Best power armor and power armor carryweight?

[Wolf]

Do make a huge diference what power armor i use or is all about the mods?
Carryweight the same for all power armor?
i want max carryweight without having to use a bad power armor, what is my best option?

[MBK]

Excavator gets you 100 extra carry weight and union 75, you'll also want the calibrated shocks mod on both legs to get an extra 100 on top of that

[Chronocide]

@MBK has it. Excavator is the best for carry weight. Though notable that this is a set bonus, so it only works if you don't mix and match.

PS: the excavator PA cannot be found.

It's questline that should be startable by clicking on the posters in the world (should be one at the rusty pick), though the patch notes have said that quest starter is a bit bugy. Not a very long quest to get the armor, and they give you all the plans.

Once you "unlock it" you'll start seeing excavator legendaries as drops from legendary creatures and events.

[Wolf]

Excavator vs other power armor on damage resistance?

[Mari]

I'm a wolf too, but all your references are meaningless to me

[Firaveus-]

Honestly excavator is not bad,I used an assassins set before I rolled my union assassins set and it was great, But out of all the sets I have ran I die the least in union Pa.

[insert food here]

Damage resistance numbers are fairly pointless when comparing between the different PA sets. All PA gets a 42% reduction to incoming damage before the resistance numbers are used to calculate the remainder and what damage you will receive. All PA also also gets a 90% reduction to incoming rads before the rad resistance is used to calculate the remainder you receive.

So even Excavator Vs the gold bullion T-65, the excavator set looks like garbage if you are just focused on the resistance numbers. Reality with the way the game mechanics work is that the difference is functionally very small. Once you add in damage mitigation perks like dodgy, blocker and ricochet even a lowly Excavator set is extremely tanky for PvE content.

Excavator, Hellcat and Union are the best sets as they all get extra built in effects. Excavator is better mining yield and +100 carry weight for a full set. Hellcat is extra damage reduction for a full set. Union is +150 poison resistance and +75 carry weight for a full set.

All PA sets will get +50 carry weight per leg with the calibrated shocks mod applied. Excavator gets the additional +100 op top of this so is the best carry weight by +25 over Union.

Union is the best set right now as it has 3/4 the carry weight bonus of Excavator but adds poison resistance to negate needing to take any poison resistance from other sources. Sure poison resistance is a situational thing for PvE, but there are several sources of it such as mirelurk queens poison spit, moonshine jamboree event and snally gasters to name a few. It is one of the things that can kill you real fast though so having it for the small trade off of slightly less carry weight vs excavator PA i think is a good trade.

The con of union is you need to buy the plans to craft it and all the mods with stamps. If you did not get the crafting plans for free from a previous season scoreboard this is the only way to get it right now. It can be a big grind if you do not enjoy expeditions or have not done them much.

Small downside is that Union gets the worst rad resist value of all PA. Not a huge deal due to the built in 90% reduction. However it is noticeable that i am popping radaway slightly more often when in a nuke zone compared to sets with a high rad resist value like T-65 and Strangler Heart.

Also Union cannot be dropped or traded. So you cannot get someone else to mod your PA for you. Excavator can be dropped and traded so someone with the plans and mod plans can help you out by modding the parts for you.

If you are a jetpack fan, Excavator cannot get a jetpack unless you can find someone willing to sell you a torso from when there was a small window of time that a jetpack could be attached. I'm sure players still have some spare but due to the elapsed time they may be harder to find now.

I used to use an overeaters Excavator set as my main set until i made an overeaters Union set. Honestly not much to complain about with the excavator set. It worked just fine