I was wondering because in Fallout 2 if I was wearing lets say Advance Power I was near invincible in it. If some one like a normal human punched me. Their attack did no damage at all. But In Fallout 3 and New Vegas I can get ownd by a bunch of Feral ghouls punching me. Even though I'm wearing this stuff called Power Armor.

Really. Besides the looks and the extra carrying capacity some forms give you. What purpose does it have now? Because it's certainly is not doing it's job when a person can kill me. By either punching me, or shooting at me with a 9mm pistol. The armor should be near impenetrable to most attacks. It should still take damage, but I shouldn't take health damage from a punch attack while I am wearing it.

It's due to gameplay reasons, mostly, and how the game calculates damage.

In FO3, armor uses "damage resistance". It shaves off a percentage of damage. THe maximum is 85% of damage received is negated.

In New Vegas, armor has damage threshold. Basically, an attack needs to deal at least X to harm you, otherwise it's unaffected.

Typically, Powered Armor of any type has high DR/DT.

It's more beleiveable in New Vegas, where someone has to literally beat your DT to hurt you- it's effectively someone punching you so hard that it leaves dents in your armor.

As for gameplay reasons... either gamesas would need to make PA extremely difficult to get, or people would complain about how easy the game is once you managed to get a suit of powered armor. And even then, people may still complain.

Yeah I find Power armor to be kinda pointless too in the new Fallout games.

DR is terrible on its own, and honestly, the way New Vegas uses DT is almost as bad. With NV DT, 20 percent damage goes through no matter what. Personally, I've tweaked it so weapons do twice as much damage and I've completely redone the DT of every item, increasing and decreasing where appropriate. It's also strict DT, meaning the damage dealt is the weapon's damage subtracting the DT. Meaning, if a weapon's damage is bellow the DT, no damage is done. So, even though I rarely use Power Armor, I have it set up so they absorb around half the damage of powerful weapons and many small caliber bullets that aren't armor piercing don't do a thing. You're basically a god if you wear it, and enemies wearing it are extremely hard to kill. I would like it if future games did it this way, because it would also eliminate bullet sponges when they don't make any sense.

It needs fixed.

In the majority of the Fallout games, the PA just works, and has no limitations ~(and you can pull the suit out of your spandex jumpsuit ).

In the recent FPP games it's a problem for the person who wants to invent artificial and unrealistic reasons to keep non-motorized conventional armor (and improvised armor) equally viable with motorized power armor (said to make you a human tank), in a game where they've made strides to create a realistic appearing first person environment. Except that there is no way to do this. The armor is supposed to completely enclose the wearer in what looks like ½ to 1½ inch plate, and be immune to trivial attacks; should be immune to small arms fire entirely.

IMO The PA should be a requirement to wield the minigun; or at least (for game sake) require that the PC strength be a 10.
(In FO1 it was 7, but with FO3 a 10 doesn't mean what it used to mean). However... despite the added realism this would bring, it would prevent those PCs that were not strong enough to carry a minigun from ever using it.

Modern game philosophy is weird, as they want the pistol round to [somehow] compare equally to the minigun round ~http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/loose-approximate-1.jpg. Single shots don't compare, and then you factor in that the minigun fires 50 rounds per second.

I understand tweaking the values a bit for gameplay, but I've never understood tweaking the values towards equalized utility. They do this with the armor and you get Power Armor that is no better than non-powered armor. IMO what's needed is engine support and level design that makes the PA impractical to use in some areas; instead of hamstringing the PA so that it cannot match it's description.

Obsidian brought back damage threshold which is alot better than damage resistance. Still the PA was weakened because it's so common and would be a game breaker if it was as powerful as it is in the originals. The reason to keep PA in Fallout I guess is for roleplaying but I would really like for PA to become rare and powerful again like it is in the original Fallout's. I don't use it much in New Vegas and in Fallout 3 it's just a total joke. PA needs to be powerful again!

It looks cool.

Yeah it pretty much is regulated into heavy armor fashion statement now.