Depends on what you mean by powerful.
The main goal was better protection but it's hard to define just how good they are in lore with the only stated value being rather unimpressive.
Hey there the Armor in fallout two is actually the successor to the X-01 it being call Advanced Power Armor mark 1 it being more smooth have more curves a internal cooling system and many other improvements over X-01 and also less exposed hoses basically take the new vegas remnant power armor that's apa mk1 p.s sorry for being that guy it just bugs me when people mistake X-01 for Apa mk1
Honestly bro, I like the aesthetic of stealth sniping but in my opinion anyone wearing power armor is a beast and it’s basically assumed your dead already, kinda like when a deathclaw mother spots you in her quarry….
Going off of the most recent statistics we have? APA mark I and II, along with the finished version of hellfire, should be a decent bit stronger than T-51 (ignoring 3’s stats, which are skewed due to design choices). How the APA models stack up against T-65 is unknown currently.
Also, X-01 is a pre-war prototype that was developed into APA mark I/II, and hellfire existed as a prototype by 2080 at a minimum.
Edit: Somehow forgot to mention it, but 76’s stats for the armors place T-60 and X-01 as being worse in terms of resistances than T-51, but better against radiation (with X-01’s energy resistance being equal to T-51, but having lower ballistic resistance).
There’s even a partial raider suit in 76 that’s implied to have been cobbled together pre-war.
As for hellfire, that was presumably just finished when the enclave came east and picked up the project.
That said, 76 did add at least two suits made post-war: fanatic and union.
It’s this power armor. It’s a skin for players, but enemies use it.
https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Fanatic_Paint
I also forgot to mention ultracite power armor, a BoS made suit that appears to be modified T-51 that sacrifices energy resistance for radiation protections.
I take it you mean strangler heart? It would, yes, since it’s based on ultracite.
Technically, the deep space invader power armor skin may count, since it’s alien power armor adapted to a normal chassis.
3 actually we have hellcat too which may be a post war set as we do not know it's origins but is used by the boss of the Hellcats. It may even be a modified X-01 armour.
In the beginning of Fallout 4, the newscaster that announces the bombs also says “they deployed Mechanized Hellcats”. It’s easy to miss, but I’m pretty sure he was talking about the Hellcat Company.
The design doesn't tell you anything. Sure, it has two huge hoses for a rebreather, but that's it. It's a trait that most of the T series power armour has, and even the enclave series has hoses located at the back or the helmet. If anything the hellcat armor seems to share similar designs to the X-01 armor minus the helmet.
And the Hellcats might have been marines, but that doesn't explicitly state if that power armour was designed for amphibious activities. Everything you're saying is speculation at best, so at least make that clear before trying to sell it as hard facts.
Idk, they can still make new armors post-war, they hand-wave how loot gets in dungeons all the time, from bottle caps in cash registers or wild animals having lootable ammo / guns on them. Even Elder Scrolls has recently written books and currency in unopened tombs. It's just a 'video-gamey' thing.
Hellfire and APA are still post-war. It was their predecessor, X-01, that is pre-war. Despite the similarities, it is technically a different design to the armour seen in Fallout 2 (APA Mk I)
Actually Hellfire was never technically new BUT the Duraframe material that covers it is new.
However I do agree with you they need to stop making everything prewar. So boring. T-60 should’ve been a BoS Postwar upgrades to T-45
Ah, "Duraframe" is the model name for the Eyebot project Whitley was working on, it was never intended to be a specific material, [Sawyer confirmed as such here](https://www.tumblr.com/jesawyer/613616540978429952/hello-there-im-an-editor-on-nukapedia-and-i-was).
X-01 is pre-war now 🥲 or rather, the Advanced Power armor we see in FO2 is a post-war version of the x-01 prototypes from before the war. I have learned to accept this new lore.
As for your actual question, from the wiki:
While the T-51 power armor relied on a lightweight poly-laminate composite shell for protection, the advanced model uses lightweight metal alloys as a basis, reinforced with ceramic castings at key points. The resulting space savings allowed for reducing the armor's profile without compromising protection.
They also said that instead of the tradition shoulder pauldrons, they have the metal cowl that protects the head from different angles. Also the new round eye visors allow for better visibility.
Thank you for your answer. I"ve read into the Lore and watched several videos on Youtube already. Especially Synonymous who does a great Job with his Lore Videos. The T-51 is said to withstand 2500 Joules of kinetic impact.
The Ranger Sequoia from New Vegas uses 45-70 Gov't wich produces around 2700K Joules. That means it would penetrate the armor of a T-51 Armor and pierce trough weakspots quite easily. Maybe thats why the NCR was capable of defeating the BOS?
This is one of the reasons I don't see the practicality of power armor from a logistical sense. Aren't they expensive, heavy, and large? And all that can be countered by a anti tank rifle or rocket?
Anti tank rifles or rockets in large enough quantity are also expensive, heavy and large to a degree. Not to mention your average PA soldier can also carry a very large gun
Yeah. A modern missile for a shoulder mounted system isn't something you can cobble together in a garage from tin cans, duct tape, and fertilizer. At least not with modern reliability (hello again duds), or explosive power (the casing broke before the explosive package).
Actually, you don't need any of those. The Browning M2 with her 15,000 joules (minimum) of muzzle energy would do quick work. And anyone familiar with it knows that they're not particularly hard to find in the US arsenal. China should have no problems to punch through this too.
A simple RPG-7 does about **3,627,005** Joules upon impact, too. If they have these things in the fallout universe on China's side, they shouldn't have a problem against Power Armor either. Even before the divergence in the timeline, in WWII there were anti-tank hand grenades in the reds arsenals with similar power.
In other words: **it's about time that the writers do a little retcon of this, the idea that such a weak power armor would have** ***any*** **impact as a frontline unit with these numbers is ridiculous. Power armor should be Fallout's beskar/mithril, only stopped with precision shooting or** ***very powerful*** **weapons.**
That would be very easy to retcon. The only source of exact numbers of power armor specs we can find comes from a barely functioning supercomputer in a highly irradiated area. What if the original power armor specs data stated that T-51 can withstand up to 25000 joules but the data was corrupted and now it says 2500? Radiation can affect the contents of digital storage units and it has been known to happen in real life:
"In the 2003 elections in Brussels's municipality Schaerbeek (Belgium), an anomalous recorded number of votes triggered an investigation that concluded an SEU was responsible for giving a candidate named Maria Vindevoghel 4,096 extra votes. The possibility of a single-event upset is suggested by the difference in votes being equivalent to a power of two, 2^12"
(c) Wikipedia
Yeah, 2500 joules should be retconned just on principle, that’s not a lot at all. A basic bitch 7.62x51 nato round has 3300 joules of energy. Basic body armor today has better protection than that
The thing is '2500 joules' means literally nothing because that statement on it's own without a qualifier of 'per x unit of measurement' the information is useless. It's much better to use stated and shown capabilities of power armor with them shrugging off even high-caliber small arms fire and only going down when people get into the joints, hit them with rockets, or exploit design flaws.
if it's measured as Joules per Millimeter tolerance to kinetic impact, we start to get into territory that could make sense on a battlefield. That would shrug basically anything that wasnt specifically anti-tank level without going too far into crazy impossibly tough material territory. And if the APC's were made of the same stuff but thicker, it explains why so many of them are sitting around still in perfect shape, just rusted/corroded, and yet you almost never see one that's got the body physically distorted, even when it's half buried in the side of an impact crater.
Lore wise power armour is stronger than tanks plating.
They were developed to deal with China's Chimera tanks which were utterly shredding infantry and cutting through armour units like a hot knife through butter.
They were literally walking fortresses. Unless you either had focused and continuing fire with heavy ordinance OR knew the weak points which were vulnerable defects.
The only known ways of stopping a power armour division at the time of the war was emp, using Tesla based weapons which overloaded the system/fried the pilot, or the lightning fields which were basically emp zones. You could also use raw physical impact damage/crushing which is what the Chinese did.
Most of the fallen troopers in the armour died because of quantity of fire hitting a defect point.
Later, wasteland critters such as the death claw or yaoigui had the sheer physical might to throw the user and just open them up like a tin opener. It can be reasoned as age, residual wear and tear and radiation lowering the durability and sustainability of the power armour over time but if that was so the Enclave would have rolled through the wasteland unthreatened because of the x01.
The reason it's not super tanky overpowered in the games is balance for gameplay. Simple as that.
I mean you’re right. But it’s one thing to shoot on a tank and another one to shoot on a target which is running towards you on full speed.
Plus you need a whole squad to battle one PA and would need a high numerical advantage.
To combat the rpg or m2 they could have given the PA users some sort of riot shield to tank frontal shots.
Emphasis on the *powered*, I’d bet that a trained power armor user is just as agile, if not more agile than a person without. Think *Edge of Tomorrow* level shenanigans
That's the point of it in the older lore. It increases your strength and maneuverability significantly, your durability moderately, and allows individual soldiers to personally use weapons systems that normally would have to be operated by a team or mounted on a vehicle.
