Uprated armour types

I had my first casualties in November - the first was due to an idiot firing a rocket into his face and lighting up the pillar a small group was hiding behind at night. >< I forget the second, but it was another vet.

The last was a rookie bravely opening a door I knew had a caesan behind it, instead of my vet standing next to her. ^^

Part of the issue I have is not so much about the balance of the Predator armour but about what it does to weapon balance.

If it is the best armour for close in and it also carries machine gun type weapons as if they were assault rifles then why would you use an assault rifle with much weaker armour?

Or breach with anything other than a Predator/machine gun user for that matter.

If you know you are invulnerable to the majority of weapons then march in the door and machine gun the area until everyone is suppressed and/or dead.

No shields required, no real danger.

Your only potential risk is if there are two plasma cannons on the other side of the door, both with AP reserved and both manage to reaction fire.

Not saying I have a solution as I also quite like the idea of a powerful armour type but this sums up some of my thoughts:

Predator armour provides a strength bonus so rookies could benefit from it as much as, if not more than, your veterans.

Sight range reduction is completely negated by having someone else spot the target, including an even tougher vehicle with longer sight range.

Weapon choice limitation is not really a limit if it also negates the penalties for using those weapons.

If the machine gun and precision rifle are balanced, at least in part, by their inability to move and shoot then removing those makes them less balanced.

Sure you can't use the assault rifle but you can use the 40 range, massively suppressing machine gun in the same role, as long as you save a few extra AP.

I actually lean more towards the glass cannon approach.

I would have had a big powerful close in armour and a weaker support armour specifically set up to use heavy weapons more effectively.

There's a simple test.

Is he pale, gaunt, with a tendency to moan and prefers to dress in white? Does the radio stutter when he's close by, do CCTV camera fail to pick him up and are spirtualists attracted to the area? If the answer is no to most of these, then he didn't die.

I checked, and he's not dead. Thanks Max!