(Friendly Consideration) Replace [+ Health] on Armors with [+ Armor] and [- Mobility]

[mykelsss]

Because why should armor make you more healthy?

This change (as in the title) would make loadouts for missions more interesting as well. Now you would be forced to choose between heavier armor vs. number of units vs. another piece of gear vs. Infiltration time instead of number of units vs. gear vs. Infiltration time.

Most of the tiers are slightly buffed, except for the Warden, which is nerfed. I use a general +3 Health = +1 Armor and +1 Armor = +1 Mobilty = +10 Dodge conversion.

This is more of a proof of concept than a rigorous balancing.


TIER 0

Kevlar
Nothing
→
Armor +1, Mobility -1

Resistance Warrior Kevlar
Nothing
→
Shield +1 (ie, those orange bars/ablative plating)

Ceramic Plating
Shield +2
→
Armor +1, Mobility -1

TIER 1

Spider
Health +1, Armor +0, Mobility +1, Dodge +10
→
Armor +1, Mobility +1, Dodge +10

EXO
Health +2, Armor +0, +Heavy Weapon
→
Armor +2, Mobility -2, +Heavy Weapon

Predator
Health +3, Armor +1
→
Armor +3, Mobility -1

TIER 2

Wraith
Health +3, Armor +0, Mobility +2, Dodge +20, +Grapple, +Wraith
→
Armor +2, Mobility +2, Dodge +20, +Grapple, +Wraith

Warden
Health +8, Armor +2, +Shieldwall
→
Armor +4, -1 Mobility, +Shieldwall

W.A.R.
Health +3, Armor +1, +Heavy Weapon
→
Armor +3, Mobility -1, +Heavy Weapon

[Devon_v]

Technically armor doesn't make you more healthy, it makes you take less damage.

Wound time is based on the percentage of HP missing. If yoy have three HP because you don't have armor and take two damage you are severely injured. If you have 10 HP because you're wearing armor and take two damage it's a minor wound.

Basically there's heavy armor plating that outright negates incoming damage, represented by the yellow pips, and there's the flexible armor mesh underneath that can't stop the incoming damage, but it can mitigate some of the force to give you a better chance of survival, represented by additional HP.

Armor doesn't last forever, while the sort of DR stacking that would be possible if all armors granted it would make certain enemies completely pillowfisted against XCOM with no possibility of wearing down the defense.

[Arcalane]

Devon's right; with the armour strength of things like late-game Tactical Vests made from Mutons and so on and so forth, this... yeah, armour-scaling would get out of hand fast.

Top it off with things like Formidable and you could easily get troops up to 6-7 armour, which is reserved for only the toughest alien forces to my knowledge. On Rookie, you'd have soldiers shrugging off Muton plasma fire like it was nothing at all.

[mykelsss]

Technically armor doesn't make you more healthy, it makes you take less damage.

Wound time is based on the percentage of HP missing. If yoy have three HP because you don't have armor and take two damage you are severely injured. If you have 10 HP because you're wearing armor and take two damage it's a minor wound.

Basically there's heavy armor plating that outright negates incoming damage, represented by the yellow pips, and there's the flexible armor mesh underneath that can't stop the incoming damage, but it can mitigate some of the force to give you a better chance of survival, represented by additional HP.

Armor doesn't last forever, while the sort of DR stacking that would be possible if all armors granted it would make certain enemies completely pillowfisted against XCOM with no possibility of wearing down the defense.

I don't think the problem is as bad as it's made out to be, or even much of a problem at all. Let me illustrate why:

RAW Long War 2
Assuming a 5 HP soldier wearing a W.A.R. Suit (+3 HP, 1 Armor) vs. a hit of 5 Damage:

5 Damage - 1 Armor = 4 Damage. He is reduced to 4/8 HP, half health. That puts him in the MinPointsToHeal=6000, MaxPointsToHeal=32000 bracket.

Proposed Change
Assuming the same:

5 Damage - 3 Armor = 2 Damage. He is reduced to 6/8 HP. That puts him in the MinPointsToHeal=3500, MaxPointsToHeal=20000 bracket.

It seems like a straight-up buff to XCOM units, until you take in one small factor and one bigger one.

