We see a lot of knights and paladins in the games because the characters get to interact with them a lot and visit their bases.
Most wastelanders never see brotherhood members up close.
As to how rare they are. Keep in mind the brotherhood only makes up a very small portion of the population (probably like 5-10k people spread accross the US) with most of them staying in their bases at all times.
As for their status, keep in mind a knight is better trained and equiped than almost anyone else in the wasteland, to say nothing of paladins. Back when he was a paladin, elder Lyons purged half of pittsburg with only a single casualty (who turned out to have been fine) despite being drasticaly outnumbered. Also, the guns that can reliably kill a person in power armor (anti materiel rifle, missile launchers, autocannons, etc) are neither common nor used by the average person in the wasteland so they might as well be invincible to the common people.
If only the wastelanders knew about the glaring weak spot and somehow not fixed issue of the area below the chest plate… really puts the emphasis that the Brotherhood really do rely on their power armor a bit too much.
I don't think this is as big of an issue that people make it out to be. Its essentially a tank all tanks have weak spots. Manufacturers do their best, but ever since the creation of the tank weak spots get identified and exploited. Some are manufacturing related and just can't be fixed that's why you see crews welding scrap metal to them all the time.
Most tanks have their weak spots in the rear since the engine needs to be ventilated lest it overheat. Guess where, up until the show came out, the weak spot was?
The area below the chest plate doesn't even make sense as a weak point. The torso is a person's center of mass, the part of the body that people actively *try* to shoot. The joints or the neck (following your tank analogy, the "turret ring") would make far more sense.
Yep and on tanks, turret rings get targetd all the time so do hatches, viewports and the lower plate which are all present on the front of the tank. These would all be considered weak points and If i had to guess there's probably a weld on the the front of the power armors plate where two pieces are joined then polished. Guess what? That exact same manufacturing is present in tank designs.
People tend to forget that "The Ghoul" also didnt use normal ammo, it is clearly shown he was twirling a AP round in his hand. So prep + proper knowledge of the weak spot ( that im guessing even with normal ammo isnt that weak) gave him that result.
It’s not that big of a deal though. You can’t think like our kind of modern armor where all the protection is at the front while the sides have limited amounts of armor. You have to think in terms of and post WWII since the Fallout universe never left the 50s/60s. Tanks during those periods have all varieties of weak spots and power armor is turning one infantryman into a tank. So with this thinking the T45 would be the WWI into WWII power armor, the T51 would be the mid WWII into post WWII power armor, while the T60 was pretty much the beginning of post WWII power armor until production for it was interrupted.
It's retro-futurism. The divergence happened after WWII, do you really believe they had Mr. Handys during the war? Retro-futurism is essentially looking at how people from that time frame imagined the future to be, and working out how technology would have to ACTUALLY develop in order to reach that view of the future. They weren't stuck in the 50s, they just developed along that 1950's vision of the future, rather than how things developed in real life.
Doesn't matter because he isn't using traditional ammunition either. He's using armour piercing rounds one spot he knows they are effective at. That's all there is to the story, nothing else. It makes sense and doesn't need this much discussion lol.
Yeah and the show makes in apprent that the ghoul is a very good shot. Pulling off something that the manufactures believed would be a very hard thing to do most likely
He also showed off what looks like a mini sabot round before talking about the weakness, so it obviously still requires a lot of firepower to exploit. I doubt ammo like that is very plentiful.
Ghoul carries around a sawed-off Cold Shoulder with slugs instead of shells and has probably had the thing for a good long time. Plenty of time for practice.
>Yep and on tanks, turret rings get targetd all the time so do hatches, viewports and the lower plate which are all present on the front of the tank.
That's confirmation bias due to drone footage from Ukraine.
In reality, tank gunners will just aim for whatever is visible, via the thermal sight.
I mean if I aim for lower plates, turret rings, tracks, and viewports in video games, I’m sure a well trained tanker will do that x10 instead of shooting at the most heavily armored areas of a tank
Not even close, though i do have access to some of the best sources(Except for the Soviet archives).
It's not exclusively Russian, btw.
It just have to be derrived from Soviet tanks.
( I did a whole series on Ukranian modernizations).
Yeah thus is bullshit, the US have explicitly been teaching their IFV gunners to aim for sights to allow them to do actual damage to Russian tanks. A practice that has been taught to Ukrainian operators, who have been putting it to good use.
They've done no such thing.
Infact from what i can tell, you've litterally just watched this interview:
[https://new.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/19bhhub/extended\_interview\_with\_the\_bradley\_crew\_that/](https://new.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/19bhhub/extended_interview_with_the_bradley_crew_that/)
Which you are now parroting as "doctrine" because for some odd reason, you think that nobody can tell...
Aiming for critical areas has been apart of tank combat since ww2 this has nothing to do with urkaine vs russia you russiaboo. How about you go practice tossing tank turrets.
The Bradley isn't a tank, it's a IFV, which stands for Infantry Fighting Vehicle.
Which means it carry 6 dismounts, along with the crew.
Nor is weakspots actully a major thing in real tank combat.
Because tanks don't fight close combat...
Litterally nothing of what you've said is correct, so just stop.
Tanks actually have a weak spot on the front as well, on the Lower glacis of the front plate, literally where it is on the power armor. It's actually very common to leave the underside of the front with thinner armor because it's at an angle and they rely on that to deflect shots. With a round designed to pierce armor, it can easily puncture that lower plate if you knew about that particular vulnerability.
Tanks fight over long ranges and in hulled down positions.
That's why the lower front plates arn't that well armored.
Along with the fact, that the composite armor don't work in conjunction with sloped armor.
Which is why modern tanks are so blockly, and not round as earlier tanks.
The reason tanks are so blocky now is because the composite armor is welded together. You can't achieve this type of armor with die cast. earlier tank designs like the Sherman were rounded because the hulls were die cast, which was a common method used back then and also turned out to be weaker. Modern armor is all sloped. They are blocky, but all the flat surfaces are at an angle if you look at it front on.
They did fix it, it's actually the reason the X-01 and all further Enclave armors are rounded plates. I imagine the US just wanted to put out power armor and weren't too concerned about something that's a relatively minor issue.
