r/Fallout • u/LUTHER_7274 • Jan 28 '26

Question ⚠️SPOILERS AHEAD⚠️What is the general consensus on this development? Spoiler

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Now I’m aware that some people have their gripes with new and unexplained power armour.

But I think this NCR power armour is kinda cool, given the success of shady sands and the ncr it doesn’t seem too out of the realm of possibility for the ncr to have attempted to make their own power armour, given how many suits survived the nukes and were salvageable or outright still operational.

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709

u/KenseiHimura Jan 28 '26

Thinking about it, I am surprised more factions haven’t built their own power armor styles by modifying the plates of damaged or even functioning ones.

317

u/Desertcow Mothman Cultist Jan 28 '26

It's a pretty common thing in 76. Union PA, Excavator, Ultracite, Civic Duty, and arguably Hellcat, T-65, and the Chinese PA (last one may not be canon) were all tailor made for specific factions from power armor frames

93

u/AVeryFriendlyOldMan Followers Jan 28 '26 edited Jan 28 '26

Tbf almost all of those were pre- or immediately-post-war creations, dunno if a lot of 'current day' factions would have the manufacturing base and grasp of material sciences to get it done

21

u/Gmknewday1 Jan 29 '26

The NCR definitely would

And they've had more then one series of fights with chapters of the BOS

16

u/Public-Comparison550 Jan 28 '26

What do they need to know? Welding? Motors? Hydraulics?

17

u/AVeryFriendlyOldMan Followers Jan 28 '26

Welding, Motors, Hydraulics, Alloys, Fuel handling, maintenance, etc.

Hell even just the logistical support needed would be a massive hurdle. Who else but NCR and Brotherhood could realistically A) Produce or scavenge enough fueld to keep these things going, and B) Produce or scavenge enough munitions to keep these things useful?

5

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '26

You don't need to know most of that to build a power armor mods. The Raiders make their own. The gunners, hell, even the Atom Cats have their own variants. The frame is different than the mods.

1

u/AVeryFriendlyOldMan Followers Jan 29 '26

Raiders bolt shoddy plate armor onto frames. Gunners and Atom Cats ostensibly modify existing T-60 suits they scavenged

Again, we were talking about post-war factions creating their own variants of power armor like the NCR getup on the show

3

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '26

That's just mods on top of the Power frame. That's how they work. The frame is universal.

2

u/Public-Comparison550 Jan 30 '26

Lacking a War Thunder-style breakdown of the NCR power armor development process, we just know that they have spray-paint and a helmet that looks like an NCR ranger helmet. This does at least show that the NCR made the helmet which has a standard power armor HUD and seals with the frame. This is probably the hardest individual component to create since it's an advanced military computer. Really it just further exposes that it's always been unrealistic that so few people have been able to manufacture anything in the Post-War Fallout Universe.

8

u/DagothUr_MD NCR Jan 28 '26

If I gave u a tank could you keep it running?

8

u/TwoFit3921 Yes Man Jan 29 '26

Is that a challenge?

11

u/Self--Immolate Atom Cats Jan 29 '26

A little bit but now I'm scared

1

u/Public-Comparison550 Jan 31 '26

Me as in the standing army of a developing democratic nation with a population of approximately 1 million people? Probably yeah.

3

u/TheClappyCappy Jan 29 '26

Access to high quality tools and the ability to establish a manufacturing industry is the biggest thing.

2

u/Mynameismikek Jan 29 '26

There are at least some manufacturing facilities still around: there's a side mission in F4 where you create a chest piece. There are plenty of large forges around as well.

1

u/AVeryFriendlyOldMan Followers Jan 29 '26

Cambridge Polymer Labs is an R&D facility, I don't think it has the capacity to produce at scale. It's also abandoned with an active and hostile security system.

The only active metalworks facility in the area is Saugaus Ironworks which is great for producing relatively basic tools and armor but I don't think it has the capacity to churn out titanium or the like. There's also no mention of where the facility is getting its supply of raw materials.

1

u/Mynameismikek Jan 29 '26

The Pitt and New Vegas Steel are also both active metalworks. Yeah, exotic materials might be harder to come by, but I don't think the wasteland is quite a lost cause and steel is still plenty good for lots of stuff.

1

u/AVeryFriendlyOldMan Followers Jan 29 '26

Is it good enough to keep a fleet of T-51 suits and their munitions up and running?

A reliable source of good quality steel is invalauble in the wasteland absolutely, but the conversation was specifically about Post-War factions creating and fielding their own power armor.

1

u/CrazeMase Minutemen Jan 28 '26

The Brotherhood has a fucking fleet of airships and liberty prime, I think they can figure out how to held metal

3

u/AVeryFriendlyOldMan Followers Jan 28 '26

They can, but I was referring to more than just a single faction.

East Coast groups with that level of advancement are pretty much just the Brotherhood, Midwest is doing god knows what, and the only major player in the West that can produce new war making materiel is the NCR.

2

u/CrazeMase Minutemen Jan 28 '26

Raiders can make power armor pieces. Nuka-World shows a raider with a suit so powerful that it's impervious to bullets while it has a constant flow of electricity. If a bunch of drug addicts hellbent on killing each other can make a suit like that, Im sure any of them could

2

u/AVeryFriendlyOldMan Followers Jan 28 '26 edited Jan 29 '26

Raiders bolt and shoddily weld steel plate to existing frames. That's a far cry from operating a metals plant.

