As it is, armour plates provide too much for a small sacrifice. For just 10 CPU and 1 PG, you get a extra 80 hp and only lose 2 percent to movement speed.

It's gotten to the point that almost every suit would be better off using 1-2 basic/enhanced armour plates.

So we currently have:

Basic -2

Enhanced -3

Complex -5

And the old penalty was:

Basic -3

Enhanced -5

Complex -10

It would probably kill off complex plates(unless the hp was buffed even more) as well as enhanced, but I can still see people using one basic.

Personally, I'd like it to be bumped up to 3/4/5. I can't see complex plates going any higher, even at 6 percent they would become useless.

No less so than shield extenders. It would mean you actually have serious drawbacks to armor like you already do with shields. But of course NOBODY wants armor to be balanced with shields.... well..... at least not the armor tankers.

I would never use a complex plate ever again if the penalty came back to 10.

The reason armor tanking became way better than shield tanking is because they both buffed the armor-per-plate and gave a reduction to the speed penalty. On top of that, there were very few options for anti-armor weapons. One was a sidearm, one was a heavy-only weapon, and one was a situational support weapon. Now that two mainline anti-armor guns are around (RR and CR) armor tanking is closer to being balanced with shields, but it's still not quite there yet. Perhaps we shouldn't return it to it's old values (3,5,10), but we should increase the penalty to the point that shield suits are adverse to running them but the armor suits still benefit from them. I suppose that means putting them at around 2,4 and 8. The basic plate is in a great spot since new players get it first and need as much of a bang for their figurative buck as they can get. 4 is more than the enhanced penalty currently is, but still isn't as bad as it used to be. 8 Seems fair for the complex, however I think that the complex needs another 10~20 HP on it so that it's worth using. The point isn't to gimp the plates after all, it's to balance them.

Just to be clear, we need a jewelers mallet here CCP, not a sledge.

No, because it takes away the shields niche of high regen, and low hp, good for lone wolfing. The problem is armor is currently 2-4 times as much hp as shields, have better sources of regeneration, very low penalty and high hp at basic and adv level, cost a lot less than shields do, and open up high slots for damage mods. Also, the argument that biotics and shields is better than plates and damage mods is made null by the fact that shield tankers have low pg, and biotic modules require the most pg, and aim assist defeats strafing unless the kill is made in under 1 second, so that the enemy doesn't have time to get his reticule near you

1. true, they are. however, armor repairs better than shields and is not interrupted if the person is sitting on a hive, or has logo support
2. That is false. They are not and this is a misconception. The are 10% more resistant to rail and combat rifles, but thats it.
3. Yes, there is no speed penalty, but they do have a shield depleted recharge delay penalty which is really significant is you get shot because it takes very few shots to fully deplete your shield, and then you must hunker down behind cover for a LONG time, whereas an armor tanker could just put down a hive once his shields started getting hit, and be invincible.
4. see above
5. They are your lifeline unless you are a damage stacking gallente or amarr with armor in the lows.

cons
1. This makes armor repairing in some cases even more effective than shield repairing because there is no delay
2. This statement is blatantly false. a basic extender=22 hp, a basic plate=85 hp which is about 4 times as much as the extender, for almost no penalty whatsoever for the armor tanker. At proto level, a plate is still more than twice as much hp as an extender.
3. Flux grenades are not rarely used like shield tanking is rarely used, they are rarely used like an assault rifle is rarely used.

You are blatantly wrong in all of your points, and i don't understand your attempt to misinform anyone who reads this of the problems with shields currently.

We are comparing modules, not suits. Currently, armor modules are 2-4x as effective as shield mods, with almost no penalty except at proto level.

Right. Also the positive/ negative bonuses to damage types seems like a bad idea. I really feel that weapons should do flat base damage, which should be mitigated whatever % by shields or armor. The way it is now... Example: you throw a grenade at someone, as soon as their shields are depleted, armor actually somehow interacts with the explosive to give it a damage buff?
Grenades are the best example, since the damage calculation greatly favors shield tankers.

The damage types as a whole favor shields over armor. If you total and average the damage bonuses, shields average a 5% resistance to the various damage types, while armor averages a 10% penalty.

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but why not make triage hives repair shields instead of armor?