Well this is interesting. It just happened while I was at a PA station working on it - while I was looking at it, the torso disappeared from the frame o.O Sure enough, it was in my inventory!
I just remembered that while 99% of my mods now are the same ones I ran the last time I was playing a lot... some of them have updated. I use Worsin's Power Armor Garage and he recently updated ... more like overhauled it. I might've found some obscure bug in it and/or conflict with something.
My mod causes power armor pieces to be actually destroyed and gone when they reach 0 health, among other things. >
I don't do this to the unique pieces, like the Tesla armor from Automatron, because that would just be annoying.
I found it silly that I had a zero-weight, zero-health "item" in my inventory that I could turn back into advanced military hardware by slapping it with two tin cans. Also, all the Power Armor all over the Commonwealth is pointless. You won't even bother going to get 95% of it unless you're building a collection showcase. This makes all those extra suits valuable, and it makes taking care of your armor important. Oh yeah, I also vastly improved the repair requirements - instead of like, "two steel," it varies per tech level. T45 legs take steel, springs and rubber. X-01 legs take aluminum and ceramics, etc.
It also drove me nuts that you could die inside Power Armor that was at 94% health. The pieces would take almost no damage, but somehow you're being shot to death by some idiot with a popgun. So, power armor provides a flat damage reduction % based on its overall condition. It's like 95% DR at perfect health, and degrades no reduction when it's barely hanging together. Also poison "environmental seals," that break when a piece dies, etc.
The overall intent was to make all the trillion extra suits meaningful; to provide SOME kind of reason why literally everyone isn't wearing it (it requires more skill and rarer mats to maintain); and provide incentive for tactical withdrawl (i'm about to lose a leg piece in the Glowing Sea and a suit breach will mean rad damage!), other things most would probably find irritating but make it more interesting to me
I made a nifty alarm go off and a message appear when the suit is breached, adds to the OCRAP feeling of losing the extra protection. While testing the mod in development, many goofy things happened I wish i had recordings of, lol. At one point, exiting power armor caused all the pieces to fall off the frame and clatter onto the floor, like the actual rarely-seen 3D object in the world of the armor pieces. The noise was amazing xD
Edit: i went back and read my desc page, and lol, it's funny how much we can be irked by things that offend our sense of logic. Scarcity also changes crafting station requirements. I've been using it so long, I completely forgot that vanilla requires a Charisma skill to stand over a table.
So much snark:
"
Crafting station requirements have been altered to make some damn sense.
- You no longer need to be an accomplished politician in order to bang a hammer on a table, or light a freakin' fire
- Weapons workbench? Gun Nut 1 OR Blacksmith 1
- Armor workbench? Armorer 1
- You get the idea I think
- Any cooking "station" - an Int greater than 2. (Seriously.)
it's a frakkin' fire with rocks around it"
