Power Armor Lore (Fusion Cores)

[Welcome2Stonia]

So this question has been bothering me, maybe more than it should be, but IMO lore is a very important part of the Fallout series and one of the main reasons why I personally am so "into" these games. So I've been thinking about it for a while and I haven't found any explanation yet by searching so I'm just going to ask the question here: how (and if) is the requirement for using Fusion Cores to keep the Power Armors working explained in FO4? From the T-51b Fallout Wiki page we can read:

 

 

 

The armor is fitted with a back-mounted TX-28 MicroFusion Pack which generates an output power of 60,000 Watts to power the HiFlo hydraulic systems built into the frame of the suit.

 

and

 

 

 

The armor usually carries enough fuel to last for one hundred years.

 

 

[backspacehacker]

Imo the fusion cores where added simply for balance reasons. Since power armor is now more inline lore wise with what it should be IE a walking tank.

 

So if you wanna make the stretch of why we need them. You could go with they have been sitting idol for 200 years, and suffered from being hit by both an emp blast and explosion so the fuel system could have been damaged or even drained out since they have not been in use. Fusion cores now that we are grabbing have been running things for around 200 years as Wel which would explain why they don't last long.

 

But again this is me grabbing at straws trying to justify in lore an I game mechanic. Which honestly I really like it and don't mind since power armor actually feels like power armor now.

[Vagrant0]

Imo the fusion cores where added simply for balance reasons. Since power armor is now more inline lore wise with what it should be IE a walking tank.

 

So if you wanna make the stretch of why we need them. You could go with they have been sitting idol for 200 years, and suffered from being hit by both an emp blast and explosion so the fuel system could have been damaged or even drained out since they have not been in use. Fusion cores now that we are grabbing have been running things for around 200 years as Wel which would explain why they don't last long.

 

But again this is me grabbing at straws trying to justify in lore an I game mechanic. Which honestly I really like it and don't mind since power armor actually feels like power armor now.

Call it what you want... Still hilarious to think that Lyons and his group crossed the to the East Coast leaving a trail of thousands of spent fusion cores along the way.

 

Balance could have been done in many other ways, such as making them extremely rare and not removable once put into a frame. The incentive to have multiple frames could come from a number of places, including more meaningful fitting options, or being able to reliably outfit settlement guards or provisioners with powerarmor (without them getting stuck in the armor). Or just made more things use power cores... Like power plants in settlements, constructable robot guards, improved sentries, ect. Instead we have cores that last about 20 minutes of activity, but where almost every weapons merchant has a few for sale. It would have made more sense from a lore standpoint while also bringing more variety.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Having a means of reconditioning or recharging a spent core (nuclear material + drained fusion core at the workbench?) would have made it very easy to turn them into an extremely rare and valuable commodity that you'd have to spend hours searching for unless you had the requisite skills to recharge them yourself. As is, once you have a bunch of them, they're nearly valueless- you can afford to be wasteful with your power armor, because you'll probably run into two or more in the time it takes to deplete the one you're using- or at least be able to buy a replacement with whatever you've scavenged and looted. I don't think they should be available in stores except very, very rarely (and for ludicrous prices); for how they're treated in dialogue, I'd pictured them as being the ultimate scavver's prize, a pocket-sized high-output power source that could breathe life into all kinds of once-dead prewar tech. They're the kind of thing people ought to be murdering each other over in a setting like this. If you let on that you have one, the town's mayor should be in your face trying to cut a deal or threaten you into surrendering it. The thing's mere presence should paste a target on your back so that you'd almost need the power armor it goes with just to keep the power source itself safe!

 

Frames and pieces are entirely too common, too- I think that more of the armors I run across should be totalled, or missing a critical component, so that I'm forced to either carry in resources to repair them in place or just strip off what I need for another armor set and leave the rest where it lies. I shouldn't just be able to slot a fresh battery into a suit that's been dead for 200 years, fire it up, and run back home to the workshop. I should have to take the workshop to the armor. I really wish the game had made getting that first suit up and running more of a chore, so that I could really take pride in repairing and customizing it once it finally all came together. By the time I got that first T45 all kitted out, though, I had half a dozen frames and enough pieces (albeit mismatched) to cobble together three whole suits with T45, T51, T60, and X-01 parts.