[*] An obvious one, and basically just a reiteration: almost all of the proposed armor changes have negative Mobility. So while you may have lost a little less health, it's important to take into consideration that it will be more difficult to reach your objective.
[*]More importantly, with the +Health option, you can always restore your health to full (including the additional Health granted by your armor). However, with my proposed change, if your armor has been shredded off/exploded for the mission, you gain no additional bonus from the armor by healing your units in the mission. Shredding is common from the mid-game on. Explosives are common. You do not have that additional HP, so you cannot keep healing yourself to a greater health value than your soldier himself has.

By way of illustration, the Warden suit has Health +8 and Armor +2. Assuming a 5 HP soldier, he would have 13 HP and 2 Armor for the mission, and he can never have a HP maximum less than 13 HP even if he lost his 2 Armor to shredding/explosions.

However, with the proposed change, he would have 5 HP and 4 Armor. If he loses portions of his armor during the mission he can never heal himself above 5 HP to tank big hits. It is very common to lose 1 Armor on a mission and common enough to lose 2. The proposed change makes armor's effect 100% ablative and it can be lost entirely for the mission.

To tackle pillowfisting, very few of the mid-game or endgame units lack a way to kill off XCOM armor. MECs have mini-missiles, Mutons have grenades, Archons have Blazing Pinions, Andromedons have Shred 1, launch acid and leak acid in Phase 2, Gatekeeper is a Psi-attacker and explodes upon death, Sectopod has an attack with Pierce 3 and Wrath Cannon deals the most damage in the game and has Shred 2, Avatar is a Psi-attacker.

This leaves Chryssalids and Codices. Chryssalids have a small mitigation here, since they have poison, which gets around armor but requires them to hit first. IMO they should have Shred 1 or Pierce 2. Codices are probably fine as-is. Not every unit needs an anti-armor attack, and they're often on the flank doing critical hits anyway.

MEC M1's have 0 Shred but MEC M2's have 2 Shred. In RAW XCOM 2 the MEC M1's had 1 Shred and I would say restore that.

Devon's right; with the armour strength of things like late-game Tactical Vests made from Mutons and so on and so forth, this... yeah, armour-scaling would get out of hand fast.

I'm not sure on the benefit of Tactical Vests, do they grant +Armor? In that case they could be changed to grant +3 Shield or +4 Shield, -1 Mobility to bring them in line with Ceramic Plating. Regardless, they could be disallowed to be paired with Tier 2 or otherwise modified.

Formidable is not a problem: it's typically pretty unlikely someone would take that in the middle of the various perk trees (where it's situated). It's not an OP combination.

[Arcalane]

Tac Vests are +4HP/+1ARM. As far as pure health goes, they're one of the best defenses, though they don't offer the status resistance of hazmat vests (3HP, fire/acid/poison resist) or other utility defenses.

Keep in mind that even 5-6 ARM is noselling 90% of a Viper plasma blast and more or less completely stopping any magnetic weapon that isn't mounted to a MEC or the ADVENT General's super-rifle. In those circumstances, Blast Padding/Formidable might look a lot more attractive due to stacking potential.

The other problem then is that you are extremely liable to run into what I see as a common problem in pen-and-paper RPGs: All-or-Nothing.

In that scenario, you have attacks that either fail to connect or are so weak as to do zero damage, or are otherwise powerful enough to flatten the target outright should they connect and either penetrate or overpower any armour. There is no middle ground between "alive" and "dead", you are either combat capable or pushing up daisies.

As for the mobility function; as you probably know, all utility platings/vests/etc. incur a -1 mobility penalty already. Tacking it on to armour doesn't achieve much.

[8wayz]

The Tactical vest provides 4 HP, 1 Armor. By your proposed conversion, it should add 2 armor (3 HP = 1 armor).

So War suit (3) + Formidable (1) + Tactical (2) = 6

You are a bit off in your example as well:

Proposed Change
Assuming the same:

5 Damage - 3 Armor = 2 Damage. He is reduced to 6/8 HP. That puts him in the MinPointsToHeal=3500, MaxPointsToHeal=20000 bracket.

In this example the soldier will have only 5 HP, since the armor suit will not grant him extra HP. Thus he will be at 3/5 instead of 6/8, or 66% to 75%.

Still better than the 50% with the current system.

And this will get even better with 6-7 armor points at the last tier of armor suits + Formidable.

[mykelsss]

Tac Vests are +4HP/+1ARM. As far as pure health goes, they're one of the best defenses, though they don't offer the status resistance of hazmat vests (3HP, fire/acid/poison resist) or other utility defenses.