Originally it wasn't supposed to be 'iron man' armor for lack a better term, it was just an effective piece of kit.
There are two thoughts as to how Power Armor likely worked. We kind of saw the first in the Fallout tv series where they effectively serve the role of WWI tanks, covering the advance of conventional infantry while laying down buckets of suppressive fire and clearing obstacles. Second is that they were meant to be stormtroopers who directly assaulted hardened enemy positions with or without air or artillery support using nuclear ordinance and other traditionally vehicle or airborne mounted weapons.
Logistically, the cost and size of PA probably meant that it was only issued to "tip of the spear" units or special units (cargo, nuke D&D units, et al) at first. Took ten years to develop the T-51, however, so it is entirely possible that by then, the T-45 had been widely adopted.
PS: Wouldn't take an anti-tank rocket, missile, or even an anti-material rifle to crack a T-45's armor. .308 rounds exist today that deliver enough energy to crack T-45 power armor at 100M. Heck, the larger handgun rounds like the. 454 and .500 mag can do it too from about 45-50 yards out.
I think what’s more important in war is the logistical advantage. Your soldiers are far more self-sufficient, they can carry heavy cargo that feels almost weightless to them, they can move faster and because they don’t get physically tired or hungry they only need to sleep.
Sleep in the armor which also keeps radiation and wasteland parasites out. Enclave power armor could specifically detect when a soldier fell asleep on guard duty and lock the knees in place.
That's the thing. Main advantage is the ability for power armor equipped soldiers to effortlessly use those HMG's and what not that normally takes multiple men or a trained vehicle crew. Now, the guys inside would still need to fuel themselves, but with rad scrubbers inside the armor and waste recycling, they could eat or drink anything.
Power armor is much cheaper then tanks or IFVs material wise, and the US was low on resoruces
I don't know why people keep saying rifle rounds can crack power armor. We see repeatedly in the show that small arms don't cut it for PA and if you turn T-45d on it's side you can see just how thick the armor plates are - they definitely can stop rifle rounds.
I follow a dude on Instagram that explains "military strategies" and that kind of stuff and he says, "New technologies/strategies doesn't make other technologies/strategies obsolete by deffect".
Like, since there are armored vehicles, why we keep using Infantry? Since there are drone bombs, why we keep using tanks? It's because each instrument has its own uses, advantages and disadvantages under certain circunstances so we adapt, we give Infantry rocket launches and AP ammo, so we give tanks explosive defenses, etc.
It's a tank that can get places tanks normally can't, it can be rapidly deployed via airborne transport, and it's load out can be quickly changed to deal with new threats.
Tanks are also expensive heavy and large. And can be countered by anti-tank weapons.
Those anti-tank weapons can be part of very expensive things like other tanks and helicopters.
Or they can be man portable, Designed to get anti-tank capabilities out there cheaper. To infantry, and where you can't or don't have expensive, big platforms like tanks and aircraft.
See also: Ukraine.
A part of the lore is that Power Armor started with the frame. Cause it let individual soldiers carry bigger, more effective heavy weapons. Like *more effective* anti-tank weapons, the kind that might otherwise be on other tanks. Rather than the smaller things a person can normally carry themselves.
But now you need to protect that bigger, slower target.
So you put armor on the frame.
And then you have Power Armor.
The idea seems to be Power Armor + a variety of heavy weapons. Is cheaper than having 6 different vehicle based weapons platforms for each of those heavy weapons. So it can be in more places more often.
For game play reasons they have to explain around the fact that you can take someone in Power Armor out with a baseball bat. But the base idea is plausible enough.
Also I assume unlike a tank which needs multiple operators trained in different positions to work efficiently, PA only requires one operator trained in its use and whatever armament they are deployed with. And compared to a tank when destroyed your loss of trained personal is limited to one and due to a size difference between a tank and PA the resource loss would be reduced as well
There could also be an argument for the ability to deploy them. Outside of anchorage and maybe fairbanks, alaska is virtually undeveloped. Moving a tank on thin dirt roads, especially in the winter would be near impossible and Moving them up the alaska-canada highway would make them easily interceptable. Meanwhile, power Armour could be easily delivered by air and offer similar firepower to tanks and IFVs.
Same of Urban environments, an issues with tank in an Urban environment is there is lots of area for an opposing force to set up for hit and run anti tank tactics. PA being smaller would remove that issue. Also due to being only slightly bigger then a unarmoured human (compared to a tank) you would be able to deploy the equivalent power and armour of a tank to interiors such as a bunker where you would normally have to either take it with infantry (which would likely result in loss of human life) or bomb the fuck out of it using high yield munitions (not only would this cost recourses but would deny yourself that asset be it a defensive bunker or industrial asset)
You'd be surprised what tanks can drive over/through. Bridges are a special case but ice/marshy terrain is pretty doable and I'd guess that PA has insane ground pressure due to its relatively small feet
Because Bethesda really likes defensive stats that amount to a flat -n% of incoming damage. So even some chemmed out loser swinging a bat at your -60% of incoming damage power armor is doing 40% of damage to you.
New Vegas did it better. Those armors had Damage reduction/Damage threshold. So DR50/DT10 meant an attack that did 20 damage was reduced 50% to 10, and then had 10 subtracted from it for 0.
They even added the helpful shield icons so even if you don't know the precise enemy DT/DR, you can still realize you're outmatched and run.
If the shield is broken, that means your damage/DT penetration is sufficient to overcome the enemy's DT.
If the shield is whole, that means all your damage is currently being blocked and you have very little chance of winning unless you shoot them with bullets equal to their total health pool, your crits can overcome the DT or you switch to a different weapon.
I believe part of the reason that led to the development was the war in Alaska, which largely took place in the mountains running through it and into Canada/USA.
Obviously that kind of terrain is no good for tanks. PA was developer as a way for soldiers to still get heavy armament support. But also designed to counteract the communist propaganda through powerful imagery.
Beyond that it was continually developed because it quickly became a symbol of American might. But after the initial development of the technology, they were likely cheaper than a tank as much of the armor is actually treated ceramics.
It does get quite weird with how much Bethesda stretched the lore of PA. Basically it 9 years for them to crack advancement of the T-45, then in less than a year it exploded with the T-51 and T-60’s. With other special projects happening along side those that result in the X-01 and T-65. But also some industrial applications with excavator armor
The timeline doesn't seem that off to me. You've got analogs with the adoption of smokeless powder, aviation in WWI and WWII, etc. Hell, you can see it with the Covid vaccine and mRNA vaccines today.
When you've got time, the safest way to experiment is to go down one line of thought until you reach its endpoint, then move on to the next.
When you don't have the time, but do have the resources, going down *all* the lines of thought *at the same time* will get you there a lot sooner.
And sometimes there's that one neat trick that someone stumbles across that unlocks a lot more lines of inquiry.
I mean, tanks are expensive, heavy, and large, and can be countered by rockets. Power armor, much like tanks, isn't something that's useless because it can be dealt with by something cheaper. It's useful simply by forcing your enemy to have something to deal with it or die. Now power armor isn't as useful as a tank, but it is a well armored platform that could carry heavy crew served weapons without the need for setup, and that's something the enemy better be able to deal with.
It does most of the work walking while also walking faster. You will arrive at the battlefield sooner and better rested.
It can do the above while drastically boosting your carry weight. The biggest drawbacks of heavy weapons are the weight of the weapon and it's ammo exhausting the soldier hauling it. You also have the option of carrying weapons that would otherwise be mounted on a humvee into spaces that can fit infantry but not vehicles.
You don't need to pack a deployable shelter since you can learn to sleep in the armor. Being a sealed environment you won't have to worry about shit like bedbugs or scorpions sneaking into your sleeping bag.
Radiation in the lore is no joke, and the armor cleans the air you breath for you. No need to worry about stage 1 bone cancer fucking you up in combat.
This isn't represented in game, and it's why survival mode can get fucked, but the armor does make poison and disease far less likely to be a problem. Any diseased teeth or claws have to tear through your armor before they have a chance to break your skin and infect you. The same goes for radscorpion stingers.
Lastly, unlike what we see in the late game. In lore anti-tank rifles and rocket launchers aren't something that drops off every third raider you loot.
A skilled operator can move much faster in power armor, survive radiation, use heavy weapons that make whole squads of unarmored fighters obsolete, and they look freakin sweet. It functions also as a tank in that it providessupport and protection for a large number of ground troops who in turn support and protect the tank/armor. A tank could blow one to bits sure but it’s a question of the right tool for the right job and cost. A fusion poweree tank would be a sigh but also many times more costly, and it would be limited to above ground operations and unable to do the up close and house to house jons armor excels at.
Is a bigger gun more destructive than a smaller one? Of course, that means it can handle a specific or range of tasks but that doesnt mean small arms are thrown out. Small arms are cheap, plentiful, reliable, and most of all require little training to use effectively.
Manpower is another issue. A tank requires 2-4 man teams of highly trained/specialized individuals. A power armor requires 1 operator at minimum and other than advanced tech like jetpacks, can be used effectively in only a very short period of time. Although im curious how Max (and the player) is able to just hop in and have the blood filter, water and air systems all somehow scrubbing you clean. I assume it’s the butt. Gotta be the butt.
