors, it would limit the usefulness of power armor quite a bit. Tenn make the repair cost astronomical and make it so only a few places could repaired it (like only a BOS or Enclave would have the necessary equipment and spare parts).

As for its abilities, it should be considered weightless when worn, but I think it should increase the Action Points cost of all actions as well (and slow down the real time shooting and reloading speed).

It is all about balance. And if the developers are creative they can make it so that while most builds and paths throe the game would eventual get there hands on a set of power armor, actually using it would only be optimal to a few of the possible build/path combinations.
[/quote]I agree with everything here except for the AP penalties... In Fallout 1 & 2 (where APs meant far more than they do in FO3/NV), PA gave no penalties. I would argue that PA could in fact assist in aiming (in the case of guns) via a targeting computer (or Pipboy link) that actually has control of the arms, fingers, and vision of the suit. Reload actions could be recorded and played pack (as key framed animation no less), to ensure that the wearer never makes a mistake reloading his gun. :laugh:

[quote name='The Mango 55' date='12 November 2010 - 02:48 PM' timestamp='1289591291' post='16670990']
Engine limitation is possible, but again we don't know exactly how it's supposed to function.[/quote]
[quote]

As far as I remember, in FO2 that was just a tin man joke.[/quote] Yes it was a joke, but also totally plausible (That it locked up ~not the bit with the oil can)

[quote]
I don't understand what you mean by "squirming". You have full range of motion and it's form fitting, if you squirm the suit will squirm with you, your leverage is as good as anyone else's. The "hard plastic shell" reforms when you move, so imagine you're lifting something that the hard plastic shell can't quite lift, so you add your own strength to it.

Explain to me exactly why 1) the suit is going to stop you from doing this[/quote]I would say that it is not as good as anyone else's, as you (the PC) are inside a suit with its own joints, and you are not actually touching what you are hoping to help lift.

[quote]
...and 2) you will damage something in the suit. The sensors would only be damaged if they were delicately made, but this is a piece of rugged military hardware designed to last 100 years (and has actually lasted twice that long).
[/quote]Was it? Can you name any other piece of military equipment designed with the expectation that it will be in use a hundred (or two hundred years later). I can't, and I really doubt anyone else can. The T-51b is a relic that still works. Sure its tough, but I think its an in-joke to the retro 50's theme.

As for damaging the insides, my point was stated above in this post.

[quote name='wurrble182' date='12 November 2010 - 03:12 PM' timestamp='1289592769' post='16671119']
short answer - if power armour was so damn good it would nullify the point of every other armour in the game - you'd NEVER want to use anything else. as it stands, there is a rhyme and reason to use light/med/or heavy armour. this is the way it should be.
[/quote]... And it should! If you actually have a bullet proof robotic exoskeleton, you should never want to take it off.... until you need to do something you can't do in the suit. FO3 was disappointing here in that you could walk across a rickety plank wearing a vault suit or a full suit of PA and the PA suit would not break it. I wish the stairs could cave in if you stomped up them wearing the suit ~and I also wish (at least for the big PA suits...that are basically vehicles), that they could not be tucked in your inventory, but had to be worn, dragged, or left behind.

Human reflexes are very finely tuned and depend on a huge amount of sensory feedback from the environment that you either won't get while wearing PA or will be delayed. On top of that, sensors detecting pressure inside the suit are not going to be able to translate motor impulses into movements anywhere close to as quickly as muscles are. By the time the muscles move you're already looking at a delay even if the sensors are able to react instantaneously, which I really doubt they would. Add the fact that servo motors in a suit of armor most likely aren't going to have the range of motion that a human body does. I think an AGL penalty is more than justified. In fact, I might even be tempted to make the penalty larger than -2. :shrug:


That's why you don't make it good for every type of character. :shrug:

You're not touching it with your skin, no, but that hardly means anything. Your hands are inside the suit's hands, your fingers are inside the suit's fingers. So when you grab something with the suit you are actually grabbing it with your hands.



The battery was designed to last 100 years. Most things don't last a century not because they necessarily can't but because there's an expectation of technological progress. But http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Victory just for the heck of it.

Take a gander...
http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/armor-3.jpg

I would bet that the hands might be artificial (I can't know this from anything I have ever seen about it, but the hands seem rather vital, and rather vulnerable ~and about 8" out of his reach).