That seems bloated. +4 Shield, -2 Mobility I'd say. This way Ceramic Plates (+Shield, re-themed in Long War 2 to "ablative armor") don't lead to Tac Vests (+Health/+Armor) for stat consistency.

Keep in mind that even 5-6 ARM is noselling 90% of a Viper plasma blast and more or less completely stopping any magnetic weapon that isn't mounted to a MEC or the ADVENT General's super-rifle. In those circumstances, Blast Padding/Formidable might look a lot more attractive due to stacking potential.

The other problem then is that you are extremely liable to run into what I see as a common problem in pen-and-paper RPGs: All-or-Nothing.

In that scenario, you have attacks that either fail to connect or are so weak as to do zero damage, or are otherwise powerful enough to flatten the target outright should they connect and either penetrate or overpower any armour. There is no middle ground between "alive" and "dead", you are either combat capable or pushing up daisies.

Under RAW XCOM 2, if an enemy hit you, they were guaranteed to deal at least 1 Damage. Didn't matter if you had 100 Armor, they'd still do 1 Damage. Has this been done away with? Or did that only apply to enemies? That means a light wound or regular wound on the first hit, every time. That's why you can take any shot at turrets with tons of armor and still always deal 1 damage on a hit.

Also, Long War 1 in XCOM 1 often had enemies dealing 0 damage to you. It was a different system, but damage could often be fully mitigated by armor for a shot or two, and you could heal it back up before taking damage to extend that effect.

As for the mobility function; as you probably know, all utility platings/vests/etc. incur a -1 mobility penalty already. Tacking it on to armour doesn't achieve much.

It's less grenades and other consumables you can bring while still keeping a decent Mobility.

The Tactical vest provides 4 HP, 1 Armor. By your proposed conversion, it should add 2 armor (3 HP = 1 armor).

So War suit (3) + Formidable (1) + Tactical (2) = 6

I agree, this is bloated. See above.

In this example the soldier will have only 5 HP, since the armor suit will not grant him extra HP. Thus he will be at 3/5 instead of 6/8, or 66% to 75%.

Still better than the 50% with the current system.

And this will get even better with 6-7 armor points at the last tier of armor suits + Formidable.

I forgot to reduce his health, but it makes no difference because of the "bucketing" system for wounds. That's still in the 51-75% bucket, which is MinPointsToHeal=3500, MaxPointsToHeal=20000. That's in the DefaultGameData.ini under "WoundSeverities".

[8wayz]

Well, I am glad you agree that some of the vests can really make armor stacking too strong.

Please also note that Long War 2 makes good use of Grazing hits and special abilities that do limited damage.

So having up to 5 armor (with the Warden suit + Formidable) will negate all grazing hits and said abilities.

Even just Wraith suit + Formidable (on Assault ! ) will make the soldier neigh impregnable, once it gets Untouchable.

[Valaska]

I almost always take formidable.

[mykelsss]

Please also note that Long War 2 makes good use of Grazing hits and special abilities that do limited damage.

But every hit will do a minimum of 1 damage, correct? I don't believe it's possible to mitigate all damage with armor. Even if you have 100 armor and the enemy hits you, you will still take 1 damage. 1 damage has a random chance of being a light wound or a regular wound. Nothing to sneeze at.

And then there are the shreds and explosions, which permanently reduce your survivability for the mission, unlike with [+ Health].

I almost always take formidable.

It's fine on a Grenadier. Maybe on a Gunner. On a Ranger you'd be gimping yourself though.

[Valaska]

Please also note that Long War 2 makes good use of Grazing hits and special abilities that do limited damage.

But every hit will do a minimum of 1 damage, correct? I don't believe it's possible to mitigate all damage with armor. Even if you have 100 armor and the enemy hits you, you will still take 1 damage. 1 damage has a random chance of being a light wound or a regular wound. Nothing to sneeze at.

I almost always take formidable.

It's fine on a Grenadier. Maybe on a Gunner. On a Ranger you'd be gimping yourself though.

Not... Really? I mean you either have something that works 100% on chance, or you have something that works 100% of the time. Formidable will get more use.

[mykelsss]

Not... Really? I mean you either have something that works 100% on chance, or you have something that works 100% of the time. Formidable will get more use.

Formidable requires you to get hit. It's only 100% to use if you're planning to get hit on every mission, or multiple times. Whereas with Bring 'Em On you can often crit multiple times on a mission.