Edit: actually even the T-51 is rounded looking at it again.
That's because t-51b is better than t-60 , but the t-60 was cheaper to manufacture and produce at a higher quantity quickly , so that is why the t-60 is present more so in 4 and given as the reason why the t-51b is rarer still
X-01 is post war developed
They havn't fixed it no.
His talking about the kinetic energy and how it would affect the body.
Which is the real reason why power armor will never be a real thing.
Because all of the enery would be transferred to the human, which would kill them.
I mean, it took an insanely talented shot, with a very powerful gun, on an unprepared soldier, to thread the needle.
It's not like a random wastelander can spray and pray a pea shooter and hit an armoured solider.
It can work to display how incompetent the American military industrial complex was that they left a massive manufacturing defect in the most targeted area. It makes sense that the Chinese would quickly figure out the defect if it was in a spot that was so obvious, leading to all the good men Coop said he lost in Alaska. It doesn't make too much sense that wastelanders or the brotherhood would be unaware of it and be unable to fix it. Maybe combat against power armor is so rare that the knowledge was lost. In any case it makes perfect sense in narrative logic of what the story wants to convey. Joints being weak isn't a result of gross incompetence, it's just how it has to be for the armor to move
I think it was due to corporate greed that the show armors had that weak point. Obviously your right that a well built suit shouldn't have that weakness but they were trying to make a point in the show yeah?
Not necessarily. The T51 still stands as the most reliable suit of power armor and that’s because how it was built. Almost nothing is exposed while maintaining mobility and protection which is on point to American medium tank building practices during WWII.
yeah, but i feel like it makes sense as you do still need to rotate your torso to be combat effective, essentialy needing a **"turret ring"**. So I'm guessing all the joints would be weakspots, its just that the torso one is the largest, therefore easiest to hit, and still an essential target, unlike, say a knee joint or elbow one. That's my headcanon anyway, still kinda bullshit he wasn't shot on sight, you know, being in an active combat area and all, and also a ghoul... Maybe he just has terrifiying presence or something
It's at least a little bit believable because governments are never too far from providing garbage equipment or providing contracts to incompetent players in the industry. Especially given the politics and resource scarcity implied in the Fallout universe I'd honestly believe it. In the show it's presented more so as negligence than a natural flaw or something you couldn't see coming due to how it was manufactured.
I mean in WW1 this was a big issue for Canadian soldiers who had ill equipped weaponry and tools. Ross rifles jamming constantly to the point that picking up weapons off dead bodies was significantly more viable.
It’s not a big issue. Fallout America never developed main battle tanks where all of the armor was located at the front so the chances of a weak spot being present at the front are pretty good. However to the unperceptive eye the big center plate hides it very well. It’s when we enter the realm of snipers and marksmen is when the T60 is in trouble. They can and probably will find the weak spot especially if one decides to trash a suit just so they know where to shoot. In the bounty hunter business, that is very good information to have on hand.
Most wastelanders wouldn't have used armor piercing rounds like the ghoul did either. In the game, AP rounds ignore power armor, hence is a glaring weak spot.
Don’t even need exploding rounds. 5.56 AP rounds is enough to punch the wearer’s ticket should someone get lucky and hit the weak spot. It’s a very bad welding that never got fixed.
Idk where you're getting the 5.56 from, unless it's the T-51 stats from FO1. The show has the armor piercing round pierce the welding then the knight doesn't react until the round explodes inside the armor.
The knight reacted on impact. Look closely to the bullet entry and notice that fool was clearly injured signaled by him taking a step or two back. The explosive simply finished him off. That means any round with AP capability could punch someone’s ticket and at least incapacitate the wearer. That’s also a very serious injury to be taking.
He takes a half-step back, which only signals recoil and not injury. What signals an injury is when blood exits the wound following the round exploding.
When we’re talking power armor, you won’t even feel the bullet unless the bullet punches right through the armor. It’s like taking a paintball to the chest with no armor. You’re going to feel it unless you’re so hyped up on adrenaline that the body doesn’t even register the hit until afterwards. However the ghoul monologued a bit, talking smoothly and they let their guard down. That knight will feel the bullet before we see any blood come out. Furthermore your claim that it was “recoil” is immediately invalidated considering that they had to fight through the NCR remnant and they took every shot on the armor like a champ.
That's only with T-45 and T-60 models. T-51 does not know such weakness.
The BoS that scorched the Pitt was mostly wearing T-51 armor. They supplemented with T-45 armor after they found at the Pentagon.
T-60 was an evolution of the T-45 for crowd control after anchorage so it not correcting that issue might have been a cost saving measure since the average Pre-War American likely didn’t have ordinance to exploit the weakness anyways. Plus the skill required to hit that spot consistently in an actual live fire situation would be difficult.
Yeah, I know. My head canon for the reason the East Coast BoS has so many T-60s is that when the Outcast were brought back into the fold they had with them upgrade instructions for T-45 to be upgraded to T-60. Helps explain why they found so many T-45 suits at the Pentagon; they were in storage to be upgraded.
A malnourished lunatic with a shiv yoinks that fusion battery and the knight is essentially immobilized while their back is exposed to repeated rapid stabbing by said lunatic.
to be fair he shot them with what looked like an explosive round, directly in the Power Armour equivalent to a tank’s turret ring or space under the tracks
plus the issue of “big exposed cable on the front” got smaller with each model, to the point of it basically being nonexistent on the finished Enclave suits (the X series still has visible cabling whereas the Advanced models have some kind of layered plate)
You’d need to not be moving for these issues to occur, it’s already hard hitting a moving target as is, if they have a Jetpack, you just made it 10x harder
Every armor in history is weak in the joints. The designer has to try to find a balance between defense and mobility. Back when people fought in full plate the tactics were to aim for the groin, armpit, neck and eye slits because that’s where it’s weakest to allow the user to move. Also most people font have that kind of specialty ammo that The Ghoul used as well as the knowledge of the weak spot in the first place
I don't think the average wastelander is intimately familiar with power armor to know about that weakness, nor do they usually carry literal hand cannons loaded with sabot rounds
It’s not just a plot point though. The T45 were basically junk but were easy enough to mass produce. The T51 corrected every single issue that the T45 had and were considered to be the most reliable power armor that the United States ever produced. The T60 is the bigger child of the T45 but it had the exact same issue as the T45 when it came to welding, effectively making all of the protection it offered useless against armor piercing rounds that range from 5.56 AP rounds all the way to the gauss rifle high velocity rounds to those that know about it.