A grand looking ship (oft repaired and sitting in dry dock). You know Hard disks are not supposed to last four years ~they can last longer, and I'd say they usually do if handled well, but that hardly means anything.

Eh, to me thats where built in sensors (think the auto-senses of WH40K) and training come into play. You could have tech that detects things in proximity and puts it on a display in your HUD so you'd find out about the guys sneaking up on you even if you missed out on hearing him. With training you can be tought to be constantly looking around your self since your field of view and awareness is much more "focused". While yes there would be a delay I don't think it would be anything close to a full 20% loose of movement. I think it would as I said before not effect your basic abilities at all only fine movements. Reflexive movement would still be reacted to since your physically moving inside the suit at the same speed.

Carrying it's own weight...yes.

Carrying more weight...yes.

Improving your ability with ranged weapons...no. But it should give strength benefits to all weapons.

I feel it should require power packs to keep it functioning, otherwise it's not 'power' armour, is it?

A colour other than 'silverish'...yes. Why would you camouflage your best equipped troops in something shiny that stands out like a neon light?

The best description in any sci-fi writing I've seen on power armour is Heinlein's Starship Troopers...and that stuff required recharging with power packs, water/nutrients and air tanks every day or so. If they designed this requirement as an option for players in hardcoe mode, they could have done the same for power armour. And it would certainly add to rebalancing the 'godliness' of wandering around in a tank suit (not that you need it in FNV, the game is already pretty much less than lethal).

Power Armor is designed to reduce some strain from movement not taking over and replacing the character's strength. If that were the case anyone in power armor would have their STR set to 10 automatically instead of just a bonus. There will always be an AGI penalty because a thick suit can not make the small, deft hand and joint movements of someone wearing thin, flexible armor. This would actually make hand to hand combat harder because a person without power armor can not twist and bend with more fluidity. Having a metal shell around you would innately reduce radiation exposure.

To sum it up, Power armor is designed to complement a person's natural STR not replace it, reduces the flexibility and detail of movements due to its bulk alone, and the metal plating partially shields the wearer from radiation. ALL of these attributes seem obvious to me and anything else would be pure speculation.

Well technically the PA in fallout does need to recharge it's power packs. It's just the the fusion power cells they used can last 100 years at full power before needing to be replaced.

Whoa.. wait... that's 40,000 in that 40k. They are practically 'borgs in armor that has 38 millennia of technology advancement.

I'd think (myself) that the [FO] armor would have a safe range of basic movement (whether mechanical or software enforced). I would say (hypothetically) that an armor could be made that could backflip with an occupant that could not do it themselves without the armor.

Barring some kind of contact or sub-dermal probe, I can't see the armor reacting that fast to the users muscles, and have to agree with Softnerd on that, but I could also see a reduction in agility to the armor's set limit (mechanical or otherwise) ~but if not mechanical, I could see that limit raised with software ~Still not a bonus though, because even the slightest delay could cause you to trip (or tip), making the rest of the delayed action moot (or detrimental).

So the enemy would see you faster, and start running away sooner.


In the series this may be true (though I never liked that and thought it a mistake, as it goes counter to the existing exo-suits that we now have.)

**http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1140234-gameplay-balance-aside-should-power-armor-be-more-amazing/page__view__findpost__p__16670068

No one builds them as an "assist", and they probably never will ~except as a medical appliance.

Because they keep the enemy focused on the things that can withstand nearly any attack, while also diverting enemies attention away from soft targets?

I felt power armor should make you look giant. Obviously that has something to do with animations or engine limitations.
I wish they'd just kept the stats from the old F1, F2 power armor. Raised your strength by 3 or 4 depending on which power armor you had.. Normal, Laser, Fire, Plasma, Explode, Electrical Damage resistances. Radiation resistance.
Stealth suit is worn under the power armor to negate negative agility affects. All in all power armor should be just a plus.
I wish they'd kept lots of things from the original games. I'm not sure why they didn't..

I'm not suggesting anything as advanced as Space Marine PA, I just stating I would imagine they have atleast sight and hearing and maybe smell connected to the outside. While I said yeah there would be delays to reaction time I don't think it would be anything close to a whopping -2 I would consider it unchanged for the most part effectively. If it didn't move at pretty much the same speed as your muscles inside you'd be pulling constantly at the suit when ever you tried to move anywhere. (Think the power loaders Ripley used in Aliens.)