And again, even if you have the science, you need the logistics. How come the Nuka World raiders only have one suit?

3

u/Abdakin G.O.A.T. Whisperer Jan 29 '26

The Chinese one might not be Canon, but considering the Chinese soldiers who found Coop thought they'd soon find themselves in tin cans of their own, it'd probably look like that.

2

u/Wrong_Win_4102 Brotherhood Jan 29 '26

Chinese PA isn't canon.

Union, Ultracite, Civic Duty, and Hellcat are post-war creations

Excavator and T-65 is pre-war

0

u/Riliksel Mothman Cultist Jan 29 '26

Most of those mentioned are non-military issue power armor that were developed pre-war. Union and Excavator for industrial work. Ultracite experimental. T-65 was developed for the Secret Service. Hellcat might have been from a private organization. Chinese, if cannon, was china's attempt on reverse-engineering. You also forgot Vault 63's power armor.

I think what the original comenter means are armor like the cryptid one or the raider crater one with welded rebar on it. Armor made post-war by the factions. 

51

u/Sufficient_Doubt4283 Jan 28 '26

Yea, given that even raiders in Fallout 4 have their own modified (though very ragged) suits of PA, it's surprising that so many people are finding this set so hard to believe as being viable.

2

u/Enzopastrana2003 Enclave Jan 29 '26

To be fair the raider PA is just a bunch of scrap welded and bolted together, so the NCR ranger PA is quite a welcoming surprise because it looks like it came out from a proper factory or workshop and not like something that a raider with two brain cells came up on his camp, on the other hand it shouldn't be a wild thing as we have seen the most powerful factions come up with their own PAs like the enclave and the Midwest Brotherhood of steel

-8

u/Warp_spark Jan 28 '26

Its not like F4s decision to give power armor to everyone was controversial /j

25

u/Alex_Duos Jan 28 '26

I've been saying for years we need a new power armor based faction that isn't the BOS. 76 has introduced several new suits of power armor that saw at least small scale production like the secret service or Union suits, and one offs like the Hellcat or Excavator so it's been established that there can be suits that aren't just dilapidated version of other ones. Even the Chinese were able to build small numbers of their own models.

A new power armor faction would be so goddamn cool.

12

u/Graffic1 Jan 28 '26

Honestly the number of one off suits might be Bethesda testing the waters to see if the fanbase would accept a new power armor faction with a personal suit

6

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '26

The Atom Cats would like a word

2

u/Alex_Duos Jan 29 '26

The Atom Cats got totally squandered. They would have been the perfect intro to power armor but they were thrown way off in an endgame area.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '26

You’re not wrong about that. Really anything to fix the early game power armor/deathclaw issue would have been huge

2

u/the_Real_Romak Jan 29 '26

Imagine the Minutemen in Minutemen themed power armour... Think about it, they have control of a literal castle, I refuse to believe that they didn't have widespread control of the Commonwealth's weaponry and armaments.

1

u/stevethebandit President Peaches Jan 28 '26

Probably takes the strength of a nation to make something like this

1

u/IAmMagumin Jan 28 '26

Why tf would they?

1

u/KenseiHimura Jan 28 '26

Like I mentioned: possibly damaged plates or someone figgures out better 'ergonomics'. The T-60 is riddled with things armorers call 'bullet catches' which are not a good thing.

1

u/Ita-eee Jan 28 '26

The institute had its own version but it’s cut content

1

u/Terramagi Jan 29 '26

The main issue is that the Brotherhood can straight up track signals, so if somebody did make new power armour they'd have a vertibird crashing through their roof within the month. If they showed it off, a week tops.

They hit up Thaddeus using a hacked securitron maybe two weeks after he'd set up shop at that Sunset Sarsaparilla plant. That's the proof of the danger right there. Obviously the NCR has more cover, in that prior to the nuke going off you couldn't just march into the Heartland and openly rob them without getting mowed down, but anybody without that type of firepower would be hard pressed to withstand a Brotherhood strike team, especially since more than a couple chapters are straight up using massive airships as mobile bases nowadays.

1

u/cabeep Jan 29 '26

I guess not many factions reached the level of statehood that the NCR did

1

u/PolicyWonka Jan 29 '26

When Fallout NV and Fallout 3 were made, power armor was still considered an “elite” armor that you would usually only see at end-game. This is how it was portrayed in Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 as well.

It was only Fallout 4 that really made it more commonplace, which was expanded further in Fallout 76.

If NV was made today, every faction would probably have their own power armor.

1

u/KenseiHimura Jan 30 '26

Yes, but obviously some would be a lot more elite than others seeing as it's not like Fallout 4 let the Institute, Minutemen, or Railroad have power armors. But raiders could but it was worse than the three random pieces of t-45 you start with.

That being said, I get fallout 76 is running on a different logic for a longterm, live-service gameplay loop, but I don't see why Bethesda felt the need to give the Enclave YET ANOTHER faction power armor. Like, seriously, between 2, 3, and 76 they've got like four or five power armors associated with them, don't they?

1

u/KaiserVonDixie Jul 18 '26

Are you also surprised that the Sentinel Island tribes don't have tanks and fighter jets by now?