First power armor didn't last very long either. And those fusion cores you shove into your energy weapons are depleted after a few dozen shots as they always have.

Doesn't seem to be to much of a stretch that the power armor version we see in FO4 doesn't last an eternity on a core.

Powering a weapon or powering armour - nuclear energy would be very effecient. Just because beth comes up with some gamey mechanic doesn't mean it's a very consistent thing - in reality or in game.

are they actually supposed to be powered by fission? That would only generate heat afaik, so you would need some kind of generator to turn it in to electricity as well, and it looks way too compact for that. And if it where running on steam heated by fission, you would still need a water tank with you D: Muh immersion

Edit: Didn't realise they where called fusion cores, so we actually got fusion down too? D: that's not exactly making it more plausible though D:

How doesnt it make it plausible? This is a timeline in which they went down the nuclear path more than we did. By the Great War they had already managed to make fusion happen in basically anysize and keep that fusion going...

But hopefully the T-51 series will be able to run a lot longer, but i wouldnt be supries if it runs just as long as the other. PA by lore is basically OP, but its all about balance.

So you can either have power armour that runs for basically ever in the T-51s case, but have it less tanky to balance it. Or do as what seems to have been done and make it a tank, and just require recharging if you will. The fact we can buy them has me a lot more happy though, and I am sure you will be able to get them from the brotherhood. HOPEFULLY!!!- we will be able to craft them at some point though.

It could be powered by a form of (a hybrid) radioisotropic thermoelectric generator? I believe it doesn't need the reactor setup - its powered by the heat decay.

IMO, utility wise, it would be pretty dumb to put these out in the field without some serious longevity. Power armour after all was suppose to change the dynamics of the war in Alaska - hard to do when it's essentially a cluster of Duracell batteries.

I don't think they're going to be too rare. I watched some leaked footage where the player found a power core pretty much right out of the vault. In another leaked gameplay video, assuming the counter under the power gauge is for the number of cores you have, the player had 17 cores.

I believe If the lore needs to balance something out by making it this gamey, then they did something wrong with the lore, or made it too available.

I would rather it be made unavailable if it meant it was consistent with the reality it's portraying.

Interesting, don't think I have heard of that being used before. You learn something every day.

Could be a really tiny fusion reactor that only has enough output to keep the power armour moving. Overtime it charges an internal battery, and it's this that we use for all the bashing, sprinting etc. Explains the short lifespan of the core.
Although only if Beth have made it recharge if you don't use it for a while.

A light suit that is fairly nimble and has a stealth field generator that consumes core energy? YES PLEASE!

There is a power armor mod that contains a stealth boy....hell yea

FO3 had a stealth suit in Operation Anchorage....

According to some reviews PA doesn't hurt stealth detection at all, rofl. Also stealth is apparently as OP (if not more due to the PA thing) than Skyrim.

Pretty crazy imbalanced. But hey its a Bethesda game.