I noticed the following and would like confirmation that I have this right:

-The protection values (balistic, energy and radiation) for your vault suit(or base clothing), power armor and under-armor all stack

-You don't get any bonuses to SPECIALS from base layer or under-armor IF you are wearing power armor.

Now the thing I have not been able to figure out:

- Do other bonuses from Legendary under-armor apply IF you are wearing power armor on top? Stuff like reduced AP cost, or faster movement, or reflecting damage back to the attacker etc?

thanks

Anyone know?

My understanding is that once you get into Power Armor, none of the bonuses of your under-armor or layered armor applies at all. Once you get into the Power Armor, the only thing that matters is the Power Armor itself. So a Leather Arm with 15% less damage from humans wouldn't be of any use while wearing Power Armor. This leads to the strategy of wearing a set of Charisma armor in your Power Armor: when you need to talk to someone, just get out, pull the Fusion Core from the armor, and have your conversation. Get back in when you're done, and you're armored up and ready to go.

wow...I thought the protedction values of armor at least stacked but I checked and you are right, it doesn't. so I guess the layered armor system is not the way bethesda implied. It works if you have no power armor on but with power armor there is no benefit to layered armor system. That is a bit disappointing. Thanks for the info though, it helps a lot.

Power Armor in FO4 seems to be more like the Elemental suits in BattleTech lore. Not a set of "armor," per se, but a full on combat vehicle that resembles a suit. Would a chainmail shirt do much while you're inside a tank?

The armor layering system works, just don't think of Power Armor the same way earlier Fallout games used it.

True the PA replace the Layer armor, bc PA work as a layer armor already.

Well, I am not sure this shouldn' be moded. Here is why. If an attack gets through the power armor, it has to also penetrate anything you are wearing before it gets to you. The way the system is now, it pretends you are naked under your armor. If they are going to allow you to wear a layer of clothing AND a layer of armor under power armor, then those layers should provide the balistic, energy and radiation protection. The legendary bonuses are debateable but I think the core protection values of everything worn should count and this is logical. It is the equivalent of wearing a modern day tactical vest with trama plates and wearing kevlar under. If the plates were penetrated by a bullet, that bullet still has to penetrate the kevlar before it gets to the person.

TBH, PA armour is so powerful it makes any DR from clothing pretty much a rounding error.

Not really. Good under armor that is upgraded will give you about 10% of the protection value of the power armor on average. Depending on the piece. anywhere from say DR 15-DR 45 which is significant when you consider that 5 levels of the toughness perk only gets you DR-50.