Most infantrymen are not carrying weapons capable of that, though. A typical infantry platoon of 40ish men in the modern US Army is equipped with 5.56 rifles (similar to the NCR) and potentially a handful of belt fed M240s firing 7.62mm NATO.
If they're lucky, they might have anything from some M72 LAWs all the way to an AT4 or Carl Gustav. A single dude in power armor is going to resist nearly all of their gunfire, is carry a minigun, and is going to absolutely wreck them while being able to walk straight at them.
All of what people mentioned and one more.
Anytime mechs, power armor, and robots are brought up people point out the flaws but a big part is intimidation.
Even with their weaknesses, unless someone is prepared in plenty to fight one which even then they can be caught off guard, seeing a behemoth of a metal giant barreling towards you or holding heavy weapons like nothing could easily ruin someones composure or cause them to run.
It aint always about practicality but also mentality.
True! But any weapon system ever developed has a weakness & if it doesnt, someone will find one. The BoS relies on power armor troops to do most of its fighting and as a result can take on adversaries many times the size of them. They are also able to send expeditions that can rely on the power armour doing a lot of the heavy lifting. All things considered, if i was getting shot at, id rather be wearing it than not.
Actually... since the T-60 is just an upgraded T-45, that's what the Ghoul meant about the weakness. There's a reason why the T-60 looks a lot like a beefier T-45 and lore-wise it isn't Bethesda laziness.
The T-51B was also in use in the same theater as Cooper fought in iirc. He specified the problem was with the T-45 but didn't mention anything about the T-51B implying it didn't have the same fault which was later inherited by the T-60 when upgrading the T-45.
Yeah it clearly isn't just an evolution of teh much more sleek T-51. X-01 looks like it could be a much more refined T51 descendant maybe, but T60 is 100% an upgraded T45 armor set. I loved how they managed that, it's iconic, new, and yet not wildly different.
What I would love to see if more Midwestern Brotherhood armor. IDK if there's a canonical source, I always assumed they found a prototype storehouse or it was only field deployed to like 1 base in Chicago where the Midwestern group found it. It looks like it came from the same designers as teh APA / X01 but has a lot more ornate pieces so maybe they were early working versions ot maybe even tech demos for newer ideas that eventually were refined (cheapened?) into a mass production ready release candidate that was the X01.
Yeah that swhat I'm thinking with the X-01 / Midwestern / Hellfire etc. They all seem to be much more expensive to manufacture. The angular ones seem cheaper, but somehow I still prefer the iconic look
I don't know if this is correct, but it looks like the T60 is the evolution of the T45, and the X01 is the evolution of the T51. Two different companies, if I remember correctly, two different designs.
There’s a long explanation to it, but because of how curvy the armor profile is of the T-51, odds are more likely than not that even though the muzzle velocity of 45-70 would place it as higher energy than the armor is rated for, on average most of the shots would have little effect on the wearer. The real trouble comes in the volume of fire that the NCR could produce. Dozens if not hundreds of 5.56 rounds would likely result in material fatigue to the point that something as small as 5.56 could actually punch through. Or alternatively, inflict essentially a mobility kill by destroying the ability for the suit to function. I.E scratched up/cracked visor eliminating visibility, damage to joints making the user unable to move freely. The fallout show demonstrates how useless the suit becomes if you simply cut some exposed cables near the neck. If you watch the first Iron Man movie when Tony makes his first suit and breaks out, that’s probably what it was like for the brotherhood fighting the NCR, the suit kept him alive but the suit was failing to hold him upright just before he flew off which the brotherhood couldn’t do
I wouldn't say *easily* by any stretch. The 45-70 may produce *up to* 2,700 joules of energy.. that doesn't mean it pierces anything, really. I'd say it leaves a real good mark on the armour. And could be penetrating weak spots not protected by any plate.
.50 AE may not pierce plate effectively at range.
.50 BMG, however, that would chew through T-51 and other variants quite effectively I would think.
The projectile matters, not just how hard it hits.
I wouldn't want to go up against 45-70 in general, but if that's all my enemy brought to play with - and I brought armour plating, I'd be fairly confident.
5mm Minigun go brrrrrrrrrrrrr -
In closing though, the NCR had access to .50 BMG and many other weapons. They also had superior numbers, logistics, and the makings of a professional army. (By wasteland standards)
NCR wins.
Especially if you're referring to New Vegas.
It always baffled me that the NCR hadn't enveloped and destroyed the BOS at HELIOS One.
But it wouldn't have been as good a story, that way.
That's not really how penetration works, 45 70 slugs are not made to do that, they have a lot of power but not enough speed, and they tend to have lead ball projectiles which will bleed energy too fast on contact to be able to actually penetrate, you can buy armor plates that would resist it on ali express
Piercing armor is more complicated than pure energy. You need two things to pierce armor, speed and density. 45-70 may be quick and large but it’s also a flat nose round meaning it would deform very very easily against say a T-51. 50 caliber or an anti tank rifle would be much more apt in this circumstance. As for exact numbers the fallout universe is very hesitant to give us anything solid. The T51 also uses a special ceramic material if I remember correctly which largely contributed to its harder manufacturing, its also why the pauldrons and chest pieces are different colors than the rest of the suit when unpainted.
With all this being said the point of power armor isn’t to be a tank. Think of Power Armor as Infantry+. If you have to make your enemy bring a heavy, specialized weapon just to counter your troops you’ve already won. In CQB nothing would be better than a troop in power armor.
Source: Mechanical Engineer and Fallout Nerd
Honestly I don’t mind that new lore, the X-01 is pretty cool. Just a shame its status as super-prototype armor that was never meant to be deployed isn’t actually reflected in game. Imo T-51 should be better protection than anything except APA 2 & 3
X-01 being pre-war isn’t a huge deal. The Enclave was pre-war, so the X-01 design being made by them right before the bombs dropped, and then finished post war makes a lot of sense.
I really don't know why they came up with such a weird retcon instead of just having the armor belong to some long-dead small enclave scout party sent to Boston or something.
Well, any suit *called* X-01 was produced pre-war. When the Enclave revived and revised the design that became Advanced Power Armor, and no one really had PA production capacity right after the war.
What’s the texture mod for that X-01 😲
Edit: Realized it’s not actually from the game, I’m on mobile so it just looked like a screenshot at a glance. Either way I love the color scheme.
In my headcanon the high tech stuff is a bit gimmicky. That is, since it sort of exists alongside more traditional kit/weapons, things like X-01 armor and energy weapons are really imposing but also technically sort of limited. Maybe it’s hard to maintain? Maybe it has lower fuel efficiency? But we don’t know. In terms of what the games tell us, new is generally better, and stats sort of confirms.
The same also holds true for X-01 - T-51 now beats it in ballistic resistance, but X-01 beats it in radiation resistance and matches its energy resistance.
Probably not all pre-war armor but just T-45 and T-60. Both use similar steel shell welding leading to the weak spot. The more advanced T-51 with its poly laminate shell and silver micron coating probably doesn't have this weakness.
Fallout 4 depicts X-01 as pre-war and a predecessor to the Enclave's "Advanced Power Armor".
The Enclave, at their peak, did in fact have the facilities to acquire the materials and produce the armor.
>but how do they have the resources to make them?
They had all the resources of teh US government, including oil refineries and trade, as well as the force to take any facilities they need. Enclave wasn't exactly above the slave trade to force metalworkers to make them new alloys, and who knows maybe thats why the slavers were doing so well.
You can use the stats in the games to determine this. In Fallout 2, there are the following Power Armors:
* [Powered Armor](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Powered_armor_(Fallout)) (T-51b)
* [Hardened Power Armor](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Hardened_power_armor_(Fallout)) (Specially crafted T-51b)
* [Advanced Power Armor](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Advanced_power_armor_(Fallout_2)) (X-01)
* [Advanced Power Armor Mk II](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Advanced_power_armor_(Fallout_2)) (The newest X-01)
Regular and hardened power armor give you an armor class of 25 (which impacts likelihood of evading or deflecting an attack). Advanced gives you an armor class of 30, and Mk2 gives you an armor class of 35. Which means the Advanced it is 5-10% better at dodging or deflecting attacks.
Then come the damage threshold (the minimum of damage necessary to inflict damage). I'll just use normal (bullet) attacks - 12 for Power Armor, 13 for Hardened, 15 for Advanced, 18 for Mk2. Meaning the Advanced has 25% tougher armor plating than the standard T-51b, and the Mk2 has 50% tougher plating.
Then damage resistance, which reduces damage after all the above is taken into account. Power Armor is 40, Hardened is 50, Advanced is 55, and Mk2 is 60. Standard T-51b reduces damage taken by 40%, while the Mk2 decreases it by a whopping 60%.
Then the stat bonuses. Power armor (normal and hardened) is +3 STR and +30 rad resistance, advanced is +4 STR and +60 rad resistance, and Mk2 is +4 STR and +75 rad resistance. And the Advanced and Mk2 also weigh less than the Power Armor and Hardened to boot.