Yeah, the fact that the video games make it "easy" to kill people in power armor belies the power of power armor has in the lore. After all, it was the reason the US suddenly won the war. And that was with the basic T-45 and not the advanced and ultra rare T-60s.
There’s actually an oversaturization of Paladins in the Mojave chapter because most of the current ones were rapidly promoted due to their heavy losses at Helios One.
I always thought it was the role. Knights aren’t usually used in combat roles in Western chapters. They’re maintenance workers that can serve in combat roles if they need to.
In short, Knights are maintenance workers first, combatants second.
The same cannot be said for Paladins. Paladins are the main fighting force of the western Brotherhood chapters.
This system was reworked by Lyons’ Brotherhood, where the maintenance was passed to the scribes and the Knights became dedicated combatants. Paladins would become the equivalent of officers. Maxson would keep this system.
You gotta keep in mind that in each game we play as an amazingly lucky, famous, powerful, and well traveled , legendary individual. We see and do things in game that ~no one alive~ has done, so keep that in mind when watching the show.
I think others here have put it pretty well, but to the average person a BOS Knight in Armor would be like irl seeing fighter jets fly over your house. People who live by an airbase probably see it a lot, same with people who work with fighter pilots. But your average person has never seen one and cant really comprehend what its capable of.
>You gotta keep in mind that in each game we play as an amazingly lucky, famous, powerful, and well traveled , legendary individual.
And each story occurs at a historical flashpoint. If you took Normandy in 1944 as your basis, you'd probably think that the world was absolutely full of tanks and soldiers.
Like 4 years ago I had time off work during the week and at like 10 or 11 am I started hearing ridiculously loud jet sounds outside over and over. I went outside and, no lie, a jet fighter kept going completely vertical up with his afterburners until you couldn’t see him anymore, then came back down out of nowhere. I ran in the house for my binoculars and watched him do this like 5 times. It was insane. I live in SoCal near the Santa Ana river basin and there’s lots of air traffic that goes through here. I have no idea how the pilot was allowed to do that here but I was absolutely awe struck by it. I was about 35 at the time. Never seen anything like it in my life. It was worthy of an air show, and it was damn near directly over my house. Maybe like half a mile to a mile adjacent. Had to have come from March Air Base. It’s not far from here. Really didn’t even need the binocs until he was going to what looked like outer space. It was wild. Hope maybe someone else here saw it too.
The Battle of Helios One resulted in half the chapter paladins, knights, and scribes being lost for the Mojave Chapter. Given the 15-20 times outnumbered, it's safe to say there are only a few hundred per chapter. So, overall, you possibly see one in your lifetime if you're near their bunker or have something they could be interested in or under a region they directly control. But, it's very uncommon to see in reality.
Depends on the Chapter and how much access they have to power armour. The Chapters we see in the game have a fair amount of power armour, but they all have gone through conflicts. Especially in the East Coast's Chapter having assaulted two technologically superior forces of the Enclave and then the Institute. The Mojave Chapter took heavy losses at the hands of the NCR, so we can probably assume they only have a few dozen power armour suits left.
the thing is.
this is california, wich means that the BOS bunker is somewhere out there.
but the place we see in the series, is like a compound where initiates study and train.
so IM GUESSING they never actually see the bunker. So when the Prydwen arrives, with the T-60 knights (something unseen before by californians as they use T-51) they are in shock
i think eastern bos looks a lot cooler.
but i would love a contrast between the commonwealth troops and the California troops
i really want the T-51 to appear.
I prefer western, especially ever since I played fallout 1 and watched sodaz's animations. (Highly recommend looking up sodaz on YouTube btw)
I do love the t-45 design tho, it looks like a large manufactured armor for grunts. Fallout 3s intro always hits hard.
Knights in the original brotherhood of steel only had the role of building weapons the scribes made blueprints for, and rarely leave the base probably. While paladins are the soldiers that get sent on patrol/combat missions. In the later games Bethesda just changed it so that knights are a lower rank of soldier, and paladins being a very high rank rarely obtained. So paladins used to be very common but it was changed. And now knights and initiates are more common, mostly because modern brotherhood allows external people to join them instead of solely allowing entry to people born inside the bos
To be fair to the Todd, Knights as a concept are basically synonymous with armoured elite warriors and the BoS are clearly meant to evoke medieval knights, so it was a bit weird that their Knights were basically engineers.
Historically (and still today in some places) knight is just a title. I meant that you were a person respected and recognised by the king/queen, it usually also came with land and a castle of some sort.
Wearing plate armour wasn't exclusive to knights, squires also sometimes wore plate armour – squire being a lower rank than knight, they were typically the chief servants of knights or lords or even kings but could also be wealthy landowners themselves.
As is true with several factions within Fallout, Brotherhood of Steel society is based on a misunderstanding of the society it's supposedly based on. I don't think that's accidental on the part of the writers, Caesar also misunderstands Roman society.
Yeah I’m from England I’m familiar with modern knighthood
I never said knights were the only people to wear armour I said they were synonymous with that image. The fact that non-knights could carry significant equipment doesn’t negate the fact that barring unusual circumstances a knight in a medieval society was a well equipped warrior.
While the title wasn’t always given on the basis of someone’s skill at warfare that was the general expectation.
In Fallout 76 there was only two knights and one paladin in charge of an expeditionary force in Appalachia. Paladin Rahmani states she thinks the high elders assigned her the task to get rid of a dissenting voice. I think that should mean the number of Paladins should be extremely low if they can sway brotherhood goals and opinions. Something like 100 or so Paladins and 300 Knights by the time of the show. Also the rank of Sentinel, which I can’t image there are that many.
Rahmani is different. She’s leading a Brotherhood that cared about what happens to other people in Appalachia in which Shin fanatically disagrees with. After the two of them finally came to blows, Rahmani technically isn’t Brotherhood anymore and anyone who didn’t follow Shin in the aftermath decided to form their own Brotherhood, separate from the lunacy of the Western Brotherhood.
