After seeing what the pulse field did to the T51-B's in Operation: Anchorage, I think pulse mines and grenades should do a damage bonus to power-armored people. In all honesty I barely used those to kill robots in FO 3, but I actually would've carried a lot with me if they affected power armored enemies in a somewhat similar manner, if not with the entire +200 damage bonus.

They can make PA invulnerable to small arms, weak pistols, automatics, and maybe some critters, and there would still be plenty of stuff left that could kill you. I'd like to be 100% protected from some enemies, so long as that sense of security was shattered as soon as I went up against a deathclaw, a stick of dynamite, or Caesar's Legion wielding armor piercing sniper rifles.

I would like to see some added damage from pulse grenade type weapons. There's a bit of a difference between the power available in a single grenade vs. the more permanently installed pulse field in OA, but still, there should be some sort of an impact. I put an "Energy Pulse Generator" into a mod recently that lets the user generate different energy bursts, basically explosions centered on the user that damage any NPCs within a certain radius. One of the pulse types was an EMP, able to paralyze robots and power armor equipped NPCs for 10 seconds or so. An effect like that would be cool, and would help balance out power armor a bit.

I think plasma weapons and possibly gauss weapons should do more damage than guns or conventional explosives. Gauss weapons can punch through anything and power armor isn't all to well suited to defend against plasma (lowest resistance/threshold in the originals). Oh, and it turns out that DT is the only determining factor. Having DR on some armors in the demos was just a bug.

I think some people are forgetting who we will be going up against. Sure, we will run into the odd raider gang that can't afford much more than some lead pipes or assault rifles. However, the main factions, NCR and CL, are both well-funded and run by people with brains (unlike stupid raiders). I highly doubt that either of these groups would send out patrols without at least one member equipped with something big enough to deal with power armor. So, therefore, that is one big obstacle to being a walking god.

No ballistic weapon under .50 cal should be able to punch through PA without a crit, and then only AP rounds of .308 or so. The exception to this would be the minigun. It is likely that the velocity of the round is extremely high, thus giving it enough energy to punch through PA. Handgun rounds do not have enough velocity at range to do any damage (not that there couldn't be some modified high-velocity hand gun in the game). Even steel core penetrator ammo from a medium caliber rifle will not be hard enough to go through PA at the velocities achieved from these rifles. Remember, T-51b was designed about 60 years from now. I doubt that metallurgy has stood still. I find it highly unlikely that someone in PA is no better protected than someone today in an armor suit of a similar design. The hardness and energy dissipation qualities of the armor used in PA should be far beyond anything we have today.

A side note: it would be possible to take out PA with a single BB. The only issue is finding a weapon that can accelerate a BB to the point where the terminal energy of the BB exceeds the ability of the armor to either resist or dissipate the energy of the incoming round.

I could be totally wrong, but damage threshold won't prevent damage to the armor itself, right? Body armor might stop a bullet, but if you hit it again in the same spot there's a good chance it's going to penetrate. This would be the minigun's strength. It might not make it past the damage threshold at first, but if DT is proportional to armor condition, a clip or so from a minigun might lower the PA's condition enough to where it starts to punch through.

Thats one of the first few good ideas I've seen in this thread.

This makes a lot of sense. You're still doing damage to the armor even if you're not hurting the person. High ROF low DAM weapons would be able to do the job way less efficiently, but still get it done. Oh, and the whole Pulse Field thing is not the same as a pulse mine or pulse grenade. The Pulse Field is more like the YK42B Pulse Rifle which fires an electrical pulse that does a lot of damage against an enemy rather than an electro-magnetic pulse which is intended to shut down advanced electronics (although a lot of tech wouldn't get shut down contrary to what Modern Warfare told you meaning Power Armor would probably be immune).

My understanding of EMPs is that the strong electromagnetic field induces electric currents in any metal within the area of effect. In the case of an electric motor or other power electronics, the current is pretty insignificant compared to what's usually flowing through it, but if your talking circuitry, like processors and integrated circuits, some of the wires are so fine that the induced current will generate enough heat through resistance to melt them, permanently frying the device. If you were going to design a suit of armor, and new that EMP weaponry existed, you would probably make everything beefy enough to withstand most pulses. You could probably handle everything with big anologue components rather than delicate digital circuitry (it would fit better with the Fallout aesthetic too). Apply a big enough electromagnetic field though, or apply the current directly though an arc, and you might still be able to do some damage.

I wish we could layer armor... In all reality the stealth armor from F3 was supposed to go under and support the power armor.

It's a bit of a hack, but I figured out a way to make layering armors work (if you're on a PC). I create a set of recon armor, and I create a duplicate set, delete the player model from it, and uncheck all of the biped slots. I use a script to equip the slotless version if the player is wearing the normal recon armor, and then puts on power armor. The damage resistance from the slotless armor has no effect, but if you apply it via an object effect it works. You also get any of the other specified object effects. The only real issue is that the slotless armor will not deteriorate under fire, but that's sort of OK, the power armor should be taking most of the damage. Some FOSE commands are required if you want to retain the condition of the normally wearable recon armor.