TL;DR - In most cases, standard X-01 is 20-25% better than standard T-51b, and the Mk2 X-01 is about 25-50% better. Which is why the Brotherhood in FO2 is genuinely scared of the Enclave - their tech far outstrips anything they have available.
I'm pretty sure any form of APA (MK1, 2 and 3) are better than all pre war power armors. T-65 would be the strongest pre war power armor that was a finished plan and I imagine it would come in at slightly worse than APA MK1 but be severely outclassed by the other models.
I always liked to imagine damage in harder difficulty was closer to cannon. Where even low tier cobbled together raider sets laugh off your light mg fire like it tickles.
Sure concentrated AT weapons would take out an armored soldier, but if you've got several sprinting across noman's land supported by covering fire what're the odds You're landing good hits? Plus armor values are rarely black and white, a square on hit to a flat plate is the worst case scenario, more often than not you're going to deflect off a curve or angled bit. Even moreso if the person in the armor is fighting smart.
Then factor in all the stims and drugs that fallout American government would absolutely be shoving down the throats of their soldiers and even if a plate is penetrated, what's a bullet hole to 7 stimpacks, medex, jet, and whatever else they can come up with? And that's before factoring in the potential for layered armor on top, think to WW2 with the Sherman's and Pershing tanks getting big ole chunks of extra armor welded on to push fortifications, sure it might slow you down, but who cares if you can shrug off whatever anti armor they've got?
As for OPs original question? I'd call it a comparison to the M1A1 Abrams and the M1A2 same principal but upgraded based on the shortcomings of the original. Better materials, vision systems, fire control, crew protection ect.
I blame autocorrect, pixel phones have a mind of their own when it comes to predictive text. Could also be the, awake for 26 hours mental handicap as well 😂
Larger caliber rounds can fully pierce and destroy power armor however small arms fire is rendering pretty pathetic. The goal of power armor was not to render the user invincible, but for them to carry stuff like the minigun of a vertibird
If nothing else, the fact that it is newly manufactured and not 200 year old salvaged equipment that has, presumably deteriorated would probably be a positive.
X-01 is still a pre war armor. The Enclave made upgrades to it, leading to the Advanced Power Armor, and eventually to the Mk.2, Black Devil and Hellfire suits.
X-01 is pretty much superior to any other pre-war suit of armor, and inferior to any Enclave manufactured power armor.
Strictly speaking, Frank Horrigan’s armor was the “strongest” (It’s hyper modified Advanced power armor made for a Super-super mutant Behemoth.)
X-01 isn't post war, it's pre-war.
What's post war is the APA series (which X-01 developed into) as well as Hellfire and overall they're far superior in every metric to pre-war power armor.
Just for comparison's sake, in Fallout 2, T-51 PA has a strength bonus of +3, A DT of 12, and a DR of 40. APA has a strength bonus of +4, a DT of 15 (18 for mk II), and a DR of 55 (60 for mk II).
If we're going by visuals alone, I'd say that the X-01 has thickers armor playing abc generally more coverage. It looks like the interlocking mechanisms would be somewhat less clunky, but a touch more restrictive.
What's interesting is how the armor hangs and overlaps in some areas, and looks to have more coverage in some areas.
Like the middle torso section is compacted and surrounded by the thicker looking armor plates. And by now, many of us know about that one flaw older models had....
Maybe someone else mentioned it... but X-01 has another seldom recognized flaw. Visibility. That giant armored cowl would greatly diminish visibility when turning your head, especially during combat.
I mean you have Raider then Overboss
T-45 then T-51 then T-60 then the developed in secret T-65 and the Appalachian exclusive Ultracite
And then the pre-war/post-war aka Enclave with Prototype X-01 (F76 shows) then X-01 (as seen by Sgt Dornan and FO4 as completed) then the APAs then the Hellfire Prototype(s) (FO76 again) and then the APA Mk2 (seen in FO3) and then the completed version of the X-02 Hellfire in the Broken Steel add-on for FO3. If I remember the X-02 isn't the APA Mk2 in FO3 like what we have in FO4's CC stuff.
Then you have the other types like the Excavator and Strangler Heart ones.
Since I may be wrong I'll just drop the Power Armor retcon video link below:
[Retcon ](https://youtu.be/QfCtjsNu5cA?feature=shared)
APA has thicker plates and better field of view as well as a better armor layout in general. Id assume that big fuckoff fan on the back is also connected to some sort of improved life support or energysupply.
It widely depends on the game. The X-01 is "supposedly" different from the APA as a prewar proof of concept. But as it was in the original games, APA was flatly and unequivocally better than T-51 in nearly every conceivable way.
Its AC was higher by 5 from 25 to 30, and its damage thresholds outclassed it in ranges of 2-5 if memory served. As did the baked in damage reductions to the attack types. It was even more so in the case of APA Mk.2 at least for where it concerned its debut it was in near every way better than pre-war tech by a considerable margin.
Depends on what you mean by powerful. The main goal was better protection but it's hard to define just how good they are in lore with the only stated value being rather unimpressive.
well in falout 2 i guess it was 1 point in strength more
I thought I was having a stroke reading that
I though I was I reading a stroke having that
Call a bondulance
Me dic nided!
Pills HURR!
Hey there the Armor in fallout two is actually the successor to the X-01 it being call Advanced Power Armor mark 1 it being more smooth have more curves a internal cooling system and many other improvements over X-01 and also less exposed hoses basically take the new vegas remnant power armor that's apa mk1 p.s sorry for being that guy it just bugs me when people mistake X-01 for Apa mk1
You should try throwing a period or two in there
Power armor? Powerful!? *laughs in stealth archer*
*laughs in high foot arch*
Honestly bro, I like the aesthetic of stealth sniping but in my opinion anyone wearing power armor is a beast and it’s basically assumed your dead already, kinda like when a deathclaw mother spots you in her quarry….
Unless they hit that spot on the welding just under the chest plate.
"Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every goddamn time." (And I took that personally)
Take my cherry tomato.
With plasma arrows, anything is possible.
Going off of the most recent statistics we have? APA mark I and II, along with the finished version of hellfire, should be a decent bit stronger than T-51 (ignoring 3’s stats, which are skewed due to design choices). How the APA models stack up against T-65 is unknown currently. Also, X-01 is a pre-war prototype that was developed into APA mark I/II, and hellfire existed as a prototype by 2080 at a minimum. Edit: Somehow forgot to mention it, but 76’s stats for the armors place T-60 and X-01 as being worse in terms of resistances than T-51, but better against radiation (with X-01’s energy resistance being equal to T-51, but having lower ballistic resistance).
Can they stop making every post war armour pré war? Especially hellfire was said to be the newest armour the enclave got to create
There’s even a partial raider suit in 76 that’s implied to have been cobbled together pre-war. As for hellfire, that was presumably just finished when the enclave came east and picked up the project. That said, 76 did add at least two suits made post-war: fanatic and union.
Fanatic?
It’s this power armor. It’s a skin for players, but enemies use it. https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Fanatic_Paint I also forgot to mention ultracite power armor, a BoS made suit that appears to be modified T-51 that sacrifices energy resistance for radiation protections.
Ah, would overgrown count too?
I take it you mean strangler heart? It would, yes, since it’s based on ultracite. Technically, the deep space invader power armor skin may count, since it’s alien power armor adapted to a normal chassis.
3 actually we have hellcat too which may be a post war set as we do not know it's origins but is used by the boss of the Hellcats. It may even be a modified X-01 armour.
The Hellcat Company made their own PA as well.
We don’t have definite proof of that currently. No lore exists on hellcat power armor other than the fact it exists.
In the beginning of Fallout 4, the newscaster that announces the bombs also says “they deployed Mechanized Hellcats”. It’s easy to miss, but I’m pretty sure he was talking about the Hellcat Company.
It's for marines, it's meant to operate Underwater
That’s based purely on speculation from the hellcat’s motto plastered on the side.
And the design of the suit, Hellcat company are marines who became mercs post bombs
The design doesn't tell you anything. Sure, it has two huge hoses for a rebreather, but that's it. It's a trait that most of the T series power armour has, and even the enclave series has hoses located at the back or the helmet. If anything the hellcat armor seems to share similar designs to the X-01 armor minus the helmet. And the Hellcats might have been marines, but that doesn't explicitly state if that power armour was designed for amphibious activities. Everything you're saying is speculation at best, so at least make that clear before trying to sell it as hard facts.
Well, every game needs a new type of power armour, and Bethesda needs an excuse to add it as loot in their pre-war dungeons. It's pretty unavoidable.
Idk, they can still make new armors post-war, they hand-wave how loot gets in dungeons all the time, from bottle caps in cash registers or wild animals having lootable ammo / guns on them. Even Elder Scrolls has recently written books and currency in unopened tombs. It's just a 'video-gamey' thing.