There is also the "proactive vs. reactive" argument, where in XCOM it's always better to plant your enemies in the ground the first turn as opposed to be taking damage.

[Arcalane]

Thinking on this some more, I feel like there would need to be an added adjustment; increase native dodge/defense, and incur dodge/defense penalties for heavier armour.

Otherwise, you're going to have weak soldiers running around and getting KO'd (and probably outright killed, with LW2 bleedout mechanics) in two hits at most.

But, even then, let's take a Muton, for instance, Base damage is 5-9, AP 1. On a high roll, that could instantly KO a soldier through the best armour available without further armour augmentation. Even a high-ranking soldier with good health progression, good base health, and a top-rate, GTS-boosted health PCS doesn't have great survival odds.

What about the Naja, the Viper Sniper variant? 4-6 damage, but higher variants get AP 1 or 2 - same thing.
Ed: Top-rank Naja is in fact 6-11 damage, AP3.

Let's not even get onto Andromedons, which are 7-11, Shred 1.

This would increase soldier loss rates to absurd levels. The player's squad is always outnumbered even on the lowest activity level, and losing even a single soldier is anything from significant (because you may not be able to recover the gear they have, if any) to "well the entire squad just got wiped".

If I wanted soldiers that could die at the drop of a hat regardless of what they happened to be wearing, I'd go play the original XCOM, where your soldiers could take 0 to 200% damage from any source depending on the whims of the RNG.

[8wayz]

@mykelsss

Alpha strikes (terminating a pod on the turn it was revealed, not allowing it to act) were the order of the day in original XCOM2.

In Long War 2 you now have:
- larger pods, sometimes up to 8 units.
- AI taking better cover and using Hunker Down.
- More defence and dodge on alien and ADVENT units.
- As a result of the better defence and dodge, more grazing hits.
... and others.

Thus you will not be able to regularly terminate a pod before it acts. What you usually do is take care of the more dangerous enemies, including those which can shred your armor (Rocketeers, Mutons, etc) and Flashbang, Overwatch, Suppress the rest, buying yourself more time.

If you are playing carefully, your armor will hardly be shred during mission and it will do its job for a good part of the time.

And the biggest argument of armor vs defence : armor will keep you safe even when you are flanked or your cover was destroyed. Thus why it is strictly better than higher health total, even if someone manages to shred it.

Concerning grazing hits, I think it works like the Stock in original XCOM 2 - you are guaranteed to do some damage on a miss, but it is subject to armor mitigation.

[redscare]

People take game concepts way too literal. Every game mechanic is an abstraction. Vests giving you extra health means damage mitigation. Same thing with people complaining about missing "in da face" shots. It's just an abstraction, in reality no alien would politely wait for you to run up to his face and blast him with a shotgun just because he already shot 5 seconds ago and cannot "overwatch".

I very much like the current implementation. You can suffer very minor wounds without landing in hospital (the orange pips from ceramic and the like), and with the exception of some really heavy armor or special perks, armor and vests don't outright negate damage but mitigate it instead (represented by extra health).

Messing with armor, mobility, dodge... that would require extensive playtesting to make sure the end result is playable (and playable at all difficulties). As mentioned, lower health + more armor would mean some shots doing 0 damage and also a lot more of one-hit-kills at the whim of the RNG gods. I prefer a more progressive system (like we have) where you can almost always take one hit and survive, and then up to you how you manage risks. One-hit-kills always kill the fun in games, at least for me.

[mykelsss]

Thinking on this some more, I feel like there would need to be an added adjustment; increase native dodge/defense, and incur dodge/defense penalties for heavier armour.

Otherwise, you're going to have weak soldiers running around and getting KO'd (and probably outright killed, with LW2 bleedout mechanics) in two hits at most.

But, even then, let's take a Muton, for instance, Base damage is 5-9, AP 1. On a high roll, that could instantly KO a soldier through the best armour available without further armour augmentation. Even a high-ranking soldier with good health progression, good base health, and a top-rate, GTS-boosted health PCS doesn't have great survival odds.

What about the Naja, the Viper Sniper variant? 4-6 damage, but higher variants get AP 1 or 2 - same thing.
Ed: Top-rank Naja is in fact 6-11 damage, AP3.

Let's not even get onto Andromedons, which are 7-11, Shred 1.

