If you’re anything like me you probably felt that the vanilla game was a tad too generous with its power armour. While handing you a suit in the first ten minutes can be overlooked, the subsequent littering of the Commonwealth with more suits was much harder to wrap my head around. Why has no-one picked these up in 210 years? Why is the one found in Concord the only one that seems to have decayed over two centuries? Are we really supposed to believe that a suit of armour that has sat at the bottom of a lake this long will work with no problems? And don’t get me started on the vanilla levelling system for power armour, which sees you handed the best suit in the game at level 28 and appears to skip T-51 (once the poster child of the series) altogether.
 
There are already plenty of mods on the Nexus which aim to fix these oversights, and this is my take on it. I’ve tried to remain as true to the lore as I can, although I’ve had to get creative more often than not to try and keep things interesting and explain new additions like the T-60.

Important: For a more in-depth look at the changes I made, have a look in the articles tab.

Power Armour
The vanilla suits followed a pretty boring power curve of each suit being slightly stronger than the previous one, to the point where the differences were pretty much cosmetic.
 
In LBPAC, the armour suits are a bit more distinctive:

• Raider: scrap cobbled together on a frame. Only saving grace is low fuel consumption and ease of repair.
  

• T-45: the first model, and all the flaws that come with that. Decent protection and not hard to repair, but eats fusion cores alive. Also reduces movement and reload speed due to primitive servo design.
  

• T-51: the pinnacle of pre-war protection. Highly durable with excellent protection and acceptable fuel usage, but at the cost of high repair requirements.
  

• T-60: an attempt to marry T-51 technology with T-45 simplicity to save resources, just before the Great War. Offers the best fuel economy and is much easier to repair than T-51, but is not as protective. The jack-of-all-trades power armour.
  

• X-01: a high-tech testbed platform for power armour mods that was never intended to be used in combat. However, with some love and attention it can be turned into the finest power armour in the wasteland.
  

Repair
In vanilla, an idiot who couldn’t use a blowtorch without lighting themselves on fire could somehow repair advanced suits of armour that took the brightest pre-war minds to design. And all with some tin cans and a hot plate!
 
In LBPAC, you’ll need progressive ranks of the armourer perk to repair power armour.

• Raider – no requirements
• T-45 – armourer 1
• T-60 – armourer 2
• T-51 – armourer 3
• X-01 – armourer 4
  

You’ll also need a lot more resources than just some steel. Even something as simple as a T-45 limb will need gears and adhesive as well as a lot more steel than vanilla. And as you use more advanced armour, be prepared to start scavenging for more uncommon crafting materials such as aluminium, plastic, fiberglass and ceramic.

Linings
e.g. the A, B, C, etc variants.
As with the suits themselves, the linings were just a bland upgrade. I’ve mostly kept that the same, but most linings have some degree of individuality now. For T-45 and T-51, a lining will usually upgrade either ballistic, energy or environmental resistance. T-60 follows the vanilla upgrade path to emphasise its more versatile nature, and some of its mid-tier linings confer additional effects to represent the needs of the different Brotherhood ranks. In addition the F linings will confer a powerful additional effect such as health regeneration or a Tesla field, as a reward for sticking with the armour piece in question.


Mods
In vanilla, almost every power armour could accept any mod. That’s gone right out of the window here – after all, where exactly were the explosive vents going in the welded scrap of raider armour?
 

• Raider: very few mods, mostly aimed at solving its issues with fragility and environmental resistance.
• T-45: a few primitive mods, reflecting its early model status. Some mods have been repurposed to help manage its ludicrous fusion core drain.
• T-51: a slew of high tech mods, including the coveted jetpack.
• T-60: mods focus on saving power, increasing versatility and protecting the user from rads (hence the Brotherhood’s love of it).
• X-01: just about any mod, with the exception of some raider-specific ones, as befitting a testbed.
  

Locations
In vanilla you would trip over power armour on your way tothe shops. Now you’ll at least have to pick a lock or hack a terminal to get at it.
 
Power armour that spawns out in the world just standing there has been disabled. Suits locked inside cages have been de-levelled and will only spawn as specific types. All in all, power armour will not be too difficult to find, but you will have to put a little bit of effort in.
 

• Raider: usually found being worn by raiders and their bosses, who you’ll have to loot it off.
• T-45: easily the most common power armour. Look for it in military checkpoint lockups and Gunner bases.
• T-51: extremely rare, as most were deployed overseas. Only a couple of suits in the Commonwealth.
• T-60: gained by joining the Brotherhood of Steel (or looting their corpses). If joining the army’s not your style, try looting some important pre-war military installations.
• X-01: there are 2 suits in the Commonwealth, neither of them easy to get.
  

 
A word about promotional power armours: there are of course 4 suits of power armour in the DLCs that are used to promote various brands of soda. Since these are all high-level T-51 and X-01 suits, you might expect them to be extremely powerful with this mod installed. But if you think about it, would the army hand over working models of extremely advanced (and expensive) power armour just to appease some corporate desk jockeys? Personally, I doubt it. I think they’d send them the defective models from the factory instead. So both the Vim armours from Far Harbor and the Nuka Cola armours from Nuka World all have something wrong with them. I’ve added terminal entries to relevant computers to try and explain these.
 

• Vim (red) T-51: broken power coil - drains core like T-45
• Vim Refresh (green) T-51: misaligned servos – slower reload and movement speed
• Nuka-Cola T-51: miscast ceramics – all pieces at 1% health
• Quantum X-01: display model – is actually a plastic statue with a power armour frame inside
  

 
If you’re worrying that this will make these unique armours useless, don’t! All of these issues can be fixed with enough resources and perk investments.

Compatibility and Installation
Install and uninstall this like you would any other mod. Should be fine to uninstall mid-playthrough, although I would get out of any power armour you are wearing first. Be aware that any suits you have already discovered (or gotten close enough to for them to spawn) will not revert back to what they originally were, with the exception of unique suits like the Quantum X-01 or Vim armours.
 
Will not be compatible with any mod that edits vanilla power armour, but will be compatible with everything else. Compatibility patches for popular power armour mods and AWKCR are available in the installer.
 
CPAO – Compatibility patch available
PAMAP – Compatible
AWKCR – Compatibility patch available (for version 8.4 of AWKCR)
X-02 and X-03 – Patches available
Creation Club - Patches for X-02 and X-03 creations
Liberty Power Armor - Patch available

MisterNPA has also made compatability patches for the following mods:
T-49 - Armor of the Storyteller
Institute Power Armor
Mechanist Power Armor
Tribal Power Armor
 
Future Work
Further compatibility patches.