How to use power armor forever.

[AnemoneMeer]

It's point intensive, but you legitimately can use power armor forever if you have the right perks.

Charisma and Intelligence are the core power armor stats. You need both at 10 (use bobbleheads). The core perks are the int 9 perk and charisma 1 perk, as well as Science and Local Leader. When you get your power armor, you want to modify the legs for improved carrying capacity. You also want to build a max ranked weapon shop in every settlement you can and develop and network settlements.

There are ~15 fusion cores floating around in easy to access shops (two in diamond city, one for brotherhood of steel). Max ranked weapon shops also sell additional power cores.

The reason you build up settlements is because they will produce resources for free constantly. This includes the parts to repair power armor. The shops will make you free caps (not much) and more importantly, will sell you fusion cores. The high charisma and barter perk ensure you can get fusion cores for incredibly cheap (250-270 caps). the int perk reduces the decay rate, and the improved leg servos increases how much you can carry by 100 units.

Put together, this means that wearing power armor becomes more cost effective than not wearing power armor. +200 capacity means you carry -far- more loot out, which translates to far more caps, which means you can buy out fusion cores wherever you go and still make a profit, and when you dip back to your fusion core shops to sell your surplus of gear, you can quickly fix your armor with the resources your settlements bring back in.

Power armor is not a luxury resource. By level 25, you can be in it forever with no consequence. Earlier you can wear it forever at the cost of making less caps than you would otherwise.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/648877624333921201/58A38F8C36A1656B04C076AAF5928F581E159EF6/

You can pull off 100+ fusion cores easily once you really get going.