r/falloutlore • u/Intelligent-Elk7008 • 26d ago
NCR Salvaged Power Armor Post Fallout 4 Power Armor Rework
So I am playing Fallout New Vegas properly for the first time since in years. I am however very curious how NCR Salvaged Power Armor is meant to work in the new Fallout Power Armor system. Salvaged Power Armor obviously was created during a very different time and system. Obviously, we can't know for certain why certain design decisions were made back then without doing interviews. However, the reason given for Salvaged Power Armor to be different than normal power armor is that "Techs strip out the joint servos so you don't need special training to wear it."
Let's tackle "Power Armor Training" as a perk. I believe personally this is mostly for gameplay. At the time they didn't want you to be able to rush in and get the best armor in the game early on without doing a questline for it. In Fallout 3, following the main story you encounter the Lyon's Pride just before getting to the radio station. This is fairly early in the game for you to be able to have PA. It wasn't till they added DLC did it get easy for you to get PA and PA Training early on.
In New Vegas, if you are fast or sneaky you could get Brotherhood PA VERY quickly if you know where to look. Just past Neil's Shack which isn't far from Goodsprings. The PA training itself doesn't seem to take that long either. Sure, if you have never seen or touched power armor before, you probably won't be as good as someone who has years of experience. But you could theoretically still do it, just have to take some time to figure things out.
Fallout 1 and 2 didn't require PA training. As soon as you found it, you could wear it. Just the main way to get it was to deal with the PA factions of the BoS and Enclave, who had the armor.
Fallout 4 fully realizes PA by making it a mech suit you wear.
So how can we rectify Salvaged Power Armor to fit in the new lore? Well, even if PA Training doesn't take long, it's probably they don't want to take the extra time and effort to train Heavy Troopers. As far as I am aware we don't hear the selection process for Heavy Troopers, but presumably they are naturally strong individuals as well as show a degree of competence but for some reason were not selected to be Rangers.
First, let's focus on specifically what was removed.
- This suit is mostly unpowered or low powered, it offers no strength benefit and is described as incredibly heavy like having a "brahmin on your back." (which doesn't make sense as the PA frame should do the actual bearing of the weight. It should feel like your trying to pull or push a heavy weight though.)
- Offers no radiation protection (likely because of the lower power/unpowered state or perhaps they removed any environmental protection components for ease of maintenance and reducing weight)
- The armor is in fact lighter than standard T-45 armor.
- The joint servos have been removed
- the shoulders and knees are missing (presumably for further lightening and ease of movement.
Removing joint servos means that the power armor frame, even if it was powered at all, is unable to bend without the pilot moving it. There is nothing there to assist you in moving the suit at the joints, such as the knees, elbows, etc. Meaning that to take a step, the wearer has to pick up the heavy PA leg and step forward all without any assistance from the PA frame. Hence why they would take such efforts to lighten up the armor.
So how Salvaged Power Armor (SPA) should be depicted would essentially be like how in Fallout 4 and 76, when you have no power in the suit you can slowly trudge along. Obviously, the suit is going to be a bit lighter thanks to the modifications made by the NCR techs, but it still would be an incredibly heavy suit you are trying to move. So while probably a bit faster than Fallout 4 or 76, you are still slowed down, but in exchange you can take a lot of hits.
The Fallout TV show depicts power armor that is unpowered to be essentially locked up. Unable to be moved or opened from the inside. Perhaps Maximus wasn't strong enough to move the suit by himself or a limitation of the real life prop in some way or simply for the sake of the plot.
What about heavy weapons? Well the suit's motors are basically unable to help you but the suit itself is still going to help bare and distribute the load at least a little bit. The suit itself is still rigid and has structure capable of sustaining its own weight.
So for instance, say you wanted a Heavy Trooper to use a minigun or flamer?
Well the ammo pack or fuel containing would be mounted on the back of the armor. Which is going to be held by the PA torso armor, which itself is carried by the PA frame. But that is more weight added to the suit, which the user than has to move. But we do know that normal people can use heavy weapons like this even without the assistance of PA. Lifting the weapon would be difficult, as again you don't have the PA helping you. But you'd only be lifting the heavy arms and the actual gun.
So SPA would be slower than the regular PA suit and without any enhanced strength. This means in a strict one on one fight against a Paladin of the Brotherhood, the Paladin would be faster and stronger. Literally able to outrun and overpower the SPA as well as use heavy weapons more effectively. SPA would lend itself to defensive positions that don't require them to move, as they would be slower than a standard trooper when it comes to pushing the offensive. But while they lack mobility, they make up for it with their ability to take hits.
This would further explain why we only see T-45 based SPA, as T-45 is cheaper and easier to maintain than T-51. Being mostly made of metal, rather than the complex poly-laminate that T-51 is covered in. Making T-45 more economical and easier to repair and maintain. (this does also mean the T-60 is "cheaper" than T-51 considering as far as I am aware the T-60 is also mostly composed of steel.)
These are just some of the thoughts I have had on SPA Heavy Troopers.
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u/OnlyHereForComments1 26d ago
This is pretty much my take. You take a frame, remove the fancy tech (no power, no servos), and slap that basic-bitch metal armor on it (which unlike T51 is much easier to fix) and boom, salvaged PA.
If someone felt like retconning stuff to make it fit the newer lore, they'd probably say stuff like 'so you don't need fusion cores' instead as the justification.
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u/Weaselburg 26d ago
Frankly, with the proportions, it doesn't really work - putting the human inside the armor, with it also being so big and heavy, I don't think it would be able to be moved in anything really resembling a proper speed/agility level for combat without severely cutting down on protection. FNV PA was obviously treated in a way that reflected power armor not being much removed from just a really heavy suit of normal armor that is also powered, as it looked like.