Oh, certainly, I agree with that. If you don't want to "tank" PA shouldn't be a very good choice at all due to the total inability to sneak, hopefully loud noise attracting foes, and chance of critical failure.

See, I agree with this. Some want it to essentially be "god mode". I think it should have plenty of drawbacks, otherwise it will be way beyond overpowered in ALL respects.

so where should the DT be at? 40? 50? 60?

Yep I would expect pulse grenades/mines to atleast temp. lock up the power armor simmilar to the cryogrenade in MZ froze those in the blast radius.




Personally I say around 75. I think 75 damage is the smallest weapon that should penetrate power armor and damage it. If you can custom craft a armor piercing round I am confidant it will be over 75 damage.

okay another question then if its at 75 will animals have special claws or something to perice it or will u just walk around killing deathclaws with ur left nut?

Why would animals need special claws to pierce the armor? Were talking about a powered suit of metal that was designed for combat, I doubt animals would do much other than just knocking you on your ass. I say make it like a walking tank cause the animals have DT just like all other living things do, the radscorpion has armor and require a strong enough weapon to take them down.

Personally I dont see the problem with the power armor being like a walking tank, I mean after all you get the stealth suit in FO3 and you have no reason to have anything else because you can avoid confrontation out in the wasteland from all animals.

And then, Power Armor became synonymous with God Mode to most fans.

Seriously, who gives a flip if in lore it's a walking tank? In Game it should have a DR of 50 or something similiar. Anything higher will just make me use it for decor.

So what if it makes a person "god like" no one is holding a gun to everyones head to use the armor if they dont like the "god like" ability it gives.

I mean [censored] I dont see people [censored]ing and moaning about the stealth armor making a person god like even though it did because you could sneak around invisable everywheres and get critical hits every time.

Even if you are clad in power armor, a herd of Big Horners would still toss you around like a paper plane, only though that you might take it better than you would without the armor. Kinda like the difference of being shot in the chest and being shot in the chest wearing a bulletproof vest. You'd have a few bruises after that fight with oversized goats, maybe even a concussion and difficulty to breathe but you wouldn't have 27 broken legs and internal bleedings like you would have without it.

Man, I can't wait to get tossed around by Big Horners! I hope there are some sports practiced similar to bull fighting in spain and standard american bull riding. Both are two very stupid "sports"

I dunno about other people, but when my RPGs have numbers, I like them to get big. If I can do a DPS of 10,000 through hard work and levelling up, then [censored] yeah - similarly, I like being able to become completely invulnerable to all but the most powerful foes, so long as it's hard to do. Not everything has to be balanced, should people have been able to survive the nukes that fell in the war because that's "balanced"? No!

People cite the ability to find the best weapons and armour at the start of the game - if you're good - as one of morrowind's greatest strengths. Big numbers aren't bad.

Because you had the choice of sneaking around. I dont mind T-51b keeping the same DR/T it has in F3 because it was powerful, but not Godly.

Thats what I mean, with the power armor animals like the big horners and the radscorpions and such would have a very hard time killing you if they even could damage you in power armor but they would become an annoyance as they knock you around. Not to mention if you were say on the edge of a cliff or a far drop and a big horner knock you off it the power armor wont save you from falling.

I mean yea maybe some people wouldnt like it but no one forces people to use it. I have four sets of T51b armor and I dont even wear it, I am either wearing the BOS/Outcast power armor or the chinese stealth suit. I dont wear the T51b because in FO3 it has such a high condition which is nice but even a RPG or laser galtin gun wouldnt really chip away at the condition.

Colonel Martyr, correct and if the power armor is too powerful for your tastes who is forcing you to wear it. They could balance it out by offering more than one version of the T51b power armor that has different DT for those that want a challenge or not.

Yes I know I said the condition was too high on the T51B in FO3 but it doesnt go against my point of having a high DT where you need very powerful or armor piercing rounds to penetrate the power armor. I want the T-51B to be easily damaged by those powerful weapons giving it a drawback as being costly to constantly maintain.

You must be joking, power armor was in no way powerful in Fallout 3. You were better off using ranger combat armor because power armor was nerfed to the point where it was useless and impractical to wear due to all of the penalties, and extremely limited strengths. Power armor never in the history of the series has made you a God; you could still be killed by plenty of crap in Fallout 1/2 unless you were playing with the combat difficulty on wimpy, and it was a hell of a lot better in those games than it was in Fallout 3.

I complain about CSS too. The reason I complain about PA is that if it's so insanely good, no one will use anything else, which to me, makes the game boring. If people want a god mode, they can have it. I won't use it, at all. I actually like challenges.

I like challenges to thats why I said high DT but any weapon that does more damage than the DT will shread the power armor at a fairly quick rate meaning its costly to maintain. That is my balance because all my challenge playthroughs Ive done I was always low on caps but my first play through by time I finished everything I was over 200k caps.

Its just that I dont want some raider shooting a hunting rifle or a AK47 and able to penetrate the power armor. Thats what the chineses were using and that armor was designed to survive that.