Mothership Zeta Crew/Headscratchers

Ditching Power Armor

One thing I'd like to see is a logical explanation for dumping their power armor. Power armor weighs 50 pounds. Enclave soldiers have about 5 to 6 strength. With their armor on, it's increased to 6 to 7, making their carry weight something like 210 to 220 pounds, with only a quarter of it is taken up by their armor. It's nowhere enough to encumber them and the extra protection would be very useful when traversing a wasteland filled with giant scorpions, mutant bears, and ten-foot-tall murder lizards. That has always bugged me. It's not as if they were like NCR salvaged power armor since there's nothing helping them at all but functioning power armor should help carry itself. It just feels like they were carrying around the Idiot Ball when they made that decision. Even then, it doesn't really matter going to Russia. I have a closet full of power armor by that point in the game. I can just donate a suit of Hellfire armor. Nylus is supposed to be the one who worked on it. He should have little issue with it and it, in DR terms, is far superior to Hammer Head Armor.

• However, the highly advanced power armor isn't that, how can we say it, maintenance friendly. Pre-War PA tends to be more on the idea that they're easy to figure out and maintain correctly. However, the Enclave (who are Elitist Pricks with a capital E and P) want something better. Their Mk II armor is the first step. However once the Oil Rig went down their main facilities were attacked by the NCR. So, while an impressive improvement over combat armor, they were toned down in durability and complexity already once all their strongholds in the west are gone. Once the Crawler (which, this mod assumes that you've played through Broken Steel completely...) is destroyed their main facilities that have the ability to manufacture parts, which in turn would turn those suits into junk. Even the NCR had the ability to replace the parts of their stripped armor. While impressive, you still need to prototype, manufacture, test, prototype some more, rinse and repeat until you get it right. Between Fallout 2 and 3 is several decades at least and the Mk II and T-51b is even GREATER in terms of time. Basing it on an already prototyped system and essentially upgrading it is a lot faster than simply making one from scratch (which would be the case of making essentially a Hellfire/Tesla Mk II armor because by the time the mod takes place, the armor would be essentially junked). Actually its a request from the players that they think the Hammerhead is too weak to be like it was stated to be. The next update would make it an actual tank.
  • OP here and maker of one of the add-on that toughens up Hammer Head armor. That still doesn't quite work because Fallout 3 Enclave armor is significantly more durable than the older variants from Fallout 2, at the expense of lower protection. It should last them quite some time if the Enclave stragglers around are any indication. Plus, working with an unfamiliar power armor system could potentially take a bit longer than working with a fully repaired suit of Hellfire armor that the player could just donate and they'd be more familiar with it anyway, with Nylus and several of the others likely having worked on it before.