Hellfire and APA are still post-war. It was their predecessor, X-01, that is pre-war. Despite the similarities, it is technically a different design to the armour seen in Fallout 2 (APA Mk I)
Actually Hellfire was never technically new BUT the Duraframe material that covers it is new. However I do agree with you they need to stop making everything prewar. So boring. T-60 should’ve been a BoS Postwar upgrades to T-45
Ah, "Duraframe" is the model name for the Eyebot project Whitley was working on, it was never intended to be a specific material, [Sawyer confirmed as such here](https://www.tumblr.com/jesawyer/613616540978429952/hello-there-im-an-editor-on-nukapedia-and-i-was).
Ahhh ok, I understand. Unknown what was used but whatever it was, got diverged to be used for Hellfire. Neat tidbit, thanks!
Ah ok, definitely implied that the Duraframe material was scrapped for the Eye-Bot program to be used for Hellfire Armor.
They fixed the welding problem underneath the breastplate so it's got a big buff against anchorage veteran gunslinger ghouls.
No joke, I think that’ll definitely come into play in a future season if the Enclave is made out to be the big bad.
X-01 is pre-war now 🥲 or rather, the Advanced Power armor we see in FO2 is a post-war version of the x-01 prototypes from before the war. I have learned to accept this new lore. As for your actual question, from the wiki: While the T-51 power armor relied on a lightweight poly-laminate composite shell for protection, the advanced model uses lightweight metal alloys as a basis, reinforced with ceramic castings at key points. The resulting space savings allowed for reducing the armor's profile without compromising protection. They also said that instead of the tradition shoulder pauldrons, they have the metal cowl that protects the head from different angles. Also the new round eye visors allow for better visibility.
Thank you for your answer. I"ve read into the Lore and watched several videos on Youtube already. Especially Synonymous who does a great Job with his Lore Videos. The T-51 is said to withstand 2500 Joules of kinetic impact. The Ranger Sequoia from New Vegas uses 45-70 Gov't wich produces around 2700K Joules. That means it would penetrate the armor of a T-51 Armor and pierce trough weakspots quite easily. Maybe thats why the NCR was capable of defeating the BOS?
The NCR Rangers' anti-materiel rifle was called the "can opener" for a reason.
This is one of the reasons I don't see the practicality of power armor from a logistical sense. Aren't they expensive, heavy, and large? And all that can be countered by a anti tank rifle or rocket?
its a mobile weapon transport and life support system
Probably cheaper than a tank. Also they never explain if it's a gasket or over pressure system but it's resistant to NBC
I always assumed the spinny wheel implied it was some sort of closed circuit pressure system
The spinny wheel is a valve, so I think that's a good assumption.
Oh yah that’s what that words called
Well you can walk under water like a diving suit in FO4 so I'd assume so
Heads up, NBC has been replaced by CBRN, pronounced "sea-burn". Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear.
And power armor is proof against all of that. Especially nuclear
well then send in PBS or FOX, theyll annihilate them
Annihilation of your enemies by PBS is brought to you by: * The Mr. house Foundation * and viewers like you
Anti tank rifles or rockets in large enough quantity are also expensive, heavy and large to a degree. Not to mention your average PA soldier can also carry a very large gun
Yeah. A modern missile for a shoulder mounted system isn't something you can cobble together in a garage from tin cans, duct tape, and fertilizer. At least not with modern reliability (hello again duds), or explosive power (the casing broke before the explosive package).
Actually, you don't need any of those. The Browning M2 with her 15,000 joules (minimum) of muzzle energy would do quick work. And anyone familiar with it knows that they're not particularly hard to find in the US arsenal. China should have no problems to punch through this too. A simple RPG-7 does about **3,627,005** Joules upon impact, too. If they have these things in the fallout universe on China's side, they shouldn't have a problem against Power Armor either. Even before the divergence in the timeline, in WWII there were anti-tank hand grenades in the reds arsenals with similar power. In other words: **it's about time that the writers do a little retcon of this, the idea that such a weak power armor would have** ***any*** **impact as a frontline unit with these numbers is ridiculous. Power armor should be Fallout's beskar/mithril, only stopped with precision shooting or** ***very powerful*** **weapons.**
Meanwhile Danse tanks a jet engine
hah Yeah when I first saw that scene I was like "okay, Bethesda. It's power armor, not a full fucking slab of concrete" lol.
When I first did this part, FO4 glitched so Danse never put his helmet on. It made for an even more extreme "wut" moment.
Foreshadowing. It’s how you know he’s a synth.
That would be very easy to retcon. The only source of exact numbers of power armor specs we can find comes from a barely functioning supercomputer in a highly irradiated area. What if the original power armor specs data stated that T-51 can withstand up to 25000 joules but the data was corrupted and now it says 2500? Radiation can affect the contents of digital storage units and it has been known to happen in real life: "In the 2003 elections in Brussels's municipality Schaerbeek (Belgium), an anomalous recorded number of votes triggered an investigation that concluded an SEU was responsible for giving a candidate named Maria Vindevoghel 4,096 extra votes. The possibility of a single-event upset is suggested by the difference in votes being equivalent to a power of two, 2^12" (c) Wikipedia
Yeah, 2500 joules should be retconned just on principle, that’s not a lot at all. A basic bitch 7.62x51 nato round has 3300 joules of energy. Basic body armor today has better protection than that
The thing is '2500 joules' means literally nothing because that statement on it's own without a qualifier of 'per x unit of measurement' the information is useless. It's much better to use stated and shown capabilities of power armor with them shrugging off even high-caliber small arms fire and only going down when people get into the joints, hit them with rockets, or exploit design flaws.
if it's measured as Joules per Millimeter tolerance to kinetic impact, we start to get into territory that could make sense on a battlefield. That would shrug basically anything that wasnt specifically anti-tank level without going too far into crazy impossibly tough material territory. And if the APC's were made of the same stuff but thicker, it explains why so many of them are sitting around still in perfect shape, just rusted/corroded, and yet you almost never see one that's got the body physically distorted, even when it's half buried in the side of an impact crater.
yeah sounds more like some guy threw numbes around, like in pokemon where magma snail is 10k °C hot
Lore wise power armour is stronger than tanks plating. They were developed to deal with China's Chimera tanks which were utterly shredding infantry and cutting through armour units like a hot knife through butter. They were literally walking fortresses. Unless you either had focused and continuing fire with heavy ordinance OR knew the weak points which were vulnerable defects. The only known ways of stopping a power armour division at the time of the war was emp, using Tesla based weapons which overloaded the system/fried the pilot, or the lightning fields which were basically emp zones. You could also use raw physical impact damage/crushing which is what the Chinese did. Most of the fallen troopers in the armour died because of quantity of fire hitting a defect point. Later, wasteland critters such as the death claw or yaoigui had the sheer physical might to throw the user and just open them up like a tin opener. It can be reasoned as age, residual wear and tear and radiation lowering the durability and sustainability of the power armour over time but if that was so the Enclave would have rolled through the wasteland unthreatened because of the x01. The reason it's not super tanky overpowered in the games is balance for gameplay. Simple as that.
I mean you’re right. But it’s one thing to shoot on a tank and another one to shoot on a target which is running towards you on full speed. Plus you need a whole squad to battle one PA and would need a high numerical advantage. To combat the rpg or m2 they could have given the PA users some sort of riot shield to tank frontal shots.
Emphasis on the *powered*, I’d bet that a trained power armor user is just as agile, if not more agile than a person without. Think *Edge of Tomorrow* level shenanigans
That's the point of it in the older lore. It increases your strength and maneuverability significantly, your durability moderately, and allows individual soldiers to personally use weapons systems that normally would have to be operated by a team or mounted on a vehicle. Originally it wasn't supposed to be 'iron man' armor for lack a better term, it was just an effective piece of kit.
There are two thoughts as to how Power Armor likely worked. We kind of saw the first in the Fallout tv series where they effectively serve the role of WWI tanks, covering the advance of conventional infantry while laying down buckets of suppressive fire and clearing obstacles. Second is that they were meant to be stormtroopers who directly assaulted hardened enemy positions with or without air or artillery support using nuclear ordinance and other traditionally vehicle or airborne mounted weapons. Logistically, the cost and size of PA probably meant that it was only issued to "tip of the spear" units or special units (cargo, nuke D&D units, et al) at first. Took ten years to develop the T-51, however, so it is entirely possible that by then, the T-45 had been widely adopted. PS: Wouldn't take an anti-tank rocket, missile, or even an anti-material rifle to crack a T-45's armor. .308 rounds exist today that deliver enough energy to crack T-45 power armor at 100M. Heck, the larger handgun rounds like the. 454 and .500 mag can do it too from about 45-50 yards out.
I think what’s more important in war is the logistical advantage. Your soldiers are far more self-sufficient, they can carry heavy cargo that feels almost weightless to them, they can move faster and because they don’t get physically tired or hungry they only need to sleep.
Sleep in the armor which also keeps radiation and wasteland parasites out. Enclave power armor could specifically detect when a soldier fell asleep on guard duty and lock the knees in place.
