I won't bother putting the math here but you can do it in your head. adding 1/2 the value of these as a hot fix, will just barely help make armor tanking a viable option. right now its abit ridiculous

the reactive plates especially need a major buff, those things are almost pointless. but they are still a good idea.
reactive plates should be giving you at least 60 armor and heal at a rate of 4 hp per second, with the 1% movement speed penalty.

EDIT:

all armor values should be doubled. all armor plates, repair modules, reactive plates (except the penalty), ferroscale, all these should have their values and bonuses doubled.

well they sacrifice damage mods, for the sake of tanking. caldari can do it, minmintar can do it, galente can do it... but caldari do it better.

the core issue is the base stats of the galente verses the base stats of the caldari. the galente suits can't tank as hard because they dnt have enough CPU/PG, slots and base armor to compensate for the disparity. moreover, their base movement speed should be higher than a caldari's by 33% so that after armor tanking starts their speed reduction isn't to the point of becoming a heavy.*



*this is a discusion about medium frames only however. as the heavy suit has a variety of tasks it is desinged to perform but still plays a support role it needs to be treated differently as well. i discuss this in the thread entitled "heavies should have resistance to small armrs fire by 30%"

+1

Im a heavy and ignore all the armor plates.

Because you realize while your fighting other suits your ability to move in and out of cover quickly is probably one of your most important skills, If you load up on plates that means your going to get to cover that % slower, and because your FOV is less then your heavy suit hitbox IE your heavy suit is firing from beside a wall then takes fire and moves its body fully behind said wall you will be taking that % more dmg before your Hitbox is fully behind cover, that % of hit based fire is MORE then the amount of tank you are going to get out of the Plates!

that is the problem, if you move 10% slower and you need to move your body behind a wall OB is going to take you 10% more time to get there, and seeing as how the plates are not absorbing 10% more damage for the Heavy suit you end up handicapping yourself!!

MATH people MATH!

BTW this should be its own thread as to WHY doing armor plates in any major capacity as a heavy is Worthless!

Its far less noticeable with the faster suits because the enemy weapon ROF is the constant! see?