intimidation affects actual combat because enemies who are not particularly courageous but who are not complete "wimps" either will still attack you, but as they will be a little frightened their combat abilities will go down slightly, and they will be more likely to flee when wounded.

I like it the way it is, no more TES elements brought into fallout please.

their combat abilities won't go down, they will just be hesitant, nervous etc...your skills don't decrease...it's not like I can't use a gun properly if I'm scared...how would this work with the player character anyway, it would force you to be intimidated and lose combat points when the actual gamer does not agree with that interpretation of the situation.

and why would frightened players attack you and not run away. It really makes no sense. And how do they take more damage from attacks? makes no sense. Intimidation changes a persons actions, not their skill levels.
If I'm scared of a big powerful guy I should be intimidated, but I will try my damn best and use all of my skills to defeat him if necessary. My skills don't disappear, just using those skills from fright may come into question.

Then what should be more protective then power armor?

A tank.

But PA will do for now.

Nothing. The amount of protection is not at question here.

Basically, in F3 no matter what your character type/play style, you would inevitably end up in PA - whether you are stealthy, a scientist or a fighter the optimum choice was always PA. As such, it was the be all and end all of armour. This was slightly improved in F:NV with the stealth suit and such, but still not perfect.

I always thought this was a problem. Fallout 3 was the start of my self-gimping; none of my stealthy characters ever used power armor despite the fact it was the "best" option. I wore leather armor pretty much until the end of the game for stealth characters. Got pretty good at self-gimping, came in handy for Skyrim.

I only used the Chinese Stealth Suit after obtaining it (which was at like level 14). Found it was the only thing I needed. I didn't consider the PA to be a better option than that for stealthy characters.

I wouldn't want armor to change that much from what Fallout 3/New Vegas did. One thing I would like added is the ability to add mods to your armor such as a DT/DR + implant, resistance to Fire, Guns +5, etc.

They should change the armour rate to same like in diablo etc. Its more nice to look that when you change your raider outfit that gives you +70 armor to Power armor that gives you +1300 armor. And that upgrading to advanced power armour to +2400 armour rating.

I didnt say it was, infact i was pointing out that NV was better for having the stealth suit, i.e. the stealth suit was better for stealth characters, whereas in F3 PA was your only option.
However, the game still suffered a binary opposition of PA vs SS, so wasnt perfect.

I primarily ended up using the ranger combat armor because it had extra bonuses while still giving good damage resistance...plus PA in F3 looks like [censored].

this is what i seek to avoid with my suggestion, as i believe PA sould only be used by "heavy soldier" type characters, those who mainly use heavy melee weapons and big guns.
what really irritates me is the total lack of effective light armors, i almost always RP a "lone wolf" type survivor and the only equipment which really suited my character was a "merc grunt outfit + combat helmet" in F3 and a "merc grunt outfit + trooper helmet" in FNV.

i would like to see more clothing of that style, with improved effects.

examples:

merc grunt outfit: 8 DT, 5 DR, + 15% torso health, + 5% explosive resistance. weight: 6,00. the same old merc grunt outfit, but it now has a flak jacket included so as to provide some protection.

steel helm: 2 DT, 2 CR, + 10% head health. weight: 2.50. looks exactly the same as the "trooper helm" from new vegas, but it's the same color as the merc grunt outfit's cargo trousers and lacks the goggles.

now, that kind of armor would be suitable to my type of character while not being useless later on in the main quest.

i would also like to see shields included in the next game, from crude balistic and anti-explosion shields made from scrap metal and wood by raiders and other low-tech outlaws to sophisticated balistic shields used by NCR.

how a shield would work is quite simple, equipping one replaces your ability to aim with a gun with that of blocking it also replaces the ability to "pistol whip" with a pushback attack. with melee weapons it only replaces the weapons block with it's own, not the special attack.

shields are the only thing which can "parry" projectiles apart from cover, this is absolutely vital to characters built around melee if guns become more realistic in terms of damage, the only alternative being stealth.

equipping a shield takes up your "two handed weapon" slot, shields are automatically equipped when you are using a one-handed weapon, it is not automatically equipped when you are "unarmed" but you can manually equip it in such a situation (see my inventory suggestions for details on the new quick inventory system).

example shield:

raider shield: (when equipped) AGI - 4, (these effects only occur when parrying and ONLY work against attacks that hit the shield) DT +24, prevents you from being critically hit. weight: 8.50, STR requirement: 7 (if not met you suffer a 20% penalty to your movement speed (on top of it's weight penalty) and lose 4 more points of agility).

I'm tired so I don't go through sequenting your whole post, but I do agree with this part. The class specifications, even if eventual and choosable, were something that were missing from the current (and past) Fallout iterations, and would be goot to add in the future. The same should be iterated to weapons too. Either you can or you can not use something, based on your skill. Or if used, provided with heavy penalties.

In what possible way would a merc grunt outfit increase hand to hand damage?

It should be +5% explosive resistance due to the flak jacket.

this would be a vast improvement, which would add some challenge and realism to the game. you would actually start out feeling like an "average joe" rather than some sort of demi-god if most armors and weapons had HEAVY penalties untill you actually developped some proficiency with them. so picking up a minigun and taking on a gang of 30 raiders at level 4 (successfully) will be out of the question.

but armor needs versatility above all else, actual trade-offs.

and, in response to wonderwombat and seb, yes, i meant explosive resistance, it was a mistake as i believed i removed the Hand to hand bonus, but actullay removed the resist bonus.

Glad that we agree.

If you're interested in more RPG specfic mecanicsms fit in the current gameplaystyle, see myhttp://www.gamesas.com/topic/1367279-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-thread-60/page__view__findpost__p__20640980 in the first page of this thread. It doesn't touch armors, but it is somewhat specific on other aspects.

maybe it has some studded leather hand wraps around the hands?

That's the thing about it... maybe.

Would Power armour have a unarmed bonus?

I mean you have some metal gauntlets and possibly a nice shiny metal boot to stick up their....

Maybe for "damage", but definitely not for "to hit". With the current gamepaly it could be presented appropriately through animation speed, but not optimally for full effect.

maybe just a small damage bonus, along with the strength bonus, but if we are going to go that far into it, then it should also decrease your unarmed skill because of your lack of mobility and dexterity(then again given the extreme simplicity of Beth's unarmed combat it wouldn't really make a difference in the current games).