This is a TEST ESP, I am uploading it so that my testers can have a look at its progress.
I do encourage everyone to have a go at it though, the armor works and is all as stable as any other armor mod, so take a look and leave me some feedback, just be aware it is still in development, some textures need work as does some meshes, as well as some much needed balancing to its entries to tune it and make it balanced.






So what is it?
This mod adds a custom armor to the game. It is made up of a combination of modified vanilla meshes with completely new, 4K textures (diffuse, speculars and normals).
But it goes a few steps further.
Instead of the usual lite, sturdy and heavy variations, this mod aims to create a much more in depth level of progression.
The player will chance upon a lost prototype armor very early in the game. It will be beat up, rusted, scratched and missing many of its pieces, but it has potential.
As you wander the wasteland, and gain levels and ranks, you will reach certain points that will allow you to upgrade your armor. 
Upgrading the armor will add new parts to your armor, over 7 "ranks", starting from a flimsy little chest plate to a full suit of well made armor.
But it wont end there, I am also in the process of creating several variations of the textures.
As you start to excel in your armorer perks youll soon find that rust can be cleaned with a bit of steel wool (steel), dirt can be cleaned with a bit of cloth and some water, scratches can be filled in with a compound of adhesive and god-knows-what, Abraxo cleaner can make for an excellent polish to bring that steel shine back to its former glory, so on and so forth.
Doing so will be done in the form of the upgrades, so not only will meshes be expanded upon, but your armor will gradually get cleaner as you go along, bringing you a clean, well-maintained armor that is fitting for a rank 4 armorer, and it all fits within the scope of fallout 4 reality.

So thats the basic concept, at the moment it is simply the base "clean" textures and the 7 stages of meshes.
There are no requirements as of yet for the meshes, and the armor ratings are all the same, so dont expect to put on the Mk VII battlearmor and go take on a squad of deathclaws, you probably wont survive. But these are all things that will be coming by the final version.


Known Issues
There are no known incompatibilities with any mods as this mod uses purely unique fo4edit entries, including the upgrade systems keywords and such.
Given that it uses its own keywords, it probably wont benefit from things such as armorsmith as of yet. It also wont work with any sorting mods as it uses its own INNR, but I have set it to work in the same way as my own sorting mod available on nexus.

* There are no requirements or conditions on upgrade items.
* There are also no armor rating increases on upgrades yet (Armor is mostly useless at this point).
* There are some minor clipping issues particularly around heavy shoulders.
* Some textures need to be re-worked, particularly the heavy shoulders, yellow shape is being warped.
* Normal maps need some slight adjustments around bolts.
* Only way to get armor at the moment is through console.

If you see any issues other than what is listed please let me know so I can go about fixing them.
Likewise, if you have any ideas that could work well then please let me know, just please consider the limitations set by the current tools available and the lack of a creation kit.



TO GET ARMOR TYPE:

player.additem xx000808

xx represents your load order.
If you are unsure of your load order you can type:
help "battle armor" 4
into console and it will show all items with that in the name. You will want the one starting with WEAP:
Then type player.additem followed by the ID listed with the help command.

Armor will always spawn in its basic form, without decals, and can be upgraded at an armor workbench.
If it spawns in any other manner please let me know.


I would also love to get some screenshots from anyone with a nice looking setup, try to avoid the visual bugs though if possible.


There are a number of modders and community members who have helped me out considerably, of whom I will be linking them all in the final version.
At this stage im just doing a quick and dirty upload for test purposes but I will say a massive thanks to Cedaie for all of his help with, well, everything.
As well as Vass'tek for allowing me to use the assets from his Nanoarmor 2.0 mod, I ended up redoing my own textures from scratch and have re-done the meshes but have still retained a somewhat similar build, and it was his beginning files that I started with (yes he gave permission).
And of course, Millenia, for taking the time to talk me through how textures worked in the first place, I wouldnt have been modding a thing without his help at the start, and continually since then.

Tools used:
B.A.E
Fallout material editor
NifSkope
Blender
OutfitStudio
Photoshop
QuixelSuite
FO4Edit