There's modifications for the power armor like blast shielding

Oh well good news for me then lol

The odds of power armor being immune to small arms... not great. Not the sort of thing Bethesda does, really.

Take a gander at this footage https://youtu.be/-3nYFn-aIno?t=4m2s%C2%A0 weapon can be used to defeat Power Armor!

Armor piercing rounds might be a fair compromise. Maybe.

Specialized ammunition considered, I agree. Armor Piercing Rounds surely could offer that little boost against equally armored opponents, or god help you, if you happen to run across that one scag in the wasteland who scored a clip AP ammo.

Also, should it return, I imagine the Antimaterial Rifle would surely wreck face on a suit of Power Armor.

Sadly there's been no word if specialized ammo is returning, but I honestly hope it does...

That's the way it was in Fallout 1 and 2. There was JHP (Jacketed Hollow Points) and AP (Armor Piercing) ammo. Since it's a soft lead core with an open end, the JHP ammo was good against people with little or no armor, up through leather because it would expand out and shatter and do lots of damage but JHP ammo would do reduced damage to enemies wearing metal, combat, or power armors as well as mechanical enemies because it couldn't break through the armor very easily. On the flip side, AP ammo did less damage to people wearing little or light armor because it simply punched holes through rather than expanding and ripping their insides up.

I bet that the new FO4 power armor protection isn't mitigation like conventional "armor" as we know it in the FOverse (Additive/DT or Multiplicative/DR), but a heapload more "health" over our fleshy PlayerChar body's health. Better armor components means more health or even better resistance against certain types of damage.

If only it had worked, and worked as described. It may have been fixed in the user patches though. These would be good to have in FO4; provided they work well, and each with its noticeable incentive to use.

I guess it was a mod that I had for FO2 that fixed the ammo and made it work right. It's been so long I forget what was base game and what was modded in.