It doesn't tend to eat it for long, though. In the early game, if you get far ahead enough, you can tank the early enemy shots. Ballistic is easy to resist, but lasers tend to get through. By the end of phase 2, you should still be ok for ballistic, but energy can still get through. By 3, you can take grazing shots, but there's a lot more danger flying your way, and you usually wind up suppressed. By phase 4, many of the weapons can just pierce right through. Lasers have a really good chance of that, most ballistic will shred your overall armor, and things like blood cannons can just be considered to ignore armor, seeing as even if they survive the first hit, the tile damage tick can hit for 50+. The armor is just there to save your units from the chaos that is shredding apart the entire map. In phase 4 you can walk into a hallway, and suddenly have the entire room bleeding out just from scratch damage.