How about Leaky Armor?

[Suicide Junkie]

Imagine something like a thick ring of slots around your ship. Maybe 50 slots in a circle, and slightly overlapping.
Larger ships could have a second or third layer for extra protection. Or maybe just Double/Triple strength and weight leaky armor components.

Leaky armor plating would probably be 1kt in weight, and give a lot of hitpoints; 30 to 50 or so.

These slots would not be armor slots, but would be hit first by virtue of being on the outside.
Since there are 50 of the slots, it will be relatively easy to punch a hole by destroying two or three adjacent slots.

The "armor" would be repaired like hull components, (since its not technically armor) but would likely need to be left at priority #9

[PvK]

Egad. There has to be a better way. Seems very complex and not much like how armor really works.

So armor is still all-or-nothing?

How about the SE4 way of making extremely tough internal components? That might work better, and be simpler, IF it would work correctly, which I'm not sure it would.

PvK

[Phoenix-D]

It doesn't, PvK. Armor is indeed all or nothing, but once you get inside damage is applied semi realisticly- a hit from the left damages components on the outer left portion of the ship first, then components on the inner left, inner right, outer right.

[Suicide Junkie]

Try the fighter in P&N - Border wars for an example!

[PvK]

Seems to me it would be best to convince Malfador to give both % and threshold protection, in addition to "destroy it all first" protection.

PvK