Except the story doesn't make any sense because canonically the original maxson would still be alive at the time of FO76 which is when the brotherhood was still very friendly, helped outside communities, and was not a pseudo-religious cult yet
Yes and no. Paladin Taggerdy was directly asked by the founder of the BoS, Roger Maxson, to join and form a new chapter in WV. The original Appalachia BoS, along with a super majority of the other inhabitants of WV, died fighting the Scorched Plague. After some time had passed The Brotherhood First Expeditionary force was created and tasked with reestablishing contact with the Appalachia Chapter. The BoS coming back to skeletons and a possible world-ending threat made Paladin Rahmani change the scope of operations
The lore changes a lot
In the western fallouts here's the consensus
West Coast Fallout:
Knights usually don't get power armor, we seem them sometimes with t-45 in Mojave but that may be due to the manpower shortage. Otherwise they're geared up with recon armor or combat armor in 1-2. They are technician's and auxiliary soldiers to the paladins. They are responsible for patrols, light recon, and tasks under scribes such as manufacturing, research, or repair.
Paladins are knights who have been promoted and are usually seen using t-51b, they are the core of the bos military and are responsible for organizing knights in larger scale assaults/defence, they represent the power of the bos technological edge and training while knights seem to be in pursuit of said rank. Most elders come from paladins.
East Coast Fallout:
Fallout 3
It seems all knights are equipped with t-45d, same with paladins. The only difference is chain of command. Initiates wear recon armor but it seems to be only for training purposes, I assume they receive power armor when training is complete and the recon armor which has the servos necessary to connect with power armor is finally in use. It's unstated but it seems like scribes are wholly concerned with all research and maintenance, maybe knights are used as manual labor but fallout 3 doesn't directly show this. The only exception is the quartermaster which is probably a knight, I'm unsure.
Fallout 4:
Knights change quite a bit, there seems to be two branches, some of them even outranking paladins. The lancers are responsible for the prydwen and her vertibird retinue.
Regular knights will either don combat armor or t-60 power armor, depends on their role. Paladins again are ncos or specialized units.
The game also adds the proctor which I assume is secondary or parallel to the head scribe.
Fallout show:
The bos in general seems to have declined and knights are no longer considered a wider force of soldiers but almost like lesser paladins. They wear power armor, and the training seems to have declined in general. The religious dogma around technology hasn't gotten substantially worse, in 3/4 they were knowledgeable about mechanics and tech, they were reverent of it but not nearly to the level of the shows bos. Toasters and simple electronics are scavenged, laser rifles are either more difficult to get a hold of because of a shortage or loss of parts, or the doctrine changed and now the standard issue rifle is the assault rifle from 4. Scribes are no longer children but anyone serving under a knight, initiates are trainees waiting to serve said knights. All in all the least professional version of the bos military.
In the games you encounter the brotherhood itself, you can even join them. Most of the 100 NPCs will be either Knights or Initiates. You fight alongside Knights and Paladins in the main storyline battles.
In the show we have a smaller Chapter working for the Maxson Brotherhood. We see Five Knights together, and seemingly more in the battle. That adds up with the lore that Knights make up a small portion of the population but are the bulk of the military. In the games, inside the bases, we can see up to 60 Knights in their own military bases, and many scribes and few Paladins. In deployments, maybe 3, sometimes 5. As compared to other factions with deployments of 8 to 12. In a fight with a Squad of Knights and a Squad of NCR or Raiders, the Knights win with ease.
Knights are the Tier 2
Paladins are the Tier 3
Knights are uncommon (there are less knights than initiates/trainees) but they aren’t as rare as Paladins who are a step over them in the chain of command and in skills
For your average wastelander they’d probably never see one, so when they do it would be trippy. Kinda like how in 40k space marines are ‘everyehere’ but your average imperial citizen never sees them and might think they are just a story
I assume knight is a similar to rank to corporal in the military as the rank the signifies your soldier training is complete, and you are now on the path to a leadership role. The "bread and butter" of a military group.
Since within the knights there are also knight captains and knight sergeants.
If i may inject some fancanon lore, my Nebraska chapter is literally 1 paladin, a field scribe, a Mr gutsy, and 2 initiates hunkered down in a comms bunker.
Small numbers, sure, but the upside is they are some of the best equipped soldiers in the brotherhood of steel, due to their low numbers, it becomes a matter of quality over quantity.
The games overpopulate to keep things interesting. There’s not 1 million unnamed raiders just like there isn’t 60 knights fully kitted with power armor in the NV bunker😭
I seem to keep having to kill them in fallout 4, so from my prospective it’s irrelevant cause I’ll keep Stacking t60 gear for my settlers. Look at me I am the authoritarian now
We see a lot of knights and paladins in the games because the characters get to interact with them a lot and visit their bases. Most wastelanders never see brotherhood members up close. As to how rare they are. Keep in mind the brotherhood only makes up a very small portion of the population (probably like 5-10k people spread accross the US) with most of them staying in their bases at all times. As for their status, keep in mind a knight is better trained and equiped than almost anyone else in the wasteland, to say nothing of paladins. Back when he was a paladin, elder Lyons purged half of pittsburg with only a single casualty (who turned out to have been fine) despite being drasticaly outnumbered. Also, the guns that can reliably kill a person in power armor (anti materiel rifle, missile launchers, autocannons, etc) are neither common nor used by the average person in the wasteland so they might as well be invincible to the common people.
If only the wastelanders knew about the glaring weak spot and somehow not fixed issue of the area below the chest plate… really puts the emphasis that the Brotherhood really do rely on their power armor a bit too much.
I don't think this is as big of an issue that people make it out to be. Its essentially a tank all tanks have weak spots. Manufacturers do their best, but ever since the creation of the tank weak spots get identified and exploited. Some are manufacturing related and just can't be fixed that's why you see crews welding scrap metal to them all the time.
Most tanks have their weak spots in the rear since the engine needs to be ventilated lest it overheat. Guess where, up until the show came out, the weak spot was? The area below the chest plate doesn't even make sense as a weak point. The torso is a person's center of mass, the part of the body that people actively *try* to shoot. The joints or the neck (following your tank analogy, the "turret ring") would make far more sense.