You can test damage to hydraulics and electrical motors by applying pressure in the direction they are providing force. If you do not apply enough pressure to the mechanism it will not produce a noticeable effect. Pushing enough to overcome the initial threshold will effectively lower the force needed by the mechanism to perform the intended action. Pushing with too much force passes another threshold in which you are actually overcoming all of the mechanisms force means that you are not only capable of performing the action without the suit and the suit is adding more strain to the movement due to you pushing the mass of the suit + whatever was being manipulated AND the friction of the mechanism since it is trying to move at a slower rate than you.

I guess power armor training would set the mechanism used to provide force to the appropriate amounts so that it can use full power if needed or just disengage the mechanism to reduce friction against your movements.

Agreed... but I wonder if PA training might teach you to move within the armors [set] limitations ~forcing you to be slower (and having basically the same effect as a stat reduction... and lack of training could make it worse; like a minus 2 instead of just 1).

Imagine if PA training let you access the internal computer and alter the default settings ~and that a lack of training left you stuck with whatever settings were in place when you found it. (You could have a bullet proof suit that was set to below-average agility and strength :laugh: ~until trained and able to alter those settings).

**Or pay someone else an arm and a leg to do it for you (and then trust that they did as you asked).

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one. I feel you're underestimating the importance of sensory feedback to reflexes and the effect any delay at all between motor impulse and suit movement would have on your brain's ability to process spacial information as it relates to movement, but without a real suit to test it's all opinion/speculation anyway.

In the originals you didn't need special training,or where limited by the armor. So to me "PA training" would only really encompass learning how to minimize the perception drawbacks and clumsiness of the armor. Plus how to read any displays or feedback the armor would give you.

The only way to truly overcome delays in sensory input would be to hardwire the suit into your nervous system. This would allow the signal to travel directly to the suit's internal computer and there by "eliminating the middleman". Anything else will always have some delay.

That's kind of a WW1 mentallity though....if we let them kill off enough of our soldiers, they'll get scared and give up!

Having been a grunt, if anyone suggested wearing a big shiny uniform to me they would have ended up with a size 10 boot requiring surgical removal from their anatomy.

To me what your saying is like if the guy is shot he wouldn't notice it even happened for several seconds. To me this would translate into a pretty bad combat platform. You'd never be able to hit anyone popping in and out of cover as you'd never have the speed to track them. So I'd say the delay would be something like fractions of a second only. Not enough to effectively drop them below there baseline Agility for just basic movement stuff.

The Power Armor is fine as it is. It fulfills its goal of making the operator a walking tank, but it is still not invincible.

As for the color, not all power armors are silver, that's basically their "display" standard color. Of course they are all silver in FO1 and 2 in game, because the sprites are silver.

But when we actually talk to people, we see that at least a few members of the brotherhood have http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20051106121014/fallout/images/e/e2/Rhombus.jpg armor. The Enclave seems to conduct most operations at night so that dull dark grey is probably fine for them. And of course the winterized armor was painted white.

I thought we were all talking about fractions of a second.

... and can get worn down by a bb gun :laugh:
I agree that it fills it's goal in the game, just not it's description.

:thumbsup:

You don't see it in the dialogs, but the FO2 Enclave armor is said to be black.

No, what I'm saying is that when you're running over uneven terrain, for example, your brain is processing minute details about the texture of the surface you're running on, the grade of the terrain, the angles of obstacles large enough to affect footing and the ability to quickly change direction, etc. There is a lot of data being processed really quickly and mostly unconsciously. You're not getting this type of feedback in PA, and if you are it's going to be dulled and delayed. As a result I'm not going to be able to run as quickly and react to inconsistencies in the terrain as well. If I loose my footing a fraction of a second delay (twice...once in the sensory feedback and again in the motor impulse to muscle movement to suit sensor to servo motor conversion) could make a big difference in how well I'm able to recover.

No, no! What i was saying is let the enemy shoot the things that can take the punishment, so they don't shoot at those who can't.

oh, now I get ya. Well all that stuff would be handled by the suit. Didn't it say in the description that the PA suits had internal gyros and shock absorbers and the like in the legs? *The suit has an auto-gyro system to keep it upright*