This would increase soldier loss rates to absurd levels. The player's squad is always outnumbered even on the lowest activity level, and losing even a single soldier is anything from significant (because you may not be able to recover the gear they have, if any) to "well the entire squad just got wiped".

If I wanted soldiers that could die at the drop of a hat regardless of what they happened to be wearing, I'd go play the original XCOM, where your soldiers could take 0 to 200% damage from any source depending on the whims of the RNG.

Heh... I'm glad it's no longer "too overpowered" and instead "insanely gimped". And I don't mean that in a combative way because that's closer to my opinion of it too: it's fairly gimped. I was being conservative with my original values, only putting what I felt would be a fairly one-to-one conversion so people couldn't say "well it's just a straight buff then, huh, pretty stupid."

The answer? Either +1 Armor on tier 2 alone or +1 Armor on tier one and +2 Armor on tier two. Maybe +3 Defense on tier one and +6 Defense on tier 2 as well.

Maybe it could be said that it scales badly, I'm not sure... but also look at the method of +Health. It's not like that scales beautifully either, with the +8 on Warden and +Health on multiple items to keep XCOM competitive.

There is the consideration of "but then XCOM will eventually have armor matching Sectopods" which is true. So increase Gatekeeper/Sectopod armor by a couple so they still look cool.

Oh, and drop the variance of all attacks in the game (Spread). Long War 2 adds TONS of spread to every attack for some reason. Reducing a weapon Spread of 3 or 4 to 1 or 2 does nothing to the balance whatsoever. It just makes damage less spikey and RNG-focused.

With all that spread you end up with a Shotgun at Magnetic tier doing 6-13 damage (range of 8) whereas in XCOM2 RAW it had a range of 3. Why even...

Alpha strikes (terminating a pod on the turn it was revealed, not allowing it to act) were the order of the day in original XCOM2.

In Long War 2 you now have:
- larger pods, sometimes up to 8 units.
- AI taking better cover and using Hunker Down.
- More defence and dodge on alien and ADVENT units.
- As a result of the better defence and dodge, more grazing hits.
... and others.

Thus you will not be able to regularly terminate a pod before it acts. What you usually do is take care of the more dangerous enemies, including those which can shred your armor (Rocketeers, Mutons, etc) and Flashbang, Overwatch, Suppress the rest, buying yourself more time.

Hmm, I can see your point of view, but I still feel the proactive strategy (Bring Em On) beats the reactive one (Formidable, originally a tier one perk). It is better to take those many enemies off the board and not get hit than be getting hit.

Like you said, if you're playing carefully, what would you need that armor for anyway? :p

And the biggest argument of armor vs defence : armor will keep you safe even when you are flanked or your cover was destroyed. Thus why it is strictly better than higher health total, even if someone manages to shred it.

Is it though? +Health does the same thing. You will have more HP out in the open and just as much survivability.

People take game concepts way too literal. Every game mechanic is an abstraction.

This isn't blowing my mind.

As mentioned, lower health + more armor would mean some shots doing 0 damage

I already tackled this. There is no such thing as "0" damage when it comes to Armor mitigating damage, only when it comes to Shields. You will always take 1 damage from a hit even if you're wearing 100 Armor. Fire a pistol at an ADVENT turret to see this. And again, even a hit of 1 can give you a light wound or a regular wound. And again, it's nothing to sneeze at.

[Arcalane]

Heh... I'm glad it's no longer "too overpowered" and instead "insanely gimped". And I don't mean that in a combative way because that's closer to my opinion of it too: it's fairly gimped. I was being conservative with my original values, only putting what I felt would be a fairly one-to-one conversion so people couldn't say "well it's just a straight buff then, huh, pretty stupid."

It's both. It forces you into that All-or-Nothing scenario where you either absolutely must stack as much armour as possible to not die (in which case you're taking hardly any damage from the vast majority of threats, and still moving slow as molasses), or... your soldiers die no matter what you do and might as well not be wearing anything in the first place, so why bother spending resources on armour? It still punishes soldiers that get shitty health rolls. It still ups the value of the Conditioning PCS significantly.

Andromedons are still going to kick your ass if they can hit you. Max-rank Naja are still going to oneshot you. I mean yeah you can make a good case for sectopods, berzerkers, and giant fucking chryssalids being one-hit KOs, but those are a given.

As for everything else? Well you just reduced the likelihood of the low-roll hits that won't instantly vaporize your troops, sure. But now it's still likely that they're going to go down in one or two hits at most. Three if they somehow survived long enough to make maximum rank. Nine or ten if they got a good roll and are somehow only facing minimum-rank ADVENT troopers (which is pretty much impossible).