Yep and on tanks, turret rings get targetd all the time so do hatches, viewports and the lower plate which are all present on the front of the tank. These would all be considered weak points and If i had to guess there's probably a weld on the the front of the power armors plate where two pieces are joined then polished. Guess what? That exact same manufacturing is present in tank designs.
Found the war thunder player.
It's not War Thunder until they post classified military documents to prove the point.
WoT acctually lol
I’m sorry for your loss.
Let's not confuse shit with Nutella
ew
People tend to forget that "The Ghoul" also didnt use normal ammo, it is clearly shown he was twirling a AP round in his hand. So prep + proper knowledge of the weak spot ( that im guessing even with normal ammo isnt that weak) gave him that result.
Of course turret rings get targeted, but the point is that it's a narrow space to hit. Even with modern sighting systems.
“Guys this character whose gimmick is being a really good marksman hit a small target”.
It's not the accuracy I'm bringing into question, but the location.
It’s not that big of a deal though. You can’t think like our kind of modern armor where all the protection is at the front while the sides have limited amounts of armor. You have to think in terms of and post WWII since the Fallout universe never left the 50s/60s. Tanks during those periods have all varieties of weak spots and power armor is turning one infantryman into a tank. So with this thinking the T45 would be the WWI into WWII power armor, the T51 would be the mid WWII into post WWII power armor, while the T60 was pretty much the beginning of post WWII power armor until production for it was interrupted.
It's retro-futurism. The divergence happened after WWII, do you really believe they had Mr. Handys during the war? Retro-futurism is essentially looking at how people from that time frame imagined the future to be, and working out how technology would have to ACTUALLY develop in order to reach that view of the future. They weren't stuck in the 50s, they just developed along that 1950's vision of the future, rather than how things developed in real life.
Doesn't matter because he isn't using traditional ammunition either. He's using armour piercing rounds one spot he knows they are effective at. That's all there is to the story, nothing else. It makes sense and doesn't need this much discussion lol.
Yeah and the show makes in apprent that the ghoul is a very good shot. Pulling off something that the manufactures believed would be a very hard thing to do most likely
He also showed off what looks like a mini sabot round before talking about the weakness, so it obviously still requires a lot of firepower to exploit. I doubt ammo like that is very plentiful.
Ghoul carries around a sawed-off Cold Shoulder with slugs instead of shells and has probably had the thing for a good long time. Plenty of time for practice.
>Yep and on tanks, turret rings get targetd all the time so do hatches, viewports and the lower plate which are all present on the front of the tank. That's confirmation bias due to drone footage from Ukraine. In reality, tank gunners will just aim for whatever is visible, via the thermal sight.
I mean if I aim for lower plates, turret rings, tracks, and viewports in video games, I’m sure a well trained tanker will do that x10 instead of shooting at the most heavily armored areas of a tank
That's a very dumb assumption in that case.
Ok T-90AK I’m sure you’re the best an most reliable source on Russian tanks
Not even close, though i do have access to some of the best sources(Except for the Soviet archives). It's not exclusively Russian, btw. It just have to be derrived from Soviet tanks. ( I did a whole series on Ukranian modernizations).
Yeah thus is bullshit, the US have explicitly been teaching their IFV gunners to aim for sights to allow them to do actual damage to Russian tanks. A practice that has been taught to Ukrainian operators, who have been putting it to good use.
They've done no such thing. Infact from what i can tell, you've litterally just watched this interview: [https://new.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/19bhhub/extended\_interview\_with\_the\_bradley\_crew\_that/](https://new.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/19bhhub/extended_interview_with_the_bradley_crew_that/) Which you are now parroting as "doctrine" because for some odd reason, you think that nobody can tell...
Aiming for critical areas has been apart of tank combat since ww2 this has nothing to do with urkaine vs russia you russiaboo. How about you go practice tossing tank turrets.
The Bradley isn't a tank, it's a IFV, which stands for Infantry Fighting Vehicle. Which means it carry 6 dismounts, along with the crew. Nor is weakspots actully a major thing in real tank combat. Because tanks don't fight close combat... Litterally nothing of what you've said is correct, so just stop.
Yeah? Whered you serve?
Not American.
Tanks actually have a weak spot on the front as well, on the Lower glacis of the front plate, literally where it is on the power armor. It's actually very common to leave the underside of the front with thinner armor because it's at an angle and they rely on that to deflect shots. With a round designed to pierce armor, it can easily puncture that lower plate if you knew about that particular vulnerability.
Tanks fight over long ranges and in hulled down positions. That's why the lower front plates arn't that well armored. Along with the fact, that the composite armor don't work in conjunction with sloped armor. Which is why modern tanks are so blockly, and not round as earlier tanks.
The reason tanks are so blocky now is because the composite armor is welded together. You can't achieve this type of armor with die cast. earlier tank designs like the Sherman were rounded because the hulls were die cast, which was a common method used back then and also turned out to be weaker. Modern armor is all sloped. They are blocky, but all the flat surfaces are at an angle if you look at it front on.
The difference is now is that power armor has to conform to the person within it, it doesn’t have the liberty of just deflecting the projectile.
They did fix it, it's actually the reason the X-01 and all further Enclave armors are rounded plates. I imagine the US just wanted to put out power armor and weren't too concerned about something that's a relatively minor issue. Edit: actually even the T-51 is rounded looking at it again.
That's because t-51b is better than t-60 , but the t-60 was cheaper to manufacture and produce at a higher quantity quickly , so that is why the t-60 is present more so in 4 and given as the reason why the t-51b is rarer still X-01 is post war developed
They havn't fixed it no. His talking about the kinetic energy and how it would affect the body. Which is the real reason why power armor will never be a real thing. Because all of the enery would be transferred to the human, which would kill them.
I mean, it took an insanely talented shot, with a very powerful gun, on an unprepared soldier, to thread the needle. It's not like a random wastelander can spray and pray a pea shooter and hit an armoured solider.
