So ive been flicking through the official gameplay on "exploration" that bethesda released onto youtube a few days ago, noticed something new on the power armours HUD - Next to the AP dial, theres a smaller dial that has 0 - 100 with "core" in the middle.

I may be completely off, but i watched the E3 gameplay plenty of times and never noticed that dial.

Is this going to be their way of limiting power armours usefulness or..

What makes you think we know?

We don't really know at this point, it may be a reference to the fact that some marks of powerarmor were powered by replaceable power cores/batteries, but honestly you get that powerarmor more or less right off the bat, since it's aparently a short walk from 111 to that museum

Freeze frameing on the PA customicing shows at least one pa chest having a battery life stat of some kind, consider ya can appeartnly get that PA at lvl 2, I assume a limited battery life woukd be a reasonable, temporary balance until you can replace the torso.

It's seems like power armour is treated as a vehicle in a way, like a battle tank you walk around in

Assuming you get this in an early quest line it might have a power cell that has a lower capacity and seems to drain faster.

Question is, will they recharge themselves over time (balancing use of rocket packs or other features) or will we have to get out and replace them? Or maybe we can craft them ourselves…. who knows, we did see some fancy tesla coils and other high tech stuff at the end of the base building segment

I like this treatment better then power armour in FO3/NV, to me power armour then never felt special beyond having a higher DR. Just a clunky outfit I could eat, sleep and sneak around like a super ninja in.

Edit: I'd bet a 1000 caps that we will see more then a couple perks tied to PA and it's battery life!

Could be that with it being early in the game they don't want you using it past the mission, the quest also requires you to pick up the mingun then auto equips it so its probably a scripted moment, you also have a jetpack and somehow I cant see all power armors having one of those unless its just a jump button.

only the absolute earlierst PA models had a short batterylife, later models just before the nukes fell had nuclear battries that last 10 000 years.

Hence my theory that at least the torso is that super old version and later we can use torsos with that 10 000 year old (aka princibally unlimited) powersource.

The one fighting deathclaws- the armour doesnt have a jetpack.
Theres a clip somewhere with power armour jumping from a roof to shoot raiders. Same place, same weapon. But it drains AP and it doesnt show when going for the deathclaw
There has to be some hinderance in power armour.. Cant just be "oh, heres a badass human-sized tank.. Dont worry, you can go anywhere, do anything and be completely safe from small arms fire plus itll only cost you 500 caps to repair"
May be once at low power, walking in it drains strength, endurance or at a reduced pace (like the previous 2 games radation effects) due to the increasing encumberance of the armour since its assisting systems shut down

Lets not overthink the metal underwear. We all know it's never as complex as we would like it.

still, it already looks 5x more complex then how they been potrayed in any Fallout game.

Then why would they bother to code in and design a power gauge? It's not like games haven't changed things from time to time to change up game play balance and mechanics.

I'd be fine with NOT having to worry about my power cell running out. The addition of a meter would lead the possibility that limited power or at least one that will need time to recharge itself after use is in the game now.

That's all

Considering it's not just inventory armor, and is a hybrid of armor and mech, this is true. But it's easy to go nuts with speculating how it's going to work.
I've seen people write whole word wall thesis' about how Power Armor should work, as though Power Armor alone was the game.

because even if its just a factor for one or two torsos, it is still a factor, so there needs to be a way to see it, wouldnt be the first time a game only used a mechanic for a very limited part of the game.

That is possible.

Could also replenish itself after time to limit spamming of attachments/abilities.

Either way, time will tell.

except we already seen how they limit it with the jet pack footage, by having them use AP.

Edit: actually I could imagen it could be used for things like the helmet light, still I think the power limit for actually wearing the armor is exclusivly a early game mechanic.

Bethesda likes to give you a little taste of power relatively early on in the game; like in Fallout 3, you got a Fat Man and a few Mini Nukes pretty early on in the game, but it was counter-balanced by the crummy condition of the Fat Man and the scarcity of Mini Nukes in general. This will probably be something like that: we're given a badass suit of Power Armor, a Minigun, and a ton of enemies to kill. But the Power Armor model uses rare fusion cells, and we won't be getting more 5mm rounds for the Minigun any time soon. So maybe after that we have to keep our phat lute at home until we find more fusion cores and ammo and what have you.

The core dial is already in game - wouldnt be in the official gameplay video on their youtube channel if it was absolutely meaningless.
The question is what its for.

It's also possible that we do not get to keep that suit of power armour after that mission. haha. I'd kind of like a short quest line to fix it up and get a new power cell as opposed to just be handed a working suit too early on.

Nope, the "core" is there in the E3 gameplay you can see it at https://youtu.be/D5esyZPt5Jo?t=1831, and here's the "https://youtu.be/GrX-QT19Ro0?t=226" video. I will say this, apparently when you can visually see enemies, right next too the "core" dial, the word SPOT appears.

The Core dial on the power armor is likely an indication of how much power is available to power the power armor.

In Fallout 2, you have to fuel the car ever so often. You will probably have to fuel up the power armor here in Fallout 4 as well.

The power armor in the videos is found in Concord, just South of the Red Rocket station where the dog is found, which is just South of Vault 111 over the little bridge.

If the indications of such are true, then, you'll have access to power armor fairly early, but, if one reviews the customization segments of the video, it's likely noticable that there are several types of power armor. T45, T51, T60, X01 ... and there might be more; special rare variants, and miss-matched composites of several types mixed together.

All of these will likely have different power, or core drain effects.

Speculation - It'd be additionally nice if the Core that possibly powers power armor could be damaged and go critical. Wouldn't it be interesting to snipe enemies in power Armor, and watch them explode in a small mini-nuke style explosion if their nuclear power core got damaged?

Wouldn't it be interesting to have this same vulnerability with your own power armor, and have to keep an eye on the core in case of disaster?

This is what I'm guessing. You get something awesome right away and then it's taken or disabled to make you want it that much more.

The first hit is free...

Annoying busywork is honestly the words I use rather then interesting.

I think that is unique to that specific model of power armor, and the rest... once we gain access to them, won't have that issue.

Considering that armor repair, upgrades, and crafting are going to be a thing, those could also be labelled as "annoying busywork".

Of course, there's always Call of Duty for folks that just want to jump in a game, and shoot at things without any role playing, or much by way of "annoying busywork", and that's even multiplayer. woo!

Power armor doesn't last forever because it's so powerful in-game (with a little tact you can take down a Deathclaw solo).

Thus the reason for the "power core" (which once drained must be replaced before the armor can be used again).

P.S. You can use a melee weapon plus "shield" with power armor, not just a minigun.

For more speculative game info:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/377160/discussions/0/530646080840498888/