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Ditching Power Armor
One thing I'd like to see is a logical explanation for dumping their power armor. Power armor weighs 50 pounds. Enclave soldiers have about 5 to 6 strength. With their armor on, it's increased to 6 to 7, making their carry weight something like 210 to 220 pounds, with only a quarter of it is taken up by their armor. It's nowhere enough to encumber them and the extra protection would be very useful when traversing a wasteland filled with giant scorpions, mutant bears, and ten-foot-tall murder lizards. That has always bugged me. It's not as if they were like NCR salvaged power armor since there's nothing helping them at all but functioning power armor should help carry itself. It just feels like they were carrying around the idiot ball when they made that decision. Even then, it doesn't really matter going to Russia. I have a closet full of power armor by that point in the game. I can just donate a suit of Hellfire armor. Nylus is supposed to be the one who worked on it. He should have little issue with it and it, in DR terms, is far superior to Hammer Head Armor.
- However, the highly advanced power armor isn't that, how can we say it, maintenance friendly. Pre-War PA tends to be more on the idea that they're easy to figure out and maintain correctly. However, the Enclave (who are Elitist Pricks with a capital E and P) want something better. Their MkII armor is the first step. However once the Oil Rig went down their main facilities were attacked by the NCR. So, while an impressive improvement over combat armor, they were toned down in durability and complexity already once all their strongholds in the west are gone. Once the Crawler (which, this mod assumes that you've played through Broken Steel completely...) is destroyed their main facilities that have the ability to manufacture parts, which in turn would turn those suits into junk. Even the NCR had the ability to replace the parts of their stripped armor. While impressive, you still need to prototype, manufacture, test, prototype some more, rinse and repeat until you get it right. Between Fallout 2 and 3 is several decades at least and the MkII and T-51b is even GREATER in terms of time. Basing it on an already prototyped system and essentially upgrading it is a lot faster than simply making one from scratch (which would be the case of making essentially a Hellfire/Tesla MkII armor because by the time the mod takes place, the armor would be essentially junked). Actually its a request from the players that they think the Hammerhead is too weak to be like it was stated to be. The next update would make it an actual tank.
- OP here and maker of one of the add-on that toughens up Hammer Head armor. That still doesn't quite work because Fallout 3 Enclave armor is significantly more durable than the older variants from Fallout 2, at the expense of lower protection. It should last them quite some time if the Enclave stragglers around are any indication. Plus, working with an unfamiliar power armor system could potentially take a bit longer than working with a fully repaired suit of Hellfire armor that the player could just donate and they'd be more familiar with it anyway, with Nylus and several of the others likely having worked on it before.
- Actually, I checked some of the emails on the personal terminals in your office, says that they had to ditch the power armor since it was slowing them down. As for why they didn't grab some suits after setting up shop on the Olympus? Basic Psychology. They wish to distance themselves from any association to the enclave, and that armor would be one huge reminder to everyone of their past actions, not to mention stain the good PR they're trying to build in the Capital Wasteland. Why not base something off T51-b or T45-d? Association. Let's take a real world example I can recall off the top of my head. U.S. Soldiers are instructed to not use any enemy weapons they acquire, one such example is the A.K. 47 and it's derivatives. One of the reasons I remember is that the A.K. 47 has a ditinctive sound when firing, and friendly fire could ensue if an ally picked up the weapon used it against enemy soldiers. I may be forgetting additional details, but the point I'm trying to make id thst even with a new coat of paint, the outer shell would need some major redesigning to make it visually distinct fo it's predecessor, or TSC soldiers might end up taking some friendly fire in a heated conflict. The Hammerhead Armor has that distinctive look.