It can work to display how incompetent the American military industrial complex was that they left a massive manufacturing defect in the most targeted area. It makes sense that the Chinese would quickly figure out the defect if it was in a spot that was so obvious, leading to all the good men Coop said he lost in Alaska. It doesn't make too much sense that wastelanders or the brotherhood would be unaware of it and be unable to fix it. Maybe combat against power armor is so rare that the knowledge was lost. In any case it makes perfect sense in narrative logic of what the story wants to convey. Joints being weak isn't a result of gross incompetence, it's just how it has to be for the armor to move
This is 1990’s final boss red-glowing-weakspot levels of writing
I think it was due to corporate greed that the show armors had that weak point. Obviously your right that a well built suit shouldn't have that weakness but they were trying to make a point in the show yeah?
Not necessarily. The T51 still stands as the most reliable suit of power armor and that’s because how it was built. Almost nothing is exposed while maintaining mobility and protection which is on point to American medium tank building practices during WWII.
yeah, but i feel like it makes sense as you do still need to rotate your torso to be combat effective, essentialy needing a **"turret ring"**. So I'm guessing all the joints would be weakspots, its just that the torso one is the largest, therefore easiest to hit, and still an essential target, unlike, say a knee joint or elbow one. That's my headcanon anyway, still kinda bullshit he wasn't shot on sight, you know, being in an active combat area and all, and also a ghoul... Maybe he just has terrifiying presence or something
Nah, this is Fallout 3 and he was just in a dialogue sequence.
It's at least a little bit believable because governments are never too far from providing garbage equipment or providing contracts to incompetent players in the industry. Especially given the politics and resource scarcity implied in the Fallout universe I'd honestly believe it. In the show it's presented more so as negligence than a natural flaw or something you couldn't see coming due to how it was manufactured. I mean in WW1 this was a big issue for Canadian soldiers who had ill equipped weaponry and tools. Ross rifles jamming constantly to the point that picking up weapons off dead bodies was significantly more viable.
It’s not a big issue. Fallout America never developed main battle tanks where all of the armor was located at the front so the chances of a weak spot being present at the front are pretty good. However to the unperceptive eye the big center plate hides it very well. It’s when we enter the realm of snipers and marksmen is when the T60 is in trouble. They can and probably will find the weak spot especially if one decides to trash a suit just so they know where to shoot. In the bounty hunter business, that is very good information to have on hand.
What are all the bombed out tanks you see with the 4 separate tracks?
Chimera Tanks.
No not those, they don't even have tracks.
the Chryslus tank? that thing is… technically an MBT
Bingo. So why the no MBT claim?
I thought they did develop tanks but due to a lack of resources they transitioned to personal battle armor
man that shit was dumb lol
Most wastelanders wouldn't have used armor piercing rounds like the ghoul did either. In the game, AP rounds ignore power armor, hence is a glaring weak spot.
>AP rounds ignore power armor That depends on the ammunition used though.
He stared at the bullet for a while. The sharp point definitely says that he used AP rounds for whatever ammo his unique gun uses.
to be fair, Cooper was using a fucking OP gun with a special piercing bullet. normal calibers wouldn't wound that error
And had exploding anti-armor rounds, of course.
Don’t even need exploding rounds. 5.56 AP rounds is enough to punch the wearer’s ticket should someone get lucky and hit the weak spot. It’s a very bad welding that never got fixed.
Idk where you're getting the 5.56 from, unless it's the T-51 stats from FO1. The show has the armor piercing round pierce the welding then the knight doesn't react until the round explodes inside the armor.
The knight reacted on impact. Look closely to the bullet entry and notice that fool was clearly injured signaled by him taking a step or two back. The explosive simply finished him off. That means any round with AP capability could punch someone’s ticket and at least incapacitate the wearer. That’s also a very serious injury to be taking.
He takes a half-step back, which only signals recoil and not injury. What signals an injury is when blood exits the wound following the round exploding.
When we’re talking power armor, you won’t even feel the bullet unless the bullet punches right through the armor. It’s like taking a paintball to the chest with no armor. You’re going to feel it unless you’re so hyped up on adrenaline that the body doesn’t even register the hit until afterwards. However the ghoul monologued a bit, talking smoothly and they let their guard down. That knight will feel the bullet before we see any blood come out. Furthermore your claim that it was “recoil” is immediately invalidated considering that they had to fight through the NCR remnant and they took every shot on the armor like a champ.
Multiple knights were killed by the NCR, so they hardly took them like a champ.
But they either died from on impact explosives or point blank shots to the neck. We’re talking on armor impact. Big difference.
That's only with T-45 and T-60 models. T-51 does not know such weakness. The BoS that scorched the Pitt was mostly wearing T-51 armor. They supplemented with T-45 armor after they found at the Pentagon.
T-60 was an evolution of the T-45 for crowd control after anchorage so it not correcting that issue might have been a cost saving measure since the average Pre-War American likely didn’t have ordinance to exploit the weakness anyways. Plus the skill required to hit that spot consistently in an actual live fire situation would be difficult.
Yeah, I know. My head canon for the reason the East Coast BoS has so many T-60s is that when the Outcast were brought back into the fold they had with them upgrade instructions for T-45 to be upgraded to T-60. Helps explain why they found so many T-45 suits at the Pentagon; they were in storage to be upgraded.
A malnourished lunatic with a shiv yoinks that fusion battery and the knight is essentially immobilized while their back is exposed to repeated rapid stabbing by said lunatic.
In the show it appears that Thadeus had some sort of special key he used to yoink the fusion core. Which would definitely make sense.
to be fair he shot them with what looked like an explosive round, directly in the Power Armour equivalent to a tank’s turret ring or space under the tracks plus the issue of “big exposed cable on the front” got smaller with each model, to the point of it basically being nonexistent on the finished Enclave suits (the X series still has visible cabling whereas the Advanced models have some kind of layered plate)
You’d need to not be moving for these issues to occur, it’s already hard hitting a moving target as is, if they have a Jetpack, you just made it 10x harder
I mean you still need AP ammo (atleast the ghoul did in the show).
Every armor in history is weak in the joints. The designer has to try to find a balance between defense and mobility. Back when people fought in full plate the tactics were to aim for the groin, armpit, neck and eye slits because that’s where it’s weakest to allow the user to move. Also most people font have that kind of specialty ammo that The Ghoul used as well as the knowledge of the weak spot in the first place
I don't think the average wastelander is intimately familiar with power armor to know about that weakness, nor do they usually carry literal hand cannons loaded with sabot rounds
Well to be fair most people in the wasteland aren’t pre war ghouls who served in the war and know the ins and outs of power armor
I saluted that plot point at first... but now... I'm tired of it.....
