The drawback of speed for Armor plates might fit within EVE, but in Dust three of the four dropsuits must keep moving in order to not die super quick.
Armor slowing you down is too much of a drawback in a game like this, even a 5% speed reduction is huge.

I suggest instead of doing speed reduction, armor plates should reduce Stamina amount.
And have a skill that reduces the amount removed by 5%-4% each skill level.

Dunno fat suits in call of duty work the same way, and they're awesome.

fat suits in call of duty move slower than prone crawling.

armour waffle?

And?
As I said, I was talking about ratio, not comparing speeds directly.
Also, there is COD and there is Dust, one is a twitch shooter and the other is not.

Also, if the speed drawback stays armor tanking will only be good for heavies, and all other suits will just be mini heavies.

that is comparable to the soon to come scan profile downside for shield extenders.

Not sure where you got this information.

I would be happy with the armor plate malus if shield had a signature resolution malus.

Well, a top speed in EVE makes no sense since it all takes place in a vacuum, acceleration, and of course ~300,000 km/s should be the only limits on ship speed (acceleration would drop as you add more mass, since inertia is correlated with mass). But then again, it's there for balance issues. The speed penalty for armor actually makes sense in Dust.

^ I know, which is why I think the Devs seem to have no respect for the laws of physics. Seriously, you make a "realistic", "gritty" space MMO (don't tell me "realistic" only applies to your actions having consequences), and you base it on a FLUID. DYNAMICS. ENGINE. RAAAAAAGE! EVE is a fun game though.

EvE could have been done that way since many people think it 'should' be that way. EvE has enough learning curve without teaching people things like weight has no effect on speed and engine turning off won't slow you down only reverse will. Many people make it through life never taking a physics class.

Armour honeycombing or waffling skill to reduce penalty would be nice. In EvE, armour had better passive resist modules and the regenerate membrane that added a percent of armour with no speed penalty. These mods/skills would help armour vs shield balance greatly.

Just lowering the penalty to something like 2/3/5 instead of 3/5/10 would make plates vastly more tolerable. As it is very few mercs bother with complex plates since you waddle so badly in them.

I think changing it from speed to stamina usage is just a step short of genius. Pity the rest of the playerbase doesn't seem to agree however.