lol I'll look up the wiki if that helps.

Here's a description in the wiki for the hydraulics:

"The armor is fitted with a back-mounted TX-28 MicroFusion Pack which generates an output power of 60,000 Watts to power the HiFlo hydraulic systems built into the frame of the suit. Made of a poly-laminate composite, the outer shell of the T-51b is lightweight and capable of absorbing over 2500 Joules of kinetic impact. The 10-micron-thick silver ablative coating can reflect laser and other radiation emissions without damaging the composite subsurface, and the eyeslit for the helmet is made of bullet proof glass to protect the wearer from any projectiles. The armor usually carries enough fuel to last for ten thousand years."

Still not what I am looking for...

"http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/T-51b_power_armor and later models also include a complete waste recycling system."

That must have been fun when it malfuctioned.

Cut out the broken system and refrain from travelling too far from your bunker! lol

I completely agree with you here. PA should be self supporting.

Oh sure, not all of them are unrealistic. Glasses improving perception, and stealth suits improving your stealth skill. But there is such a prevalence of clothes which affecting stats so implausibly, and this is what i disagree with.

The extent to which psychological theory can be applied to anything is debatable, i tend to shirk off a lot of psych as pseudo-science, which attempts to apply scientific method to a field which is anything but scientific.
Of course, what you wear can impact the way people percieve you, if someone see's you wearing your cowboy outfit they may make the assumption you are a cowboy. Wearing a cowboy outfit will not however, affect you psychologically and make you a better shooter. In the same vein, putting my chef whites on doesn't make me cook better; i can rustle up a good meal regardless of what clothes i wear and it has absolutely no bearing on my ability.

Okay, seeing now what you guys think, some want more customization, but a lot fo you don't. What I had in mind when I meant customization I was also referring to the Satchels Mod (which adds tiny bits of different outfits that go over/replace other gear)

Though if it happens then PA and PA Training should be very rare and also come with some pronounced downsides like severely limited flexibility or -100 to Sneak.

Sounds reasonable. Why should you sneak when you are a walking tank? And how should it work?

There is one important aspect in the PA discussion...
That is, it is a gaming mechanic.
Given the fact that most of us would want to have PA to be the best armor in the game.. (which it wasn't, arguably, in both FO3 and FO:NV) make it so..

From a gaming standpoint it doesn't make sense to create an armor which doesn't have any visible drawback.
PA might be nerfed beyond recognition in the two recent games.. I can understand what Obsidian and Bethesda tried to with it. Present FO being more action based. It has been redesigned to fit a certain playstyle (which I feel failed, because the dt/weight ratio is meeeh)

So I am completely with Styles and Lobotomite on this one.

Either bring it back as it was or at least make it so that is undeniably the best armor (DT wise) but give it severe drawbacks..

I get what you are saying, but keep in mind that PA has always had weight even when in use. For it to suddenly not have weight wouldn't make sense. PA makes it so you can carry alot of weight and be well protected, but clearly the suit was also designed for the person in side to bear some of the burden.

The exoskeletal system and all the other systems still has weight and it stil relies on the person inside of it. It can't make itself weightless, unless it has some anti-gravety system built into it, and it doesn't have such a thing.

My argument is that it has always had weight and should continue to have weight. It is one of the draw backs of PA. If you remove that then it makes the game just that much easier. The suit was designed to have the person inside it bear some of the burden.

Indeed (at least up to a point), but heavy as hell when not worn. And with proper disadvantages for wearing it (this is not necessarily plausible given the purpose of it, but thinking about the gameplay and balance, PA should not be the be all end all of protective apparel, imo).

I'd think that a good start would be to give it a -100 Sneak penalty. PA also ways hundreds of pounds so it should make a thump whenever you move, you should be a tank in all definitions of the word. You should not only be very well protected, but it should also be slow, heavy, require regular maintenance and it should also make you the absolute center of attention everywhere you go(the RPG definition of a tank).

Tanks are tracked armored vehicles, power armor isn't tracked or a vehicle. So it is not a tank according to the definition.

Foiled by logic yet again.

Oh i agree completely, although i very rarely resort to PA anyways. NV did go a step towards this by having viable armour for stealth characters as well as PA, also the addition of NCR Salvaged PA was a nice touch- maybe it shouldn't be possible to loot working PA? After all, if youve managed to kill someone inside it you've undoubtedly had to riddle it with holes to get to them. Its not very plausible that it would still be in a working condition.

so wearing a suit designed to protect you from hazardous materials will not improve your chemistry skill by preventing you from killing yourself with acids and toxins?, wearing a clean and respectable suit will not make people easier to talk to (as they will repect you more)? and how come wearing a pair of trousers and a bandolier with compartments designed to make access to ammunition and tools easy will not make it easier for you to use guns or look after your equipment?

the bonuses are not magic, they are a simplified way of representing the advantages granted by specialized pieces of equipment.