 

Overall, though, I like that the power armor uses, well, power. It feels like it should- not just a set of really bulky endgame clothing as it has been in every other Fallout so far, but rather a bipedal engine of death and destruction that you ride into battle like a post-apocalyptic cavalryman. I almost feel guilty when I'm using it and not wielding a heavy weapon too.

[Raycheetah]

*snip*I really wish the game had made getting that first suit up and running more of a chore, so that I could really take pride in repairing and customizing it once it finally all came together. *snip*

You've actually just descrbed what I anticipated when we first saw that Power Armor repair station in the Red Rocket when Bethesda did their FO4 reveal. I had NO idea they'd be putting us into PA, untrained, rght at the get-go. ='[.]'=

[WrathOfDeadguy]

I didn't think we'd be getting whole suits of power armor, period, except after joining the Brotherhood (as in previous games). The training, sure, there were sometimes other ways to get that, but I figured I'd have to put a suit together pretty much from scratch once I found out there'd be armor crafting. Power armor really shouldn't be so readily available so early in the game, and it should be a rickety piece of junk until you put some serious work into fixing it up. Similarly, fusion cores should be rare as hen's teeth until you've built up a substantial amount of infrastructure to support your armor's upkeep, and most of the cores you find should already be partially or mostly depleted. And yes, you should need training to use power armor. That's been a requirement in every other Fallout game, and since the armor is even better than it was before, the requirements for using it should have been increased rather than the other way around.

 

Still, I do think it's a major step forward in terms of gameplay. The power armors in the other Fallouts didn't have nearly the same impact, and you could easily substitute combat armor and a few more stimpacks if you didn't want to carry the PA around... this time the armor carries you, and that's the key distinction. You want to take the armor off? Fine, you have to find a safe place to park it. Ran out of juice? Now you have to run and find another core before you can get it home to the workshop. Even though the implementation (over-availability of cores and ease of access for initial use) is flawed, I think Bethesda got more right than they did wrong with regards to the power armors. I really understand why they were such a feared weapon in the US arsenal when I step into one and single-handedly slaughter a whole camp of bad guys without touching my chem reserve, which is something I didn't really get in the other games.

[Pthalo]

Having a means of reconditioning or recharging a spent core (nuclear material + drained fusion core at the workbench?) would have made it very easy to turn them into an extremely rare and valuable commodity that you'd have to spend hours searching for unless you had the requisite skills to recharge them yourself. As is, once you have a bunch of them, they're nearly valueless- you can afford to be wasteful with your power armor, because you'll probably run into two or more in the time it takes to deplete the one you're using- or at least be able to buy a replacement with whatever you've scavenged and looted. I don't think they should be available in stores except very, very rarely (and for ludicrous prices); for how they're treated in dialogue, I'd pictured them as being the ultimate scavver's prize, a pocket-sized high-output power source that could breathe life into all kinds of once-dead prewar tech. They're the kind of thing people ought to be murdering each other over in a setting like this. If you let on that you have one, the town's mayor should be in your face trying to cut a deal or threaten you into surrendering it. The thing's mere presence should paste a target on your back so that you'd almost need the power armor it goes with just to keep the power source itself safe!

 

Frames and pieces are entirely too common, too- I think that more of the armors I run across should be totalled, or missing a critical component, so that I'm forced to either carry in resources to repair them in place or just strip off what I need for another armor set and leave the rest where it lies. I shouldn't just be able to slot a fresh battery into a suit that's been dead for 200 years, fire it up, and run back home to the workshop. I should have to take the workshop to the armor. I really wish the game had made getting that first suit up and running more of a chore, so that I could really take pride in repairing and customizing it once it finally all came together. By the time I got that first T45 all kitted out, though, I had half a dozen frames and enough pieces (albeit mismatched) to cobble together three whole suits with T45, T51, T60, and X-01 parts.

 

Overall, though, I like that the power armor uses, well, power. It feels like it should- not just a set of really bulky endgame clothing as it has been in every other Fallout so far, but rather a bipedal engine of death and destruction that you ride into battle like a post-apocalyptic cavalryman. I almost feel guilty when I'm using it and not wielding a heavy weapon too.

