na, its totally random. I have found 2 out in the open. One under water by a crashed vertibird (was a full set) and one was in a locked container in a random place in the middle of no where (full set as well) sounds like you got some bad luck :/

So is the player supposed to be able to loot those suits at all then? It seems to me that maybe its intentional so that you can get another chance at claiming the suit since for some reason you cant peel a frame of a corpse like every other thing on them.

that may have something to do with it, as you cannot loot a frame off a body. So the game mechanics re spawn it so you can get a frame. From what i have read, people use this bug to make caps. Let raider enter armor, kill raider, loot PA pieces, leave area, return and do again. Stupid i think, caps are extreamly easy to aquire.

Money to weight issues on that too. i was fast traveling to quincy quarry for a while to get to the surrounding areas and never full cleared the quarry. so every time i fast traveled there i would have to take out something like 8 raiders and pick up another 3-4 assault rifles. those weigh less and are worth more than Power Armor bits anyways.

With my new BoS playthrough I basically immediately went to diamond city and then to the atom cats. I just sprinted there. You can get t-60 even at level one from them