Maybe if we do some butt kissing...

I've been thinking. I think armor isn't hard enough to skill into a good fit with.

Consider shield extenders. 22hp, 33hp, 66hp at complex. It really encourages you to use complex extenders.

Consider armor plates: 65hp, 87hp, 115hp at complex, with increasing penalties. It actively discourages using complex plates.

If the armor plates were 65hp, 97hp and 195hp with a flat 3% speed penalty, it would encourage armor suits to actually expend CPU and PG on.

I'm not sure I like the idea of an increased movement penalty for the size of suit I wear. Already a 3%-10% penalty is bad enough leading to really really slow moving mercs, I'd rather see the movement penalty reduced to the same level as the Basic armor plates and have a bigger visible signature on the Tac Net depending on level of armor plating. It is a big enough penalty already if only running basic armor and the light frame suits are meant to be speed tanked anyways, why give them a compounding bonus by making their plates less restrictive in movement, they are already the fastest suits on the battle field and have the smallest signature. Because the movement penalty is a percentage of base movement there is already a reduced movement penalty on the scout suits.

I'm going to miss my scrambler rifle being adequate once armor plates get fixed.

After that, I won't be able to get through the plates before I overheat.