Oh, and back to those Mutons for a moment. I've seen them get up to 60% to-hit through light cover with no height bonus. There are plenty of situations where you won't have enough high cover to go around and thus are essentially choosing who is likely to immediately die the moment the bullets start flying, so that you can maybe keep everyone else alive. So again see my point about each squad loss potentially being A Big Deal.

This is still pushing us straight back into the era of the original game. And, again, if I wanted that game, I'd go play it.

You're pitching too much into a non-restorable value, and that's just bad. I've seen it with damage resistance and armour class alike in traditional tabletop games.

[Goumindong]

Not... Really? I mean you either have something that works 100% on chance, or you have something that works 100% of the time. Formidable will get more use.

Formidable requires you to get hit. It's only 100% to use if you're planning to get hit on every mission, or multiple times. Whereas with Bring 'Em On you can often crit multiple times on a mission.

There is also the "proactive vs. reactive" argument, where in XCOM it's always better to plant your enemies in the ground the first turn as opposed to be taking damage.

If you crit 4 times in a mission with your ranger Bring-em-on is worth maybe 8 damage if you're lucky.

1 HP is worth more than 8 damage generally.

Especially since the primary advantage of rangers is that they can move into dangerous locations and then shoot+hunker formidable starts to look a lot better.

edit: The only time "bring em on" is really useful is when you're facing a LOT of enemies (need 16 visible in order to get +8) and while that is nice for taking down some of the really big enemies... a sniper is generally better at that specific task... and you really want a grenader/technical to deal with group

[mykelsss]

Anyway, I don't think Pavonis is down for this one and that's totally fine, so I'll just mention for anyone who's interested that these modifications (or any others you want to make to armor) are totally possible with the Armor Stat Customiser mod, which is 100% compatible with Long War 2.

Cheers to Pavonis for making their game so customizable.

edit: oh wtf, I edited my other post. Or double posting isn't allowed here.

[Goumindong]

in the context of an entire mission for the 8 damage, spread randomly around targets that may or may not need it. Compared to 1 HP that almost certainly will, at some point, save that units life.

In general you're going to get hit probably 1-3 times per (serious) mission, on average. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. This is based off an assumption of say 4 to 12 semi-controlled shots landing at 25%. Generally you can control who will be taking those shots (by placement and defense management) and that means that armor is super valuable, especially on short range units that can only shoot bullets.

There is an argument to take ever vigilant over formidable, but not really one to take bring em on. Not in its current incarnation

Edit: If you need a +4 damage crit because you pulled 8 dudes you would rather have

1) A technical
2) A grenadier
3) A sniper with precision shot or Kubikuri

[8wayz]

Well, Pavonis have their own ideas and refurbishing the whole HP/Armor system will be a lot of work on their side.

That said, concerning the argument I gave about flanking against armor, once the AI sees that a soldier is out of cover, it will try to swarm it.

With armor you can safely shrug off any low-to-mid damage. The armor will still be in place for the next shot coming your way, provided there are no Shredding enemies nearby.

Thus armor will keep you consistently alive when out of cover, while HP will help you survive just the first hit.

As you pointed out, there is already a mod that helps you do what you are aiming for, give it a go and let us know how it goes.

[Arcalane]

Anyway, I don't think Pavonis is down for this one and that's totally fine, so I'll just mention for anyone who's interested that these modifications (or any others you want to make to armor) are totally possible with the Armor Stat Customiser mod, which is 100% compatible with Long War 2.

Cheers to Pavonis for making their game so customizable.

Firaxis, you mean. But yes.

Arguments aside, I think the idea might be salvageable? Like, you could halve health values and increase armour values by 50-100%, and still get a bit more of the feel you want without completely wrecking things. And I stand by the 'higher innate defense/dodge, reduced by heavy armour'. That way you can try to bank on not being hit instead of tanking every hit that comes your way.

It's just an extremely delicate thing with a lot of knock-on effects, and you'd probably have to tweak every single enemy too if you were stripping out health bonuses entirely.

I also don't know if the ASC would let you tweak the plating/vest stats. You might need to do some fiddling and possibly compile a branch/copy that supported the new items. I toyed with it in the past (adding shield HP to the War/Warden suits for vanilla) and it was definitely pretty powerful though.