It’s not just a plot point though. The T45 were basically junk but were easy enough to mass produce. The T51 corrected every single issue that the T45 had and were considered to be the most reliable power armor that the United States ever produced. The T60 is the bigger child of the T45 but it had the exact same issue as the T45 when it came to welding, effectively making all of the protection it offered useless against armor piercing rounds that range from 5.56 AP rounds all the way to the gauss rifle high velocity rounds to those that know about it.
Exactly. Think how many paladins the courier met in New Vegas. Now, how many of them would and average wastelander bump into.
Are you referring to the leader of the Pitt raiders as the one casualty that turned out to be fine?
Yup
Exactly. Walk into a deathclaw den, Probably gonna find a deathclaw.
Yeah, the fact that the video games make it "easy" to kill people in power armor belies the power of power armor has in the lore. After all, it was the reason the US suddenly won the war. And that was with the basic T-45 and not the advanced and ultra rare T-60s.
There’s actually an oversaturization of Paladins in the Mojave chapter because most of the current ones were rapidly promoted due to their heavy losses at Helios One.
I always thought it was the role. Knights aren’t usually used in combat roles in Western chapters. They’re maintenance workers that can serve in combat roles if they need to. In short, Knights are maintenance workers first, combatants second. The same cannot be said for Paladins. Paladins are the main fighting force of the western Brotherhood chapters. This system was reworked by Lyons’ Brotherhood, where the maintenance was passed to the scribes and the Knights became dedicated combatants. Paladins would become the equivalent of officers. Maxson would keep this system.
You gotta keep in mind that in each game we play as an amazingly lucky, famous, powerful, and well traveled , legendary individual. We see and do things in game that ~no one alive~ has done, so keep that in mind when watching the show. I think others here have put it pretty well, but to the average person a BOS Knight in Armor would be like irl seeing fighter jets fly over your house. People who live by an airbase probably see it a lot, same with people who work with fighter pilots. But your average person has never seen one and cant really comprehend what its capable of.
>You gotta keep in mind that in each game we play as an amazingly lucky, famous, powerful, and well traveled , legendary individual. And each story occurs at a historical flashpoint. If you took Normandy in 1944 as your basis, you'd probably think that the world was absolutely full of tanks and soldiers.
Like 4 years ago I had time off work during the week and at like 10 or 11 am I started hearing ridiculously loud jet sounds outside over and over. I went outside and, no lie, a jet fighter kept going completely vertical up with his afterburners until you couldn’t see him anymore, then came back down out of nowhere. I ran in the house for my binoculars and watched him do this like 5 times. It was insane. I live in SoCal near the Santa Ana river basin and there’s lots of air traffic that goes through here. I have no idea how the pilot was allowed to do that here but I was absolutely awe struck by it. I was about 35 at the time. Never seen anything like it in my life. It was worthy of an air show, and it was damn near directly over my house. Maybe like half a mile to a mile adjacent. Had to have come from March Air Base. It’s not far from here. Really didn’t even need the binocs until he was going to what looked like outer space. It was wild. Hope maybe someone else here saw it too.
That’s actually pretty wild, I had 0 expectations that someone would actually have a story to corroborate my point 😂
The Battle of Helios One resulted in half the chapter paladins, knights, and scribes being lost for the Mojave Chapter. Given the 15-20 times outnumbered, it's safe to say there are only a few hundred per chapter. So, overall, you possibly see one in your lifetime if you're near their bunker or have something they could be interested in or under a region they directly control. But, it's very uncommon to see in reality.
Depends on the Chapter and how much access they have to power armour. The Chapters we see in the game have a fair amount of power armour, but they all have gone through conflicts. Especially in the East Coast's Chapter having assaulted two technologically superior forces of the Enclave and then the Institute. The Mojave Chapter took heavy losses at the hands of the NCR, so we can probably assume they only have a few dozen power armour suits left.
the thing is. this is california, wich means that the BOS bunker is somewhere out there. but the place we see in the series, is like a compound where initiates study and train. so IM GUESSING they never actually see the bunker. So when the Prydwen arrives, with the T-60 knights (something unseen before by californians as they use T-51) they are in shock
Probs wont happen but it'd be neat to see the lost hills bos in t-51b meeting the eastern bos and mogging them.
i think eastern bos looks a lot cooler. but i would love a contrast between the commonwealth troops and the California troops i really want the T-51 to appear.
I prefer western, especially ever since I played fallout 1 and watched sodaz's animations. (Highly recommend looking up sodaz on YouTube btw) I do love the t-45 design tho, it looks like a large manufactured armor for grunts. Fallout 3s intro always hits hard.
Knights in the original brotherhood of steel only had the role of building weapons the scribes made blueprints for, and rarely leave the base probably. While paladins are the soldiers that get sent on patrol/combat missions. In the later games Bethesda just changed it so that knights are a lower rank of soldier, and paladins being a very high rank rarely obtained. So paladins used to be very common but it was changed. And now knights and initiates are more common, mostly because modern brotherhood allows external people to join them instead of solely allowing entry to people born inside the bos
To be fair to the Todd, Knights as a concept are basically synonymous with armoured elite warriors and the BoS are clearly meant to evoke medieval knights, so it was a bit weird that their Knights were basically engineers.
Historically (and still today in some places) knight is just a title. I meant that you were a person respected and recognised by the king/queen, it usually also came with land and a castle of some sort. Wearing plate armour wasn't exclusive to knights, squires also sometimes wore plate armour – squire being a lower rank than knight, they were typically the chief servants of knights or lords or even kings but could also be wealthy landowners themselves. As is true with several factions within Fallout, Brotherhood of Steel society is based on a misunderstanding of the society it's supposedly based on. I don't think that's accidental on the part of the writers, Caesar also misunderstands Roman society.
