Power Armor does not need power?

[limbo696]

I’m new to the game and I found a (1) basic power armor suit and (2) light power armor helmet. Anyway, I have been able to wear the armor and go on a complete zombie rampage through town with seeming invincibility due to the 99 protection level which seems overpowered. I checked the wiki and it says that the armor requires power via a unified power supply (UPS). However, I see no indication of how this is installed or how it works and I seem to have unlimited power with the suit. Is this a bug or working as intended? (I downloaded an experimental version from last week and installed the latest version today with no difference.)

[kevin.granade]

You should notice that you are extremely heavily encumbered on all body parts, that goes away if the suit is powered.
It definitely needs a nerf though, there was a bug until recently that rendered the coverage of the power armor 99% instead of 100%, once that was fixed it revealed the fact that the power armor is in reality way too good.

[Barhandar]

You should notice that you are extremely heavily encumbered on all body parts, that goes away if the suit is powered.

Only 5 encumbrance.

It definitely needs a nerf though, there was a bug until recently that rendered the coverage of the power armor 99% instead of 100%, once that was fixed it revealed the fact that the power armor is in reality way too good.

Depends. The armor part needs nerf, yes, but the rest of stats are being power-sept: it ONLY protects you against bash and cut, plus works as gas mask.
While RM13 is lighter, less encumbering, and holds double the advanced UPS’s charge and is a full ANBC plus full-color nightvision plus gas mask plus wade-into-a-burning-fungal-patch-and-not-even-warm-up fire protection plus ear protection when on. Doesn’t have as much bash and cut defense, but nothing stopping you from equipping it along with the rest of your gear, minus shoes and helmet, other than encumbrance.
Much rarer, but stethoscopes aren’t rarer than it now and acetylene torch helps break into banks where it usually spawns.

P.S. Speaking of equipping two pairs of shoes… are there things which can be equipped OVER your footwear? IRL’s shock protection galoshes are worn over regular footwear.

[The_Lone_Badger]

Only 5 encumbrance.

5 is a shitload.

While RM13 is lighter, less encumbering, and holds double the advanced UPS's charge and is a full ANBC plus full-color nightvision plus gas mask plus wade-into-a-burning-fungal-patch-and-not-even-warm-up fire protection plus ear protection when on. Doesn't have as much bash and cut defense, but nothing stopping you from equipping it along with the rest of your gear, minus shoes and helmet, other than encumbrance. Much rarer, but stethoscopes aren't rarer than it now and acetylene torch helps break into banks where it usually spawns.

RM13 can only be powered by plutonium though, whereas there are renewable ways of powering standard power armour (rechargeable UPS or bionics).

[Barhandar]

5 is a shitload.

That thing above about clearing entire city worth of zombies in unpowered basic armor kinda says otherwise. Imagine if they take heavy (169/247 armor).

RM13 can only be powered by plutonium though, whereas there are renewable ways of powering standard power armour (rechargeable UPS or bionics).

Yes, but it lasts for 15000 turns on a single activation from full charge, doesn’t take extra charges to activate, and you don’t have to keep it active when you’re not being attacked/wading through waste sarcophagi. Which also means it’s harder to get surprised by armor losing power, because it’s got its own power supply that isn’t shared with bionics (which could be attack bionics) or UPS (charge-using guns).
In short, RM13 is really good, but runs on non-renewable power - while power armor runs on renewable, but is incredibly clunky and only good against straight attacks (not acidproof, not radproof, not electric_immune unless powering it adds these flags).

[Arek_PL]

5 is a shitload.

i have 7 enc on my torso and 4 on every other body part 5 is realy small

i think that i need to find power armor because it will give me more protection at less enc

[jokaro]

What kind of powerarmor is this? Can you even move the joints when it doesn’t have any power?

[Barhandar]

What kind of powerarmor is this? Can you even move the joints when it doesn’t have any power?

Why not? If it’s sanely-designed, joint lock will be fail-positive - only working if it’s powered, so that if you lost power, you still can, say, get out of the armor or walk away and into safe place. It’s just going to be very, very hard and tiring to do, since you’ll be moving all the weight by yourself.

