I have a pile of cash and was thinking of buying the metal armor in the guns shop in the Hub (Fallout 1). Downside is that it's very heavy. Also, its armor class is actually less than my leather armor (20 vs. 25). But it does add 25% resistances for various kinds of attacks. Are these resistances worth the extra weight and the armor class loss?

P.S. Is there any way to see the stats of an item in the barter screen BEFORE buying the item?

If you're well armed, you can kill a khan. They wear metal armor, and they drop it when they die. That way you don't need to spend a bottle cap.
Metal armor is heavier, but it's better. AFAIK, no. Just save before buying the item, them reload the game.

Thanks for the info. I'll save my cash for now.

Ok. If you have any problems tell me. : )

There's a Wiki, mind you.
The Vault - Metal Armor (Fallout 1)
The Vault - Leather Armor (Fallout 1)

No, not really. You can "see" it, but that generally won't tell you much for weapons or armor. Save, buy it, put it on, check the stats. Then reload if you don't like it.

As a note, Fallout uses three types of armor stats.
1) AC. The higher this is, the harder it is to hit you. Basically it decreases the hit chance for attackers. This is why you'll get different hit percentages for different enemies in melee.
2) Damage threshold. This amount is subtracted from all damage of that particular type. If the threshold is higher than the damage dealt, you get the "X hit Y for no damage" message.
3) Damage resistance. This is a percentage reduction of everything not stopped by the threshold.

Some armor, like metal armor, has lower AC, but higher threshold and resistance, which means (overall) you'll take less damage even though you're easier to hit. Other things, like Tesla armor, have very different thresholds and resistances for different damage types, making it VERY useful against energy weapons but not that great against knives. And then you have Power Armor, which is great in all three categories, which is why you can take rockets and miniguns to the face with it.

In general, leather < metal < combat < power.

If memory serves, there's also a place in hub where you can buy Combat Armor which obsoletes metal armor right away. It's also almost my favourite armor in the game, a big part of the fun goes away after moving to heavier stuff.

Actually I like the leather armour the best and try to survive with it as long as possible. There's something very appealing in leather clad men shooting each others with shotguns. No homo.

Yes, I just found this merchant yesterday. He is near the entrance to the Old Town section. The combat armor is expensive ($30k or so) so I'll have to find it elsewhere or save my cash. He also has a lot of heavy weaponry, including a rocket launcher.

Great info, thanks. So let me make sure I understand all of this correctly. I'll illustrate with a hypothetical example:

Suppose an opponent has a 75% (unmodified) chance of hitting me. With leather armor, my AC is 25, and with metal it's 20. So depending on which armor I am wearing, his chance is reduced to either 50% or 55%.

If he does hit me (say, with normal damage), then there is some unmodified amount of damage that is presumably random based on his weapon type and (I guess) my distance from him and other factors. Let's say this amount is 10. The DT for metal armor is 4, vs. 2 for leather. So this 10 is reduced to either 6 or 8. In both cases these are positive numbers, so his hit was successful.

Then, metal's DR of 30 reduces the 6 by 30%, so he does 4.2 damage to me, which will I assume be rounded down to 4. On the other hand, leather's DR of 25 reduces the 8 by 25%, so I take 6 damage. In either case, the final number (4 or 6) is subtracted directly from my HP.

Did I get all that right?

[edit] Oh ho, I found a page in the Wiki that looks like it spells out all the details:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_combat

also relevant:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Critical_Hit

Here's a detail I wouldn't have guessed:

"Note: The Fallout 1 engine does not implement the ammo modifiers, so there is no difference between JHP and AP ammo."

So I guess that means in practice the two types are just a nuisance because they can't be mixed together in the same gun at the same time. I still hoard both types because I fear running out.

...So do I.
NO MORE! BWAHAHAHAHA!
Thanks, didn't know this.

Damn, I never realized the AC has such a small effect.
Probably makes a difference at long ranges, but...

I was thinking more along the D20 system, where every point is 5%.