I can't say that I understand the problem with 1 point of armour being 'worth' more than 1 point of health - that type of thing always used to relate to percentages anyway, as far as I was concerned (not really for NS)
If you want a hard to fix counter-intuitive point though, why does being shot in the foot a few times mean that you end up with no armour across your chest? It'd be an utter nightmare to run, but having a system that was entirely location based / model based (so if you hit the big lump of armour on the player model you do less damage (but might break that bit of armour) than if you hit a weak-spot) would give better player feedback (i.e. you can see that a marine has the armour shredded off of his back, or that a fade's carapace has been turned all mushy) etc.
The nanite armouring (basically tiny egg-shaped deals that absorbs impact quite effectively but breaks in the process) redistributes itself to cover the body equally. It's probably thinner than paper at 1 armor point.
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If you want a hard to fix counter-intuitive point though, why does being shot in the foot a few times mean that you end up with no armour across your chest? It'd be an utter nightmare to run, but having a system that was entirely location based / model based (so if you hit the big lump of armour on the player model you do less damage (but might break that bit of armour) than if you hit a weak-spot) would give better player feedback (i.e. you can see that a marine has the armour shredded off of his back, or that a fade's carapace has been turned all mushy) etc.