I know what you are saying; "Power Armor? Penalties? What is this dude talking about?"

Well, for me, power armor does have some of what I would call "penalties".

1. Negates any "mods" you made to your normal armor.
Meaning if you put "Deep Pockets" on your armor to grab everything in sight...tough.
You now can only carry what the power armor allows you to.
For me this means losing 50 Units of carrying capacity.
That is a lot of "junk" I could be using to mod weapons/armor, or improve my settlements.

2. Negates any S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Bonuses from clothing/armor.
Meaning if you wear any clothing that boosts a stat...tough.
As soon as you step into your power armor, that bonus goes bye-bye.
For me this means that all my settlements lose two settlers if I wear power armor for any extended amount of time....since settler population is equal to your charisma + 10, and I have a chrisma rating of 11, and wear three charisma boosting clothing items.
So, if I have all the settlements, I lose 29 (Home Plate doesn't count.) x 3 = 87 settlers.
Since profit from stores relies upon settler population, I am losing money...and I am very greedy.

I only wish that at least "non-armor" bonuses didn't get negated by wearing power armor.
I would love to try it out on a playthrough...but, I just can't get past the penalties.

A pair of leg mods (forget their name) will boost your carry capacity by +50, giving you 410 while suited if you use both. Military paint and a strength-enhancing mod will further up the carry capacity to 442.

Is a great balance, i mean if Power Armor give u as many Bonus as layer or normal armor, it will become SUPER OP.

My carrying cap is at 510 right now.
I am collecting all the PA suits I find though.
I will just use them when I don't care much about carrying capacity.
Still losing 3 settlers from every settlement everytime I want to use PA...harsh.

It's fine though...I never really used PA in F-3/F-NV either.
I always liked the combat armor better...it just looked co much cooler to me.

A raider dropped a mini-nuke on my head while I was in a suit of MkVI X-01 power armor, with explosive resistance coating. He took off 15% of my health. Nothing standard armor can do for me could compare to that.

For me, I like being out in the open with standard armour. Nothing to do with gameplay, it's for role playing reasons. I just like being out in the open. Well, you're in the open in power armour, but you know what I mean!

well that is one of the reason to have a power armor build, is more aka Tank build for Skyrim where u eat dragons attack to the face.

Between painting, calibrating shocks for the legs, putting special mods on the helmet and torso, and the massive strength increase by simply wearing the damn armor, there is literally no reason to ditch power armor for any other armor.

YES, you can retain a good chunk of bonus charisma, just apply the minuteman paint to the power armor.

YES, you can carry a [censored] ton of stuff, just calibrate shock both legs and your back to carrying around 500 pounds of junk.

NO, do not look down upon power armor.

Power armor raises your strength to 11, giving you a base of 310 CW before any mods/perks. This effect is on any power armor, from raider to X-01. To match/surpass that at the beginning, you would need at least 10 ST or 8-9 ST and lvl 2 (to pick up strong back rank 1). PA has the advantage. It has almost no investment needed, you always get it at the beginning, and provides an extra 10 CW. Where as the other method only gives 300 - 315 CW and may screw with the players' play style thanks to the amount of points needed.

Here is my character for example. He has strength of 4 (base of 3, plus 1 for army fatigues) which gives him 240 base CW. I have 1 rank in lone wanderer, that gives an additional 50 CW. He is also wearing deep pocketed light (fiberglass level) combat armor, which gives 60 CW. However I have to carry the armor, so I lose out on 24.2 CW. I actually lose 26.4 as my right leg armor is bugged showing a weight of 5.6 instead of 3.4. All of that gives a total of 323.6 CW.

While he is in PA however, he is truely a pack mule. Strength is set at 11, giving 310 CW. Lone wander gives another 50 CW. The "Calibrated" leg mods each give 50CW, for a total of an extra 100 CW. That's a grand total of 460 CW. The armor carries itself, so you don't get penalized while using it.

In the end, I'm getting an extra 110 CW via PA.

As for the loss of SPECIAL bonuses, I agree that it svcks. My guy has Chr 6 (base, not boosted), if I need a boost I use Graqe Mentats (Immune to addiction).

One problem is the paint. I don't think you can put the minute men paint job on it.

*Edit* Nevermind, I didn't see minuteman paint for X-01 so I thought it was a problem. Vault-Tec paint does the same buff.

Weird how no one's mentioned the fact that the game is balanced around possessing power armor, and playing as a character dependent on not using it is basically screwed.

Sure, you go into the glowing sea with a hazmat suit, but what's the point if PA is just plain better, anyways?

Isn't it suicidal to go into the glowing sea without PA? With all of those nasty deathclaws, radscorpions, etc waiting out there? I haven't been there myself, but from what I've seen in videos, it looks dangerous without PA.

wait whaT?????, no way. i been playing a playthrought w/o Power Armor, and i have 0 problem even on the glowing sea.

Pretty much.

I'm in PA and am above level 70 and some of the legendary peeps in the glowing sea can still take me down a good 20% of my HP in a single hit (usually because of poison effects or massive radiation dose effects).

well i been there w/o power armor, i just move really slow and paid alot of attention (yeah is good to get there with a fully upgrade Guess rifle to pretty much 1 shoot deathclaw from far far FAR away. And Camuflage or Stealth-boy Help alot)

I won't be able to do that. I have no sneak skill and only agility 2. Invested heavly into power armor (currently have X-01 Mark V). I do have the unique Gauss rifle though. It currently does 345 damage with my current lvl/perks and does 50% bonus limb damage.

yeah Guess rifle are fun, lol. i love how i 1 shoot BoS.

i have only 1 issue with power armor: u can;t take it with u

I do not really like power armor, unless my build requires it. too bulky for my tastes.

What do you mean? You can take it anywhere.