Can Opener is an ambitious mod: I aim to make it the last power armor rebalance mod you will ever need. Looking at the vanilla game, it's fairly obvious that Power Armor is fairly well broken. Despite the fact that characters in the game speak almost reverently of power armor's abilities, and no less than two quests involve characters who will massacre innocent people for a single suit, it's barely more powerful than the best metal armors (and arguably, in the case of the vanilla T-51 armor, actually worse) and worst of all, it's everywhere. With a Mesmetron, some strategy, and some luck, a player can harvest literally dozens of pieces of armor from Outcast patrols and get incredibly wealthy from the sale of slaves. Once obtained, it becomes difficult to upkeep, and in a couple cases actually impossible to repair outside of merchants. Considering the way Fallouts of the past have worked, this is an unrealistic state of affairs. While some past mods have addressed facets of the problem, Can Opener aims to approach power armor from the ground up by making it rare, making it live up to the hype, and giving the player more options to keep up his or her armor with their own talents.

First, NPC-worn power armors have been rendered unlootable. This has precedent; power armor is obviously a very complex as well as very heavy piece of equipment, and should be nearly impossible to simply slip off a dead body. As we can see in Operation: Anchorage, it normally requires a special harness simply to get soldiers into it, and this is with presumably factory-fresh suits, not ones worn down by two-centuries of wear and intense firefights.

All power armors have been boosted statistically significantly. Can Opener raises the maximum damage resistance cap to 90%, and the best power armor gives exactly that much damage resistance, and even the least powerful suits offer at least 80% DR. Stat bonuses have also been boosted and rebalanced; the "ground floor" for bonuses add +2 to strength, +5 Unarmed Damage, +50 Carry Weight, +7% Radiation Resistance, at the sole expense of 40 points of Sneak and 5-15% lower vulnerability to Energy Weapons.

I have, however, left a few key suits of armor: Linden's Outcast Power Armor, Medic Power Armor, the armor given to you in Take it Back! (though it has been altered), T-51b (standard and winterized), and an added unique suit of Enclave armor (the Enclave Shocktrooper Armor included in the game files but not used).

The central feature of Can Opener, though, is its eponymous perk. The Can Opener perk, available at Level 14 and 60 repair, gives the player the ability to salvage Power Armor parts from downed suits. These parts can be used to repair all other power armors and helmets. As well, players with the Scrounger perk are able to harvest more parts more successfully than those who have not taken it.

I'm not going to lie; Can Opener alters a lot of vanilla resources, and probably cuts a wide swath through a number of other mod's functionality, such as some of the many Power Armor stat rebalances and Repair Rethought Reborn. If you're comfortable with how you have things set up, don't use Can Opener. If you are frustrated at uneven, un-uniform coverage of power armors and wish for a comprehensive solution, Can Opener may be for you. Unlike Wasteland Melee Mod Pack, this is not designed to be dynamic or modular, because the vanilla setup is just that poorly done. I do not at this time plan to make compatibility patches, as the sheer number of PA mods on the Nexus is enormous, and the components of this mod also depend on a lot of very time-consuming duplication. I do give permission to others to upload their own tweaks to Can Opener, and offer reciprocal links to anyone who makes or uploads their own compatibility patches for it.

• Slower Degradation - keeps armor and guns from degrading quite as fast.
• Abbreviated Effects - abbreviates effect titles in inventory and the PipBoy for items with complicated statistical bonuses.
• EMP Damage for PA - adds negative effects when you're caught in Pulse Grenades' wash when you're wearing PA.