Do you think T-51 is hands down the best looking and most iconic armor in the series? Do you hate that its made obsolete so quickly? Do you think that cafeteria tray on the T-60's chest piece looks weird? (Okay that one might just be me...)

Do I have the mod for you!

So what does this mod actually do?

• Makes T-51 competitive with X-01 on the best power armor in the game. All T-51 parts have 10 points more physical resistance, and 10 points LESS energy resistance than X-01. T-51 also had more durability than X-01.
  

• Increases the durability of most power armor pieces pretty much across the board (Save for Raider power armor) Most limbs have been doubled or even tripled in durability. (Power Armor allowed you to walk through explosions unscathed in Fallout 1 and 2, two grenades should not shred your legs off)
  

• Material requirements for repairing T-51 have been increased to better reflect its new position, inversely T-60's requirements have been lowered.
  

• Crafting material requirements for T-51 armor mods have been increased to match T-60 mods, while T-60 have been lowered to match old T-51 requirements.
  

• The Level Lists for power armor frames has been revised. As fallout 4 had a problem with unlocking armors far too early in the game, level 28 was all that was needed to spawn X-01 armor, which can easily be achieved before you have even taken down Kellogg (especially if you do lots of settlement building)
  

As it stands, T-60 begins spawning at level 18, T-51 at Level 35, X-01 at Level 50, much closer to a "End Game" level. (Keep in mind some power armor frames seem to have a maximum level, particularly this seems to affect "partial" frames, the further you get from sanctuary, the higher the max level of the frame)

• Lastly, this mod also forces the Cambridge Polymer Labs quest to reward the player with a T-51 piece, removing the possibility of a T-45 piece entirely. (The animation is still a T-60 piece, which was never a possible reward in the vanilla game either.) This makes the quest much more rewarding.
  

It always rubbed me wrong that the BOS gives you a T-60 frame, as in Vanilla this can sometimes result in skipping over T-51 entirely. Now it feels much more fitting, as you can join the BOS early on, and get a early suit (which can be helpful if you keep finding partial frames and can't complete your T-60 in the early game) but not a near-end game suit. This also makes the unique T-51 frames you can find in Far Harbor more rewarding.

I also didn't really like other mods that tackled making T-51 the "best" such as simply giving it X-01 stats copy/paste. I wanted something a bit more high effort that still left a more natural progression within the game, so I had to make the effort myself!


What About the Lore?

I like to keep things lore friendly while also recognizing that gameplay comes first. Whether T-60 is actually "Better" than T-51 is actually up in the air, outside a single quote from the Fallout TTRPG that implies it is. Fallout 76 made T-51 the poster armor and gave it even higher stats than T-60 AND X-01. There is next to no lore on T-60 or X-01 armor, so there is a lot of wiggle room we can speculate within.

We can speculate that despite being the "pinnacle" of pre-war armor, T-51 may have been very expensive to manufacture and maintain. T-60 could have been the response, an upgraded T-45 that was cheaper to produce and maintain. (America was strapped for resources at this time and military contracts have always gone to the lowest bidder)

As for X-01, while we know for a fact its descendant, Advanced Power Armor, finally surpassed T-51, X-01 is a experimental prototype, we can easily assume it hasn't quite broken that barrier yet (As Fallout 76 seems to even more firmly imply than this mod does)


Compatibility:

Item sorting mods (aka mods that change the names of every item in the game) and mods that change power armor stats such as durability are not compatible with this mod.

This mod is not compatible with my Power Armor Level List Rebalanced mod as it basically replaces it.

This mod is compatible with Power Armor Materials and Paints (PAMAP)