[jokaro]

[quote=“jokaro, post:7, topic:7432”]What kind of powerarmor is this? Can you even move the joints when it doesn’t have any power?

Why not? If it’s sanely-designed, joint lock will be fail-positive - only working if it’s powered, so that if you lost power, you still can, say, get out of the armor or walk away and into safe place. It’s just going to be very, very hard and tiring to do, since you’ll be moving all the weight by yourself.[/quote]

That I can agree with. But you shouldn’t be able to clear a town of zombies with an unpowered armor. You will probably move so slow that you can’t swing any weapons. And without any power you would probably lose balance quite easy.

[Arek_PL]

maybe increase enc to give 10 instead of 5 on all body parts?

[Datanazush]

I’d have to say Arek probably has the right of it, make the armour truly crippling to wear without power, probably by way of a severe movement speed decrease?

[Barhandar]

That I can agree with. But you shouldn’t be able to clear a town of zombies with an unpowered armor. You will probably move so slow that you can’t swing any weapons. And without any power you would probably lose balance quite easy.

Losing balance, again, should be prevented by design. But other factors? Sure. If you’re not a demigod with things like 30 strength, you shouldn’t be able to fight in powerless power armor at all. Ignore blows completely while you patch yourself up and maybe recharge if you have batteries sure, moving sure (you’ll have to run away sometime, after all), but not fight. 10 torso and arms/hands encumbrance, 3 everything else, maybe. Dropping to 1-2 like now when powered. But that’d require coding to allow all-covering armor to have different encumbrance for different parts it covers.

I’d have to say Arek probably has the right of it, make the armour truly crippling to wear without power, probably by way of a severe movement speed decrease?

Severe movement speed decrease would mean near-complete disuse of power armor, it’s already one trick pony, and if it slows you down even more than now, even zombies are going to kill you if you lose your means of fighting back.

[Arek_PL]

yea losing balance on its own is not thing what we need but slow actions and realy small mele accuracy given by high enc on every bodypart (escept eyes maybe mouth too) will work well

[jcd]

but a really strong character (say STR 20+) should be able to use the power armors reasonably well, even if unpowered.
Maybe the enc could be a function of the character’s STR?

eg. for unpowered: ENC = 100/pl_STR
so a char of STR 8 will face 12.5 ENC wearing it, but a char of 20 STR will only have 5 ENC.

[Arek_PL]

good idea too getting pernament 20+ is hard so getting character what will walk and fight free without power without using granades will be hard too

[Nathan]

power armor’s biggest drawback is only being able to carry around 130 storage

[limbo696]

Thanks for discussing the situation, guys. I think the wiki section should describe that the suits can be used without power to explain the situtation better–the unpowered encumbrance is only 5 for this particular suit. Making the suit less functional without power seems more realistic or less OP to me.

[Datanazush]

[quote=“Datanazush, post:11, topic:7432”]I’d have to say Arek probably has the right of it, make the armour truly crippling to wear without power, probably by way of a severe movement speed decrease?

Severe movement speed decrease would mean near-complete disuse of power armor, it’s already one trick pony, and if it slows you down even more than now, even zombies are going to kill you if you lose your means of fighting back.[/quote]

What I meant is that unpowered armour should basically be a heavily armoured coffin. I mean, you’re moving by personal strength what is normally moved by a series of powerful motors, sure you can do it, but you’re probably going to end up unable to fight well in it, get exhausted by moving in it, and probably move like you’re wearing a sack of bricks.

Basically, it should be the armour equivalent of a fusion gun or laser rifle, really pretty and flash, but useless unless you’ve got the right stuff to run it.

[kevin.granade]

As for nerfing, even more encumbrance is an option, as is stamina drain once the stamina/running feature lands.
The most interesting thing though is to give enemies attacks that ignore armor, like grappling to restrain you and allowing very strong bashing attacks to cause some damage by slamming you around inside the armor.

The cruelest option is to let zombies pile on you until you simply can’t move…

[sagethor]

There’s something appealing about imagining someone in football gear in a dogpile of zombies…