Long story short... percentages are bad. (Primarily due to power creep between things with small numbers to tack percentages on versus things with big numbers for the same cost.)
So as an alternative instead of a percentage, how about this?
Lets say that 32 points of STD armor is 1 ton.
As such, for the IS 36 points of Ferro armor is 1 ton.
For 14 slots you get 4 points of additional armor per ton, or 2 points additional armor per half ton.
Your 100 ton mech (unquirked, unskill treed) is limited to 614 points of armor.
That's approximately 18.2 tons of armor!!
What if your limit of armor wasn't points, but weight?
614 might be 19.2 tons-ish in STD, but in IS Ferro that's 730 points rounded up.
OR we could do 20%...
...and you'd get 614+20% = 736.8. And yes you make out like a bandit at the high end.
Now consider the low end.
20 tons, bottom of the barrel. Your armor? Caps at 138 points STD or 4.315 tons.
Now we give you a 20% boost for Ferro! 165.6 points. Sounds great, doesn't it?
Or we could give you your max armor weight in ferro!
163.875 points.
Huh.
Okay well that isn't so bad, but this is a thing that's scaling upwards. Look at Ferro slapped onto the Annihilator pre-nerf with 20% and that's just insane. You already have skill tree adding percentages and quirks adding whole numbers that the skill tree tacks the percentage on top of. The more you can carry the higher a percentage based benefit will go, skewing some things. A solid number, however would keep things a little more in check. Even if it isn't as high a benefit as 20%, it still comes close.
Still think additional armor based on weight is pretty reasonable. And yes this means the Clans can tack a little more than the IS.
It's a shame that you couldn't, say, 'crit' the armor slots to chip off extra armor.
Edited by Koniving, 22 October 2017 - 02:13 PM.