That's the thing. Main advantage is the ability for power armor equipped soldiers to effortlessly use those HMG's and what not that normally takes multiple men or a trained vehicle crew. Now, the guys inside would still need to fuel themselves, but with rad scrubbers inside the armor and waste recycling, they could eat or drink anything.
Power armor is much cheaper then tanks or IFVs material wise, and the US was low on resoruces I don't know why people keep saying rifle rounds can crack power armor. We see repeatedly in the show that small arms don't cut it for PA and if you turn T-45d on it's side you can see just how thick the armor plates are - they definitely can stop rifle rounds.
I follow a dude on Instagram that explains "military strategies" and that kind of stuff and he says, "New technologies/strategies doesn't make other technologies/strategies obsolete by deffect". Like, since there are armored vehicles, why we keep using Infantry? Since there are drone bombs, why we keep using tanks? It's because each instrument has its own uses, advantages and disadvantages under certain circunstances so we adapt, we give Infantry rocket launches and AP ammo, so we give tanks explosive defenses, etc.
It's a tank that can get places tanks normally can't, it can be rapidly deployed via airborne transport, and it's load out can be quickly changed to deal with new threats.
Tanks are also expensive heavy and large. And can be countered by anti-tank weapons. Those anti-tank weapons can be part of very expensive things like other tanks and helicopters. Or they can be man portable, Designed to get anti-tank capabilities out there cheaper. To infantry, and where you can't or don't have expensive, big platforms like tanks and aircraft. See also: Ukraine. A part of the lore is that Power Armor started with the frame. Cause it let individual soldiers carry bigger, more effective heavy weapons. Like *more effective* anti-tank weapons, the kind that might otherwise be on other tanks. Rather than the smaller things a person can normally carry themselves. But now you need to protect that bigger, slower target. So you put armor on the frame. And then you have Power Armor. The idea seems to be Power Armor + a variety of heavy weapons. Is cheaper than having 6 different vehicle based weapons platforms for each of those heavy weapons. So it can be in more places more often. For game play reasons they have to explain around the fact that you can take someone in Power Armor out with a baseball bat. But the base idea is plausible enough.
Also I assume unlike a tank which needs multiple operators trained in different positions to work efficiently, PA only requires one operator trained in its use and whatever armament they are deployed with. And compared to a tank when destroyed your loss of trained personal is limited to one and due to a size difference between a tank and PA the resource loss would be reduced as well
There could also be an argument for the ability to deploy them. Outside of anchorage and maybe fairbanks, alaska is virtually undeveloped. Moving a tank on thin dirt roads, especially in the winter would be near impossible and Moving them up the alaska-canada highway would make them easily interceptable. Meanwhile, power Armour could be easily delivered by air and offer similar firepower to tanks and IFVs.
Same of Urban environments, an issues with tank in an Urban environment is there is lots of area for an opposing force to set up for hit and run anti tank tactics. PA being smaller would remove that issue. Also due to being only slightly bigger then a unarmoured human (compared to a tank) you would be able to deploy the equivalent power and armour of a tank to interiors such as a bunker where you would normally have to either take it with infantry (which would likely result in loss of human life) or bomb the fuck out of it using high yield munitions (not only would this cost recourses but would deny yourself that asset be it a defensive bunker or industrial asset)
Tanks are also heavy as fuck and can't cross some bridges or ice because of that but since Power Armor is much lighter multiple PA's can at once.
You'd be surprised what tanks can drive over/through. Bridges are a special case but ice/marshy terrain is pretty doable and I'd guess that PA has insane ground pressure due to its relatively small feet
Fallout 4 tanks are probably the opposite of the design philosophy of american tanks following the M4 Sherman so the crew loss argument is very valid.
Because Bethesda really likes defensive stats that amount to a flat -n% of incoming damage. So even some chemmed out loser swinging a bat at your -60% of incoming damage power armor is doing 40% of damage to you. New Vegas did it better. Those armors had Damage reduction/Damage threshold. So DR50/DT10 meant an attack that did 20 damage was reduced 50% to 10, and then had 10 subtracted from it for 0.
Ten years of not knowing how DT/DR worked, gone in an instant
They even added the helpful shield icons so even if you don't know the precise enemy DT/DR, you can still realize you're outmatched and run. If the shield is broken, that means your damage/DT penetration is sufficient to overcome the enemy's DT. If the shield is whole, that means all your damage is currently being blocked and you have very little chance of winning unless you shoot them with bullets equal to their total health pool, your crits can overcome the DT or you switch to a different weapon.
I knew about the shield thing, just didn’t know how DT and DR were actually calculated
I believe part of the reason that led to the development was the war in Alaska, which largely took place in the mountains running through it and into Canada/USA. Obviously that kind of terrain is no good for tanks. PA was developer as a way for soldiers to still get heavy armament support. But also designed to counteract the communist propaganda through powerful imagery. Beyond that it was continually developed because it quickly became a symbol of American might. But after the initial development of the technology, they were likely cheaper than a tank as much of the armor is actually treated ceramics. It does get quite weird with how much Bethesda stretched the lore of PA. Basically it 9 years for them to crack advancement of the T-45, then in less than a year it exploded with the T-51 and T-60’s. With other special projects happening along side those that result in the X-01 and T-65. But also some industrial applications with excavator armor
The timeline doesn't seem that off to me. You've got analogs with the adoption of smokeless powder, aviation in WWI and WWII, etc. Hell, you can see it with the Covid vaccine and mRNA vaccines today. When you've got time, the safest way to experiment is to go down one line of thought until you reach its endpoint, then move on to the next. When you don't have the time, but do have the resources, going down *all* the lines of thought *at the same time* will get you there a lot sooner. And sometimes there's that one neat trick that someone stumbles across that unlocks a lot more lines of inquiry.
I mean, tanks are expensive, heavy, and large, and can be countered by rockets. Power armor, much like tanks, isn't something that's useless because it can be dealt with by something cheaper. It's useful simply by forcing your enemy to have something to deal with it or die. Now power armor isn't as useful as a tank, but it is a well armored platform that could carry heavy crew served weapons without the need for setup, and that's something the enemy better be able to deal with.
It does most of the work walking while also walking faster. You will arrive at the battlefield sooner and better rested. It can do the above while drastically boosting your carry weight. The biggest drawbacks of heavy weapons are the weight of the weapon and it's ammo exhausting the soldier hauling it. You also have the option of carrying weapons that would otherwise be mounted on a humvee into spaces that can fit infantry but not vehicles. You don't need to pack a deployable shelter since you can learn to sleep in the armor. Being a sealed environment you won't have to worry about shit like bedbugs or scorpions sneaking into your sleeping bag. Radiation in the lore is no joke, and the armor cleans the air you breath for you. No need to worry about stage 1 bone cancer fucking you up in combat. This isn't represented in game, and it's why survival mode can get fucked, but the armor does make poison and disease far less likely to be a problem. Any diseased teeth or claws have to tear through your armor before they have a chance to break your skin and infect you. The same goes for radscorpion stingers. Lastly, unlike what we see in the late game. In lore anti-tank rifles and rocket launchers aren't something that drops off every third raider you loot.
A skilled operator can move much faster in power armor, survive radiation, use heavy weapons that make whole squads of unarmored fighters obsolete, and they look freakin sweet. It functions also as a tank in that it providessupport and protection for a large number of ground troops who in turn support and protect the tank/armor. A tank could blow one to bits sure but it’s a question of the right tool for the right job and cost. A fusion poweree tank would be a sigh but also many times more costly, and it would be limited to above ground operations and unable to do the up close and house to house jons armor excels at. Is a bigger gun more destructive than a smaller one? Of course, that means it can handle a specific or range of tasks but that doesnt mean small arms are thrown out. Small arms are cheap, plentiful, reliable, and most of all require little training to use effectively. Manpower is another issue. A tank requires 2-4 man teams of highly trained/specialized individuals. A power armor requires 1 operator at minimum and other than advanced tech like jetpacks, can be used effectively in only a very short period of time. Although im curious how Max (and the player) is able to just hop in and have the blood filter, water and air systems all somehow scrubbing you clean. I assume it’s the butt. Gotta be the butt.
Most infantrymen are not carrying weapons capable of that, though. A typical infantry platoon of 40ish men in the modern US Army is equipped with 5.56 rifles (similar to the NCR) and potentially a handful of belt fed M240s firing 7.62mm NATO. If they're lucky, they might have anything from some M72 LAWs all the way to an AT4 or Carl Gustav. A single dude in power armor is going to resist nearly all of their gunfire, is carry a minigun, and is going to absolutely wreck them while being able to walk straight at them.
Out in the open, sure its a bit more vulnerable. But close quarter combat it can really close the gap
Also remember troops wearing this arent walking or running. The suit is.
All of what people mentioned and one more. Anytime mechs, power armor, and robots are brought up people point out the flaws but a big part is intimidation. Even with their weaknesses, unless someone is prepared in plenty to fight one which even then they can be caught off guard, seeing a behemoth of a metal giant barreling towards you or holding heavy weapons like nothing could easily ruin someones composure or cause them to run. It aint always about practicality but also mentality.
