What's the point of... Raider Power Armour

[The Inept European]

The VDSG load screen for it just came up, and made me think.

Given there's 3-4 suits of (vastly superior) US Army T-45 PA within 5 min walk of Sanctuary Hills, many of which you can just walk up and take, what is the point of Raider PA? I would expect some massive questline just to get some crappy bits of Raider PA, and you would just have to dream about getting actually "cherry, military-issue" power armour until later in the game. But in fact by the time you encounter Raider PA you have already outclassed it, and it's just so much junk to sell off.

Seems a poor game design decision and a missed opportunity to make the player work harder for their armour progression.

[Out Of Bubblegum]

Originally posted by danconnors:

I suppose you can put raider armor parts on a normal core, but I don't know if I've ever tried.

Yes you can. And you can mix-n-match too. I am in an early restart right now and Piper has a T45 armor with a raider armor II helmet. I still need to find a right leg to complete her set. The raider helmet come from the crashed boat on the way to Diamond City.

[Jurassic Fart 1]

It's not a game fault—it's YOUR fault. You can't decide what to pick up and use? It's not the devs' fault you don't know whether to crap or go blind. Jeez—crap or get off the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pot!

[Rayevsky]

Raider power armor created for the atmosphere. Would you even ask for raider regular armor in the game? Your captain Obvious.

[Count Von Count]

That’s a fair point, it is just another thing that they’ve screwed up in the layout of this game

[Rayevsky]

Originally posted by Lt Veers:

That’s a fair point, it is just another thing that they’ve screwed up in the layout of this game

There should always be garbage ammunition. Raider easier to improve, but it spoils the fact that good things are easily available. I more regret that raiders are not divided into named groups or gangs, as in Nukaworld.

[jonnan.west]

I use immersive Gameplay, which ramps up Settlement attacks to pretty heavy duty levels (50 or so attackers). Since I don't wear power armor normally, being able to have sets at any given settlement is fairly useful.

[The Inept European]

Yes those IG5 settlement attacks are brutal. Typically 20-30 levelled attackers, smarter tactics, better weapons, many levelled above you, some with PA, mini guns, Broadsiders, it's intense. Attacking from multiple directions at once, flanking, using cover. You definitely need your own PA on site.

[The Inept European]

To clarify my point, I'm not against Raider power armour, I really like it in fact. What I don't like is that the easy - easier in fact - availability of cherry milspec Power Armour makes the raider armour of marginal use to the player in the storyline.

[Shirome Artiste]

To me raider PA fills two niches, at least on paper.

1: Elevate some raider camps beyond mere "Bunch of walking lootbags" levels of threat in the base game. They're still fairly easily taken out but you can no longer blindly run in and kill everyone by sneezing at them.

2: Give relatively early access to a number of power armor pieces to starting players.

The thing with point 2, as a few people stated already, is that you're literally tripping over full t45 sets the moment you first get out of the vault. Not even talking about the main quest related one, just by randomly exploring a little bit outside of the vault there's 3-4 sets just waiting for you to either get in without any effort, or at worst, hack an advanced terminal or pick an advanced lock.


And sure, raider PA is cheap to repair. But so is t45. And t51, and lategame you're swimming in resources anyway so it no longer matters.

Doesn't mean raider PA is useless, it still adds a bit of threat to some raider camps which is always nice. Raiders IMO need all the help they can get in FO4 compared to literally every other group that holds POIs on the map.

It just means that, aesthetics aside, there's no real reason to go out and find raider PA gear when you can, with barely any effort, have half a dozen full t45 suits ready and waiting before even going all that far beyond Concord.


And yes, I believe that the amount of hilariously easy to find sets of power armor is a bit lorebreaking. I can somewhat accept that those suits locked in mil-spec locked cages on e.g. derailed trains are still intact and unlooted. Those cages are probably cutting tool-proof and hacking a terminal is probably pretty hard for the people 200Y beyond the bombs, but seriously guys. There's complete sets of PA literally standing in the middle of a field next to crashed 'birds in more than one occasion. The fact that 200Y+ in they're still there boggles the mind.

[The Inept European]

I agree, the free for the taking suits are not only illogical but lorebreaking, because they undermine the basic premise that PA is super cool and so, implicitly, hard to find/get.

But yes Raider PA does do a very important job in buffing the Raiders as opponents.

[The Inept European]

I mean a realistic, challenging, and lore-keeping assumption would be that to get a suit of real PA, you've got to *kill* someone who's wearing it, who's probably surrounded by a horde of tooled-up flunkies.

In which case it would be a very good idea to get yourself a suit of Raider PA first, before making the attempt, by killing a less-powerful Raider boss in a less-powerful Raider suit leading a less-powerful gang. It would be like... progression.

[The Inept European]

There you go, Bethesda, I fixed it for you. 😁