I take it you didnt read the post i made after that one.
I dont deny that a nice suit might make people respect you more, but will it physically improve your ability to talk? No, your skill will be the same regardless of the clothes you wear. I would agree with a Charisma bonus here, not a speech bonus
Clothes with compartments for ammunition will not improve your skill with a gun -it should not improve your aim, they will however reduce reload time, which of course should be reflected through a faster reload time not through a skill boost.
Wearing a lab suit will not improve your skill with chemicals, it will however help protect you from chemicals or reduce the danger of critical failures. -as should be reflected through resistances.

The bonuses in their current form are verging on magical, because they are far too general and far too liberally applied. I do not deny that some skill/stat bonuses make sense, but the vast majority do not and require a very circuitous justification to make sense. Hence why i want 'no more' not there utter abolition - i think its a good principle, i seem to remember Arcanum doing such things very well, but this might be my imagination. What i dont want is random clothing with random bonuses.

For instance;
The Tunnel Snake Outfit (A Leather Jacket) give +5 to Melee Weapons -How? Why?
The Wasteland Outfit (A tshirt and trousers) gives +1 to both Endurance and Agility -How does it make you better able to take pain? How does it make you more agile than you inherently are?
The Followers Lab Coat (Literally just a lab coat) gives +10 to Medicine and Science - How is it that this has happened? What is it that this lab coat does to its wearer that it gives skill bonuses worth more than an entire level?

The things i do believe make sense are;
Metal Armour -1 Agility, - because its big, clunky and heavy
Chinese Stealth Armour +5 Sneak - because it uses Science! to make you better at sneaky, its designed to achieve just that.
Gecko Backed Leather Armour +15 Fire/Poison/Radiation Resistance -The extra protection makes sense because of the materials the armour is made with
sixy Sleepwear +1 Charisma, because who doesnt find someone wearing sixy sleepwear extra charismatic?

Do you see the distinction im making here? That certain boosts are fine, and make perfect sense within the context of the game, while others are not because they are implausible?

indeed...when I saw these in F3 for the first time I was like "wtf is this bs?"

ROFL, I did this in F3 with the stealth suit. BoS Helmet + Fedora (Sneaky Hat). It was hysterical. Although Stealth Suit + Ghoul Mask + Sneaky Hat was even better. At that point you're pretty much RPing Death himself.

yes, i do see the distinction you're making, and i understand. but in order to achieve the level of realism you want many new kinds of bonuses would have to be added, while this would be ideal, it may be too time consuming and potentially game breaking if not properly balanced.
however, i agree that it would be better if equipment affected "secondary" stats, such as reload speed, unarmed damage, chem creation success and critical success rates, medicine effectiveness, etc...

however, some of the "magical-looking" bonuses you mentionned are actually perfectly logical when thought about, such as the tunnel snake outfit, which probably increases your melee weapons skill by 5 because it looks "agressive" and is essentially a "gangster's" outfit, ergo the bonus of 5 points to your melee weapons skill symbolizes increased confidence in the wearer and the fact that the target is somewhat intimidated.
however this could be replaced by an "intimidation" stat, which represents how much you frighten your enemies, making them take more damage and more likely to flee.

This supposed intimidation would be relative to the individual(really only to local people who know about the gang and are essentially wimps...making it practically useless in this case, since when it comes to combat it really makes no difference once you start fighting) and I doubt that it would intimidate many people. It definitely would not increase your combat ability at all, so it is not at all logical.
Another example, the park stroller outfit increases my agility?...nope.

Just a sudden thought about the sixy sleepwear, if the condition is below the maintenance level, it would look unappealing, and therefore should lose its CHR +1 bonus.

Well, most of those bonuses are already in game, im pretty sure you can improve reload speed and such through weapon mods, so its not much of a stretch to put those boosts on other items.
I dont see how it could be any more game breaking than it already is in its current form. I mean, a lab coat which is worth 1/2 levels worth of skill points? Thats pretty drastic.

I think you might be grasping at straws with your justification here
No matter how confident you are feeling your technical ability will not be improved. Even if you feel like a badass you will still be swinging your weapon about like a lunatic because you dont know how to use it; and wearing the leather jacket wont make you any more competent, and competence is what your skill represents.

An intimidation stat could be interesting. Did people in the originals get scared of you and just run rather than fight? I seem to remember that happening.



Maybe there are springs in the heels which help you move about quickly

Haha, that would be good!

last time i checked individual characters had a "confidence" level, affecting how likely they are to flee, combined with the faction system determining how characters feel towards eachother would allow the intimidation stat to work just fine.
also, by looking more intimidating you would discourage attacks by weaker criminals in general, who may prefer to retreat (or flee when attacked) unless they have numbers on their side.

I'm not saying intimidation can't work, I was just saying that in that case of the tunnel snakes outfit, it really would only affect wimps and would be more of a convenience to not have to fight random easy battles as you pointed out(if even so, because wimps won't attack you anyway, and only the actual affiliation with a particular gang would intimidate someone that isn't weak, not just a leather jacket. Although wearing something like power armor would be a different case), but It wouldn't affect actual combat at all, and I don't see how they would take more damage, I don't agree with that.