Removing armour

  In todays post I will explore the idea of removing armour from vehicles.  As with the previous posts, you will need the Arsenal supplement to use the information in this post.  I also suggest asking your game master for permission, as I expect this to be a controversial topic.

  First, we will assume all standard modification (off the rack) armour is the normal armour modification (it probably is concealed armour in a lot of cases though).  Based on this, removing default armour should recover one modification slot.

  However, if you remove the armour modification and recover one slot, and then later add an armour modification for one slot, you would have made an armour modification for a total of zero modification slots.  The rules specifically state this is not the case, as the armour modification already strips the default armour from the vehicle as part of the mod.  Still, it seems sensible that removing armour should free up space in the vehicle, and recover a modification slot.  Therefore, I suggest the following new vehicle modification.

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Removed Armour (All)

Removes all standard armour from a vehicle, giving the vehicle an Armour attribute of 0. Removed armour is incompatible with all other vehicle armour modifications, but not reflective hull.

Modification	Slots	Threshold	Tools	Cost	Availability	Special Skill
Removed Armour	+1	Rating	Shop	100	4	Armourer

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  When vehicle armour equals or exceeds the damage value it negates the damage entirely.  Nearly all weapons in the game do a minimum of 4 damage (with the exception of light and pistol crossbows, and possibly some metahuman powered weapons). A successful hit always implies at least one net success on the opposed combat test, meaning a successful hit typically has a minimum damage value of 5.

  Every 3 points of armour results in (an average of) 1 hit on the damage resistance test, meaning 3 armour is roughly equivalent to -1 damage value.  An armour of 4 is worth approximately -1.33 damage value.

  It can therefore be argued that the main benefit of armour (both vehicle and metahuman) occurs when the armour equals or exceeds the damage, not it's ability to mitigate damage.  It follows that armour less than that which would stop the majority of weapons outright is not truly very useful.

  In other words, it is my opinion that armours of 4 or less are not very useful, and more benefit can be gained by removing said armour and replacing it with some other modification.

  I won't list all the vehicles for which 0 < armour < 5, but there are (as of this post) 74 of them.

  In particular for armour less than 3 there are better mods available for 1 modification slot; self-repair, nano-maintenance, smoke projector (with thermal smoke) and lock-on countermeasures (only helps against active targeting).  Other ideas include; improved suspension (reduces chance of being hit altogether, which potentially skips the damage resistance step) and off-road suspension (same).