I've acquired two machined plate mails, one from the enemy in the firearms master quest and one I pick pocketed from the dwarf smith in Caladon, but neither seem to increase strength. Both armors are being worn by technological characters. My character is wearing the small plate and Jenna is wearing the larger. Is this a bug or are the found versions of this armor different then the ones you can craft? Is this something I need the unofficial patch to fix?

The unofficial patch (which you probably should've installed either way, as it fixes a truckload of ridiculous bugs) does fix the tech armors' strength bonuses. But, if I remember correctly, the version of the armor you find on NPCs is actually different from what you craft yourself, stat-wise.

Thanks! Does anybody know if I install the patch now will it screw up my current saved game?

It will; you want to start a new game after patching. If you don't want to replay from the beginning, finish your current playthrough, then patch.

This is definitely a game that should be played with the unfinished business mods and fixpatches!!!

I'd say just start over, honestly.

The official word is that the unofficial patch will break savegames. But I've heard some people say that they were able to install the unofficial patch and keep playing with their current game.

If you want to try it, just make a backup of your savegame and then try the patch. If you have problems, then you can just reinstall vanilla Arcanum and revert to your backup save.

One of the joys of Arcanum is trying again with a different character who makes different choices, because the game really responds well to these. Having said that, if you've gotten pretty far (and I'm guessing you have, since you're already using machined plate) I would say you should go ahead and finish. Then you can use the unofficial patch on your next character. You may find you'll want to try a lot more characters anyway.

Yeah, I think I need to see this through to the end at this point. It's not a huge loss since I'm a sneaky thief type, now however I just need to figure out if I have enough character points left to make all the awesome top-tier guns and pump up my weakling halfling strength enough to effectively wield said guns.

If it helps, here is a listing of all firearms that require ST >8. Note that all of them happen to be two-handed:

09 - Rifle
10 - Mechanized Gun
11 - Shotgun, Rifled Cannon, Tesla Gun
12 - Repeater Rifle, Levered Machine Gun, Elephant Gun, Grenade Launcher
15 - Blade Launcher, Flame Thrower

Also note that one of the best firearms in the game (which will be a late-game acquisition because of where the schematics and components are found) is a one-handed weapon requiring only ST 7 (or 5, if used with two hands) to operate.

There's a couple of ways you can go about making a solid gunslinger character; one option is to use prowling master + Electro Armor + Mechanized Gun (powerful because you can't be seen and many of the high tier humanoids have high dodge-- meaning high rate of fire can do more damage than just a couple of big shots that'll miss).

Good news is that you can use fate points to steal some of the more powerful guns, quaff intelligence potions, etc. so gun-crafting doesn't have to be expensive on the character sheet at all unless you want it to be.

Besides this though, my favorite combination is using Long Range Pistol + Tempered Shield + Feather-weight Chain & Goggled Helmet. You can even go with Oiled Thieves Leather if you want to, the heavy armor in this game isn't really all it's cracked up to be. Just make sure you have other solid equipment, use haste potions, and oh yeah--- use all that extra carry weight saved for GRENADES. Concussion and Electro and Stun.

P.S. Most of the Exotic "top-tier" guns aren't that great, but if you must go after something that expensive on the character sheet, go for the Telsa Gun. Low rate of fire, but massive damage when it hits.