Editing Power Armour (section)

==Power Armor Frame==
[[File:Power Armor Frame.png|thumb|right|200px|The power part of power armor.]]
Developed sometime after Alaska, the Army showed worry in maintaining the suits of armor they already had during a possible Chinese invasion. With multiple varieties currently in use, and more being developed, a version designed for ease of maintenance was going to be required. Instead, this was developed. Basically all the wires and joints of the armor without the actual armor, one can easily slap individual power armor sections onto the frame allowing for bits of damaged armor to be used to form up a singular complete suit. Think the Heresy armor from 40k above. With the internal workings bare it also made modifying and maintaining the armor a total breeze, though did come at a cost. All American armor post T-45 used a internal reactor allowing for centuries of use before requiring a recharge. Since every armor variety used a different level of power, putting in a reactor would have resulted in a situation of either too much or too little power being produced, resulting at best a sluggish barely working suit and at worst a nuclear explosion. Instead commonly used fusion core batteries were used as the power source. While these cores did hold much more power then the Microfusion packs of the T-45, they still didn't last long when used.

Fluffwise, a fusion core battery lasted around 10 hours on full charge, and that's just moving on a brisk pace, no sprinting or doing fast combat maneuvers, which would drain the battery even faster. While realistically this seems horrible to have to deal with during extended operations beyond friendly lines and a logistical and engineering nightmare to deal with in the middle of a conflict, there are ways to greatly extend the battery's lifespan (and/or optimize the armor's power consumption) through character skills and perks, so we'd assume that pre-armageddon, there were already ways to make the armor last much longer in the field, but these improvements weren't standardized for all suits yet by the time the bombs fell (since power armored troops stateside wouldn't have to worry about running out of fusion cores on their home turf, compared to the soldiers stationed overseas). That or Bethesda didn't think this concept all the way through and really shouldn't have overcomplicated the armor's power source in FO4, whichever makes more sense to you.

The frame was used extensively in the eastern region of America, but none were deployed to the West by the time the bombs dropped. For the record:
*T-45, T-49, T-51, X-01, X-02, X-03, and Horned Power Armor all have interal reactor versions (or Microfusion in the T-45 case).
*T-60, T-65 and EX-17 were built exclusively with the frame in mind.
*The original C-00 model no longer exists, so it's frame only for that guy.
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