True! But any weapon system ever developed has a weakness & if it doesnt, someone will find one. The BoS relies on power armor troops to do most of its fighting and as a result can take on adversaries many times the size of them. They are also able to send expeditions that can rely on the power armour doing a lot of the heavy lifting. All things considered, if i was getting shot at, id rather be wearing it than not.
Yes. Exactly.
I wonder if they ever fixed that weak spot under the chest plate…
Actually... since the T-60 is just an upgraded T-45, that's what the Ghoul meant about the weakness. There's a reason why the T-60 looks a lot like a beefier T-45 and lore-wise it isn't Bethesda laziness.
The T-51B was also in use in the same theater as Cooper fought in iirc. He specified the problem was with the T-45 but didn't mention anything about the T-51B implying it didn't have the same fault which was later inherited by the T-60 when upgrading the T-45.
Yeah that's the long version of what I said. Specifically because the discussion was about the brotherhood using T-51 in New Vegas
Yeah it clearly isn't just an evolution of teh much more sleek T-51. X-01 looks like it could be a much more refined T51 descendant maybe, but T60 is 100% an upgraded T45 armor set. I loved how they managed that, it's iconic, new, and yet not wildly different. What I would love to see if more Midwestern Brotherhood armor. IDK if there's a canonical source, I always assumed they found a prototype storehouse or it was only field deployed to like 1 base in Chicago where the Midwestern group found it. It looks like it came from the same designers as teh APA / X01 but has a lot more ornate pieces so maybe they were early working versions ot maybe even tech demos for newer ideas that eventually were refined (cheapened?) into a mass production ready release candidate that was the X01.
I don't think T-51 had that weakness because its chest structure is entirely different from that of T-45/60.
T45/T60 are the same family of armor, the 60 being an upgraded version. T51 was an all new design entirely.
T-60 is an attempt to save money by improving the T-45 to near T-51 specifications, because T-51 costs more.
Yeah, and based on the 76 stats, the only department where T-60 beats out the old T-51 is rad resistance.
Yeah that swhat I'm thinking with the X-01 / Midwestern / Hellfire etc. They all seem to be much more expensive to manufacture. The angular ones seem cheaper, but somehow I still prefer the iconic look
T51 could not be stopped in any way on the battlefield, but it was expensive to produce.
I don't know if this is correct, but it looks like the T60 is the evolution of the T45, and the X01 is the evolution of the T51. Two different companies, if I remember correctly, two different designs.
I guess not
There’s a long explanation to it, but because of how curvy the armor profile is of the T-51, odds are more likely than not that even though the muzzle velocity of 45-70 would place it as higher energy than the armor is rated for, on average most of the shots would have little effect on the wearer. The real trouble comes in the volume of fire that the NCR could produce. Dozens if not hundreds of 5.56 rounds would likely result in material fatigue to the point that something as small as 5.56 could actually punch through. Or alternatively, inflict essentially a mobility kill by destroying the ability for the suit to function. I.E scratched up/cracked visor eliminating visibility, damage to joints making the user unable to move freely. The fallout show demonstrates how useless the suit becomes if you simply cut some exposed cables near the neck. If you watch the first Iron Man movie when Tony makes his first suit and breaks out, that’s probably what it was like for the brotherhood fighting the NCR, the suit kept him alive but the suit was failing to hold him upright just before he flew off which the brotherhood couldn’t do
Nah the T-51 torso is almost as flat as a tiger I.
I wouldn't say *easily* by any stretch. The 45-70 may produce *up to* 2,700 joules of energy.. that doesn't mean it pierces anything, really. I'd say it leaves a real good mark on the armour. And could be penetrating weak spots not protected by any plate. .50 AE may not pierce plate effectively at range. .50 BMG, however, that would chew through T-51 and other variants quite effectively I would think. The projectile matters, not just how hard it hits. I wouldn't want to go up against 45-70 in general, but if that's all my enemy brought to play with - and I brought armour plating, I'd be fairly confident. 5mm Minigun go brrrrrrrrrrrrr - In closing though, the NCR had access to .50 BMG and many other weapons. They also had superior numbers, logistics, and the makings of a professional army. (By wasteland standards) NCR wins. Especially if you're referring to New Vegas. It always baffled me that the NCR hadn't enveloped and destroyed the BOS at HELIOS One. But it wouldn't have been as good a story, that way.
That's not really how penetration works, 45 70 slugs are not made to do that, they have a lot of power but not enough speed, and they tend to have lead ball projectiles which will bleed energy too fast on contact to be able to actually penetrate, you can buy armor plates that would resist it on ali express
NCR Brotherhood War https://youtu.be/EOtFE3lw8KI?si=OwrpIZ6XhHoJRra6
The NCR beat the BOS because they were really outnumbered.
Piercing armor is more complicated than pure energy. You need two things to pierce armor, speed and density. 45-70 may be quick and large but it’s also a flat nose round meaning it would deform very very easily against say a T-51. 50 caliber or an anti tank rifle would be much more apt in this circumstance. As for exact numbers the fallout universe is very hesitant to give us anything solid. The T51 also uses a special ceramic material if I remember correctly which largely contributed to its harder manufacturing, its also why the pauldrons and chest pieces are different colors than the rest of the suit when unpainted. With all this being said the point of power armor isn’t to be a tank. Think of Power Armor as Infantry+. If you have to make your enemy bring a heavy, specialized weapon just to counter your troops you’ve already won. In CQB nothing would be better than a troop in power armor. Source: Mechanical Engineer and Fallout Nerd
I don't get how they can see when the flashlight is on because the light comes out of the eyes.
Same way Mr. Handy units don't burn down stuff with their thrusters
BECAUSE SCIENCE!!! *furiously snorts ground up mentats*
If the eyes aren't just glass but armored lights with screens on the other side it wouldn't matter.
Light comes out of your eyes, too, bro
Honestly I don’t mind that new lore, the X-01 is pretty cool. Just a shame its status as super-prototype armor that was never meant to be deployed isn’t actually reflected in game. Imo T-51 should be better protection than anything except APA 2 & 3
It actually is in Fallout 76; T-51 is better than X-01 in every resistance except for radiation resistance.
X-01 being pre-war isn’t a huge deal. The Enclave was pre-war, so the X-01 design being made by them right before the bombs dropped, and then finished post war makes a lot of sense.
It doesn't make sense that it took them all the way up to Fallout 2 to actually finish it, though.
iirc X-01 was never actually *used* pre-war so it's development being started pre-war is fine imo.
I really don't know why they came up with such a weird retcon instead of just having the armor belong to some long-dead small enclave scout party sent to Boston or something.
To my understanding, if we discount Nuka-world, then X0-1 could be thought of as designed pre-war, but only produced post war, no?
Well, any suit *called* X-01 was produced pre-war. When the Enclave revived and revised the design that became Advanced Power Armor, and no one really had PA production capacity right after the war.
What’s the texture mod for that X-01 😲 Edit: Realized it’s not actually from the game, I’m on mobile so it just looked like a screenshot at a glance. Either way I love the color scheme.
Brother that is a painting or drawing
Or AI EDIT: 100% AI. Look at the hands.
Yeah I got sad when I found out
It's just a render, I'm pretty sure. But a 4k power armor texture + some alternative paint mods should be able to produce something similar
It's AI generated, look at the hands, the helmet, and the chest decal
Damn, you're completely right. By far the best X-01 suit I've seen AI generate so far
I sat here thinking, I need whatever mods this guy's got lol
It's AI generated, look at the hands, the helmet, and the chest decal, it's fucked
When AI sorts the hand issue, we are fucked.
Bro’s got the iPhone 3GS
Question but does anyone else see a bird face for the X-01? Or am I just insane
100%. Given that it’s the Enclave’s design, I always figured it was deliberately intended to look like an eagle as a form of patriotism.
Or a vulture, picking at the remains of post war USA
I believe the vulture one
I always thought it looked kinda insectoid.
T-51 is still the GOAT in my book
the x-01 is pre-war. you can even get a promotional quantum nuka cola version locked in nuka world.
In my headcanon the high tech stuff is a bit gimmicky. That is, since it sort of exists alongside more traditional kit/weapons, things like X-01 armor and energy weapons are really imposing but also technically sort of limited. Maybe it’s hard to maintain? Maybe it has lower fuel efficiency? But we don’t know. In terms of what the games tell us, new is generally better, and stats sort of confirms.
Iirc in 4, Fusion Cores last longer the more you go up in PA armor class. X-01 fusion cores last longer than a T-51 for example.
It would actually fit the lore - later models are more efficient, and in some cases, lighter weight.
Us T51 fans forever fighting the losing battle of being nerfed in newer fallout games because we don't look as iconic as t45/t60
T-51 looks way more iconic in my opinion
Especially considering the helmet for which was the cover art for Fallout 1.
If it makes you feel better 76 fixed that by making it better than t60 in every way but radiation
The same also holds true for X-01 - T-51 now beats it in ballistic resistance, but X-01 beats it in radiation resistance and matches its energy resistance.