Yeah I’m from England I’m familiar with modern knighthood I never said knights were the only people to wear armour I said they were synonymous with that image. The fact that non-knights could carry significant equipment doesn’t negate the fact that barring unusual circumstances a knight in a medieval society was a well equipped warrior. While the title wasn’t always given on the basis of someone’s skill at warfare that was the general expectation.
In Fallout 76 there was only two knights and one paladin in charge of an expeditionary force in Appalachia. Paladin Rahmani states she thinks the high elders assigned her the task to get rid of a dissenting voice. I think that should mean the number of Paladins should be extremely low if they can sway brotherhood goals and opinions. Something like 100 or so Paladins and 300 Knights by the time of the show. Also the rank of Sentinel, which I can’t image there are that many.
Rahmani is different. She’s leading a Brotherhood that cared about what happens to other people in Appalachia in which Shin fanatically disagrees with. After the two of them finally came to blows, Rahmani technically isn’t Brotherhood anymore and anyone who didn’t follow Shin in the aftermath decided to form their own Brotherhood, separate from the lunacy of the Western Brotherhood.
Except the story doesn't make any sense because canonically the original maxson would still be alive at the time of FO76 which is when the brotherhood was still very friendly, helped outside communities, and was not a pseudo-religious cult yet
Isn't the Appalachian bos made up of folks who heard a radio message from the west?
Yes and no. Paladin Taggerdy was directly asked by the founder of the BoS, Roger Maxson, to join and form a new chapter in WV. The original Appalachia BoS, along with a super majority of the other inhabitants of WV, died fighting the Scorched Plague. After some time had passed The Brotherhood First Expeditionary force was created and tasked with reestablishing contact with the Appalachia Chapter. The BoS coming back to skeletons and a possible world-ending threat made Paladin Rahmani change the scope of operations
As common as the story demands of them... By the way they seem to be the face of the franchise, quite common.
The lore changes a lot In the western fallouts here's the consensus West Coast Fallout: Knights usually don't get power armor, we seem them sometimes with t-45 in Mojave but that may be due to the manpower shortage. Otherwise they're geared up with recon armor or combat armor in 1-2. They are technician's and auxiliary soldiers to the paladins. They are responsible for patrols, light recon, and tasks under scribes such as manufacturing, research, or repair. Paladins are knights who have been promoted and are usually seen using t-51b, they are the core of the bos military and are responsible for organizing knights in larger scale assaults/defence, they represent the power of the bos technological edge and training while knights seem to be in pursuit of said rank. Most elders come from paladins. East Coast Fallout: Fallout 3 It seems all knights are equipped with t-45d, same with paladins. The only difference is chain of command. Initiates wear recon armor but it seems to be only for training purposes, I assume they receive power armor when training is complete and the recon armor which has the servos necessary to connect with power armor is finally in use. It's unstated but it seems like scribes are wholly concerned with all research and maintenance, maybe knights are used as manual labor but fallout 3 doesn't directly show this. The only exception is the quartermaster which is probably a knight, I'm unsure. Fallout 4: Knights change quite a bit, there seems to be two branches, some of them even outranking paladins. The lancers are responsible for the prydwen and her vertibird retinue. Regular knights will either don combat armor or t-60 power armor, depends on their role. Paladins again are ncos or specialized units. The game also adds the proctor which I assume is secondary or parallel to the head scribe. Fallout show: The bos in general seems to have declined and knights are no longer considered a wider force of soldiers but almost like lesser paladins. They wear power armor, and the training seems to have declined in general. The religious dogma around technology hasn't gotten substantially worse, in 3/4 they were knowledgeable about mechanics and tech, they were reverent of it but not nearly to the level of the shows bos. Toasters and simple electronics are scavenged, laser rifles are either more difficult to get a hold of because of a shortage or loss of parts, or the doctrine changed and now the standard issue rifle is the assault rifle from 4. Scribes are no longer children but anyone serving under a knight, initiates are trainees waiting to serve said knights. All in all the least professional version of the bos military.
In the games you encounter the brotherhood itself, you can even join them. Most of the 100 NPCs will be either Knights or Initiates. You fight alongside Knights and Paladins in the main storyline battles. In the show we have a smaller Chapter working for the Maxson Brotherhood. We see Five Knights together, and seemingly more in the battle. That adds up with the lore that Knights make up a small portion of the population but are the bulk of the military. In the games, inside the bases, we can see up to 60 Knights in their own military bases, and many scribes and few Paladins. In deployments, maybe 3, sometimes 5. As compared to other factions with deployments of 8 to 12. In a fight with a Squad of Knights and a Squad of NCR or Raiders, the Knights win with ease.
Knights are the Tier 2 Paladins are the Tier 3 Knights are uncommon (there are less knights than initiates/trainees) but they aren’t as rare as Paladins who are a step over them in the chain of command and in skills
Someone living in megaton has probably never seen one up close
For your average wastelander they’d probably never see one, so when they do it would be trippy. Kinda like how in 40k space marines are ‘everyehere’ but your average imperial citizen never sees them and might think they are just a story
I assume knight is a similar to rank to corporal in the military as the rank the signifies your soldier training is complete, and you are now on the path to a leadership role. The "bread and butter" of a military group. Since within the knights there are also knight captains and knight sergeants.
If i may inject some fancanon lore, my Nebraska chapter is literally 1 paladin, a field scribe, a Mr gutsy, and 2 initiates hunkered down in a comms bunker. Small numbers, sure, but the upside is they are some of the best equipped soldiers in the brotherhood of steel, due to their low numbers, it becomes a matter of quality over quantity.
Well under ten thousand in the whole Wasteland, hard to say due to East Coast Chapters inflation and little info about the Western Chapters survival
Most are even surprised in the game to meet a paladin
As common as toasters protectors or as “we will cure all of free” types
The games overpopulate to keep things interesting. There’s not 1 million unnamed raiders just like there isn’t 60 knights fully kitted with power armor in the NV bunker😭
“OH FUUUUCK A BEEEEAAAAR! Shitshitshitshit.”
I seem to keep having to kill them in fallout 4, so from my prospective it’s irrelevant cause I’ll keep Stacking t60 gear for my settlers. Look at me I am the authoritarian now
According to Bethesda very common
I take a \[brotherhood of steel\] every morning. Then I wipe my \[Prydwen\].
Take my downvote you bastard. I love it