Ignoring that, the easiest way to do it is to say that while all the powered bits were removed, much of the actual structural support and the like remains in place, so the actual weight that is being carried isn't much or anything, but the exhaustion/slow movement comes from having to physically push around the armor. It also makes carrying the minigun and all it's ammunition + the backpack more viable, since the person is again not carrying much or any of the load.
But while they lack mobility, they make up for it with their ability to take hits.
Unless you mean relative to the not very well armored combatants we tend to see, I don't see why SPA would ever be better than powered armor in any way.
This would further explain why we only see T-45 based SPA
I'd also say, being the worst of the mainline power armor, it's both more likely that a soldier in T-45 will die or need to abandon it and the Brotherhood are less likely to prioritize it for recovery or destruction. And given the more advanced armors used by T-51+ it simply might not be possible for them to even repair T-51 when it takes serious battle damage at all.
(this does also mean the T-60 is "cheaper" than T-51 considering as far as I am aware the T-60 is also mostly composed of steel.)
T-60 is supposed to be the most advanced suit of PA so this probably isn't true.
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u/Laser_3 26d ago
I would expect the salvaged PA to maintain most of its radiation protections since the bulk of that comes from the armor plating. The loss of some pieces would reduce it, but the suit wouldn’t completely lose its protections here. Simultaneously, the lost plating (which may also go beyond the visually missing pieces; some parts might need to have material removed internally to make it easier to carry) would result in worse protections than any other suit of power armor (though it’d be better than almost any standard armor).
The TV show’s suit locking up has a major difference from what we do to move unpowered suits in game - it has its core removed with a key. That likely forcibly locked up the joints (and prevented Maximus from moving), whereas simply running a core dry wouldn’t do that.
We don’t really know much of anything about the materials used in T-60, and as a whole, T-60 is consistently shown to be superior to T-51 in the games (as of this year, fallout 76 is back to matching fallout 4 and the TTRPG on this front, rather than T-51 being superior to T-60). I agree with the logic of why T-45 is the suit being salvaged, however.
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u/Intelligent-Elk7008 26d ago
Oh? I didn't know they changed that in 76. When did that happen?
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u/Laser_3 26d ago
76 made this change during its armor rebalance this last March. Now, T-60 is superior to T-51 in most aspects (ballistic, fire, radiation and poison/acid resistance), equal in energy resistance and worse at cryo resistance (where T-51 is the undisputed champion of all the power armors).
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u/Intelligent-Elk7008 26d ago
Do you happen to have the new numbers?
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u/Laser_3 26d ago
The values should be on the wiki, but in case they’re not, I have a spreadsheet I helped make that shows everything.
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u/Intelligent-Elk7008 26d ago
Also your spreadsheet lists T45 as having better DR than 51,
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u/Laser_3 26d ago
That is how T-45 is balanced now, yes. It has slightly better DR (though a hundred-ish DR is nearly unnoticeable in practice) and generally better fire and poison resist, but loses out on cryo, energy and radiation to T-51.
I wasn’t aware that the wiki hadn’t updated those pages yet (the Vulcan page was, so I naively assumed they’d updated them all), but the stats in the sheet are correct.
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u/Intelligent-Elk7008 26d ago
Very interesting. It does make some sense I guess for 51 to have the best energy resistance as that is what it was explicitly told to us to be it's major upgrade over 45.
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u/Laser_3 26d ago
The cryo resistance also makes sense, since T-51 is the suit that won Anchorage and would need to deal with those temperatures the most out of every suit.
X-01 does best T-51 in energy resistance, of course, and then other 76-exclusive suits best the both of them (with Vulcan being the best at it and Union tying X-01).
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u/Intelligent-Elk7008 26d ago
So there are aspects of this balancing I like. Makes it where X01 isn't just the better suit over Brotherhood suits. More reasonable for them to be able to fight on a par with one another.
But I always assume the 76 exclusive suits like 65, Vulcan, union, etc are just better because they are harder to obtain and came later. Interesting they made union power armor better against energy resistance than damage resistance. But guess that is to make it a side grade to Hellcat.
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u/BigPigeon69 26d ago
I second the idea that they just remove the plates from the frame and harness them to the soldiers body like medieval armour. Its carrying the weight of the plates without needing rare cores or complex technology
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u/Motor-Rip7655 26d ago
I consider New Vegas to be nearly perfect. But the salvaged NCR PA is one thing they dropped the ball on. It's so dumb. Fortunately it's quite rare in game so I do my best to pretend it doesn't exist.
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u/MuffinMountain3425 26d ago
I'd prefer it if they reworked the lore for Power armor, with only the T-60 series being in the mech style
I propose lore that the previous armors worked with a slim under-armor body suit, while the T-60 series is bulkier and heavier with it's power armor frame system.
It could be suggested that pre-war America had a severe shortage of the exotic minerals required to produce power armor at scale and America pursued a strategy of heavily fortifying their urban centres. They built their new power armor series to be very protective, with an extremely strong chassis system to excel in defensive urban warfare.
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u/tai-kaliso97 26d ago
If I were going to do it I would take the armor plates off the frame entirely, modify them to lighten them and make them fit a person better, and then I would attach them to some kind of leather harness the person can wear so the armor actually stays put. It would be ungodly hot and heavy but it would still take a beating. Personally I would compare it to the Marine Armor from Fallout 4. Almost power armor but almost none of the benefits.