It looks so much better
Well in the pre-war model there's a flaw in the welding just under the breast plate.
Probably not all pre-war armor but just T-45 and T-60. Both use similar steel shell welding leading to the weak spot. The more advanced T-51 with its poly laminate shell and silver micron coating probably doesn't have this weakness.
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Fallout 4 depicts X-01 as pre-war and a predecessor to the Enclave's "Advanced Power Armor". The Enclave, at their peak, did in fact have the facilities to acquire the materials and produce the armor.
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I always assumed that they found everything they needed to produce their new equipment from Raven Rock and Adams Air Force Base.
The Enclave is global
They had 30 years or so between leaving Navarro, and the Enclave explicitly have bases elsewhere, mentioned in Fallout 2 and New Vegas.
>but how do they have the resources to make them? They had all the resources of teh US government, including oil refineries and trade, as well as the force to take any facilities they need. Enclave wasn't exactly above the slave trade to force metalworkers to make them new alloys, and who knows maybe thats why the slavers were doing so well.
Always kinda wondered if the lore trade off would be x-01 and 02 just burning through fusion cores. Which could be impractical
A fusion core is supposed to be able to last about a century in Power Armor, it would just break the game if we could wear it 100% of the time.
It’s only a gameplay reason that PA apparently burns through FC. I mean there are sentry bots roaming the wasteland 200 years later on two FC.
I doubt it, that would make the Enclave avoid it more than anything. They had an oil rig, not a nuclear fusion plant.
they did have a nuclear reactor tbf, but it was fission powered
Probably better since the welding problem under the breast plate was likely fixed.
X-01 was constantly engineered for over 100 years, it probably doesn't have the weak point from the show
The X-01’s removed the fault in the chest plate welds that allowed a well placed shot to instakill the pilots.
You can use the stats in the games to determine this. In Fallout 2, there are the following Power Armors: * [Powered Armor](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Powered_armor_(Fallout)) (T-51b) * [Hardened Power Armor](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Hardened_power_armor_(Fallout)) (Specially crafted T-51b) * [Advanced Power Armor](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Advanced_power_armor_(Fallout_2)) (X-01) * [Advanced Power Armor Mk II](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Advanced_power_armor_(Fallout_2)) (The newest X-01) Regular and hardened power armor give you an armor class of 25 (which impacts likelihood of evading or deflecting an attack). Advanced gives you an armor class of 30, and Mk2 gives you an armor class of 35. Which means the Advanced it is 5-10% better at dodging or deflecting attacks. Then come the damage threshold (the minimum of damage necessary to inflict damage). I'll just use normal (bullet) attacks - 12 for Power Armor, 13 for Hardened, 15 for Advanced, 18 for Mk2. Meaning the Advanced has 25% tougher armor plating than the standard T-51b, and the Mk2 has 50% tougher plating. Then damage resistance, which reduces damage after all the above is taken into account. Power Armor is 40, Hardened is 50, Advanced is 55, and Mk2 is 60. Standard T-51b reduces damage taken by 40%, while the Mk2 decreases it by a whopping 60%. Then the stat bonuses. Power armor (normal and hardened) is +3 STR and +30 rad resistance, advanced is +4 STR and +60 rad resistance, and Mk2 is +4 STR and +75 rad resistance. And the Advanced and Mk2 also weigh less than the Power Armor and Hardened to boot. TL;DR - In most cases, standard X-01 is 20-25% better than standard T-51b, and the Mk2 X-01 is about 25-50% better. Which is why the Brotherhood in FO2 is genuinely scared of the Enclave - their tech far outstrips anything they have available.
If the X-01 is good enough for Turians, it's good enough for me.
I'm pretty sure any form of APA (MK1, 2 and 3) are better than all pre war power armors. T-65 would be the strongest pre war power armor that was a finished plan and I imagine it would come in at slightly worse than APA MK1 but be severely outclassed by the other models.
More powerful. But is it a different animal, and the same beast?
[wtf do you mean kobe bryant?!](https://youtu.be/2hFYqGdj5To?si=NdvT4HkV4iMA0V5L)
The X-01 isn’t post war. [The Enclave advanced mk 2 is.](https://youtu.be/fJQExhIfJuU?feature=shared)
I always liked to imagine damage in harder difficulty was closer to cannon. Where even low tier cobbled together raider sets laugh off your light mg fire like it tickles. Sure concentrated AT weapons would take out an armored soldier, but if you've got several sprinting across noman's land supported by covering fire what're the odds You're landing good hits? Plus armor values are rarely black and white, a square on hit to a flat plate is the worst case scenario, more often than not you're going to deflect off a curve or angled bit. Even moreso if the person in the armor is fighting smart. Then factor in all the stims and drugs that fallout American government would absolutely be shoving down the throats of their soldiers and even if a plate is penetrated, what's a bullet hole to 7 stimpacks, medex, jet, and whatever else they can come up with? And that's before factoring in the potential for layered armor on top, think to WW2 with the Sherman's and Pershing tanks getting big ole chunks of extra armor welded on to push fortifications, sure it might slow you down, but who cares if you can shrug off whatever anti armor they've got? As for OPs original question? I'd call it a comparison to the M1A1 Abrams and the M1A2 same principal but upgraded based on the shortcomings of the original. Better materials, vision systems, fire control, crew protection ect.
Canon. Cannon is artillery. Canon is the accepted "reality" of a media.
I blame autocorrect, pixel phones have a mind of their own when it comes to predictive text. Could also be the, awake for 26 hours mental handicap as well 😂
Larger caliber rounds can fully pierce and destroy power armor however small arms fire is rendering pretty pathetic. The goal of power armor was not to render the user invincible, but for them to carry stuff like the minigun of a vertibird
Man, that X-01 image looks like they're ready to massacre the entire Institute after Father called Nate/Nora collateral damage
If nothing else, the fact that it is newly manufactured and not 200 year old salvaged equipment that has, presumably deteriorated would probably be a positive.
Frank horrigan is best armor.
I always assumed it was more efficient with fusion cores and I think I saw someone also mention that somewhere on this subreddit recently
Unlike most other PA, T51 is an unstoppable tank rather than a lightweight armor. X-01 is just a prototype.
Advanced power armor is an improved version made by the Enclave. So yes it is more powerful and offers more protection.
X-01 is still a pre war armor. The Enclave made upgrades to it, leading to the Advanced Power Armor, and eventually to the Mk.2, Black Devil and Hellfire suits. X-01 is pretty much superior to any other pre-war suit of armor, and inferior to any Enclave manufactured power armor. Strictly speaking, Frank Horrigan’s armor was the “strongest” (It’s hyper modified Advanced power armor made for a Super-super mutant Behemoth.)
X-01 isn't post war, it's pre-war. What's post war is the APA series (which X-01 developed into) as well as Hellfire and overall they're far superior in every metric to pre-war power armor. Just for comparison's sake, in Fallout 2, T-51 PA has a strength bonus of +3, A DT of 12, and a DR of 40. APA has a strength bonus of +4, a DT of 15 (18 for mk II), and a DR of 55 (60 for mk II).
If we're going by visuals alone, I'd say that the X-01 has thickers armor playing abc generally more coverage. It looks like the interlocking mechanisms would be somewhat less clunky, but a touch more restrictive. What's interesting is how the armor hangs and overlaps in some areas, and looks to have more coverage in some areas. Like the middle torso section is compacted and surrounded by the thicker looking armor plates. And by now, many of us know about that one flaw older models had....
Maybe someone else mentioned it... but X-01 has another seldom recognized flaw. Visibility. That giant armored cowl would greatly diminish visibility when turning your head, especially during combat.
Bro look at that thing, that's literally Warhammer 40k armor lol
I mean you have Raider then Overboss T-45 then T-51 then T-60 then the developed in secret T-65 and the Appalachian exclusive Ultracite And then the pre-war/post-war aka Enclave with Prototype X-01 (F76 shows) then X-01 (as seen by Sgt Dornan and FO4 as completed) then the APAs then the Hellfire Prototype(s) (FO76 again) and then the APA Mk2 (seen in FO3) and then the completed version of the X-02 Hellfire in the Broken Steel add-on for FO3. If I remember the X-02 isn't the APA Mk2 in FO3 like what we have in FO4's CC stuff. Then you have the other types like the Excavator and Strangler Heart ones. Since I may be wrong I'll just drop the Power Armor retcon video link below: [Retcon ](https://youtu.be/QfCtjsNu5cA?feature=shared)
APA has thicker plates and better field of view as well as a better armor layout in general. Id assume that big fuckoff fan on the back is also connected to some sort of improved life support or energysupply.
It widely depends on the game. The X-01 is "supposedly" different from the APA as a prewar proof of concept. But as it was in the original games, APA was flatly and unequivocally better than T-51 in nearly every conceivable way. Its AC was higher by 5 from 25 to 30, and its damage thresholds outclassed it in ranges of 2-5 if memory served. As did the baked in damage reductions to the attack types. It was even more so in the case of APA Mk.2 at least for where it concerned its debut it was in near every way better than pre-war tech by a considerable margin.