 

This guy. This guy right here. Give this man a Quantum and a thumbs up. I just stumbled into another one of these darned things in some lake. I can see it has rust on it, don't tell me 200 years later and this thang isn't gonna have more holes in it.

[shinthomas]

It's just a tacky balancing addition. At the very least, they could have made them excessively rare but last much longer. Then they could have made it so that you don't get one right off the bat, like made the one in the museum instantly run out of juice once the deathclaw is dead or something. The depth on the armor system is incredibly lacking. According to the lore in some of the military areas, the early model power suits are really strong and well armored but didn't allow the soldiers to jump. I would like to see more depth in the abilities of the different suit models. T-45 is heavy armored and slow, it has an even higher bonus to carry capacity but doesn't allow the user to jump or sprint and doesn't have good energy and rad resistance or allow for high tech upgrades or jetpacks. Maybe it doesn't even allow the user to fast travel. The X-01 on the other hand, has less armor and high mobility. It has very high energy and rad resistance and allows the mounting of jet packs and other high tech modules.

 

Just some ideas. Maybe they'll expand the systems later. We won't see any really big armor mods until after the dlc releases probably. At the very least, there's already some mods that 'fix' the power drain on the suits but do nothing to alleviate how common they are (too common). They also didn't do a very good job of integrating them into the perk trees. There should be a great deal more to do with the most hyped part of Fo4 in the perk trees, but we only get two perks that have anything to do with pa.

[Boombro]

It's just a tacky balancing addition. At the very least, they could have made them excessively rare but last much longer. Then they could have made it so that you don't get one right off the bat, like made the one in the museum instantly run out of juice once the deathclaw is dead or something. The depth on the armor system is incredibly lacking. According to the lore in some of the military areas, the early model power suits are really strong and well armored but didn't allow the soldiers to jump. I would like to see more depth in the abilities of the different suit models. T-45 is heavy armored and slow, it has an even higher bonus to carry capacity but doesn't allow the user to jump or sprint and doesn't have good energy and rad resistance or allow for high tech upgrades or jetpacks. Maybe it doesn't even allow the user to fast travel. The X-01 on the other hand, has less armor and high mobility. It has very high energy and rad resistance and allows the mounting of jet packs and other high tech modules.

 

Just some ideas. Maybe they'll expand the systems later. We won't see any really big armor mods until after the dlc releases probably. At the very least, there's already some mods that 'fix' the power drain on the suits but do nothing to alleviate how common they are (too common). They also didn't do a very good job of integrating them into the perk trees. There should be a great deal more to do with the most hyped part of Fo4 in the perk trees, but we only get two perks that have anything to do with pa.

I agree in making the cores rarer, last longer and the power armors more varied. But they should allow fast travel. I mean how also are you going to them around into other side of the map without wasting cores?

 

And you can get power armor from other places or buy a frame from traders for tons pf caps(that why there is a stand nearby.) steal them or find them in the wild.

 

And why should there be perks for power armor? Power armor already great without any need for anything. You can use the first one till end game no problem in fact. And it odd having perks that does not effect the character.

[shinthomas]

I agree in making the cores rarer, last longer and the power armors more varied. But they should allow fast travel. I mean how also are you going to them around into other side of the map without wasting cores?

 

And you can get power armor from other places or buy a frame from traders for tons pf caps(that why there is a stand nearby.) steal them or find them in the wild.

 

And why should there be perks for power armor? Power armor already great without any need for anything. You can use the first one till end game no problem in fact. And it odd having perks that does not effect the character.

 

 

The perk comment was more for if they were better balanced. The pa is horribly op right now. So yeah, they don't need perks right now. If the system was more robust, where the first suit was a heavily armored POS that you could barely even run in, as opposed to a god like nigh-indestructable fall damage eliminating ninja suit that can do everything the others can but with less resistance. There would be incentive to collect other suits. The lore even suggests that the t-45 suit was really clumsy and that the techs were 'considering' adding more strength to the legs along with servos and a gyro. But all of the suits are just damage resistance and cosmetic side upgrades.

 

If the power cores were more balanced/lore friendly, they would last much longer. Then being forced to walk everywhere wouldn't be much of an issue. It'd be more of an immersion option. I would never force anyone to abandon fast travel.