That's just an example, and the same could be made of any heavy armor. A Mastercraft Battlesuit costs 20,500 and has a soak of 14, compared to the DE91 Shogunite Molecule Mail, which is light armor that has a soak of 13 and costs 19,000 credits. They're closer, but that -4 defense penalty still means the light armor is better. So I think my issue can be broken down into a few parts.
1. Outside of the very, very expensive heavy armor in the Specialist Armor splat, I can't find any heavy armor that is worth getting over a suit of light armor of a higher quality. (Mastercraft Leather for 850 vs regular Power Armor for 10,000, for example).
2. I'm not sure what to make of the rarity classifications for item quality. If equipment power was balanced by credit cost (a suit of light armor, medium armor, and heavy armor at roughly the same cost were all viable for different builds), it wouldn't be an issue - player wealth would balance itself out. But if I can buy a suit of leather armor that's as good as power armor for a fraction of the cost, it becomes important to define pretty clearly what "very rare" specifically means.
3. The price of a quality item depends on a multiplication of that item's base cost, but the scaling of benefits is flat. So it's cheaper to make a cheap suit of armor really good than it is to buy a good base-line item.
Thinking about it, I can think of a few ways to go about balancing it. One might be to make the soak bonus scale differently for different types of armor. So light armor would get +1 soak per quality, medium would get +2, and heavy +3. But even then, that mastercraft suit of leather armor would have a soak of 7 for 850 credits, which makes it better than base riot armor, which costs 1000 credits. But that might be the best light armor can go before you get into the very expensive Artisanal quality, while medium armor can progress beyond that soak point more cheaply. Another might be to add caps to quality bonuses. Or rarity could have a defined in-game effect - maybe the player has to make a roll of some kind to locate an item of that quality, and there is an additional cost based on the rarity to pay if the player can't succeed at that roll.
But I think the big fix for me will be to just homebrew a bunch of equipment to give more options. Rarity should be a choke point for players trying to take cheap armor and make it really good, but if that becomes the case, another option should be available, whether that be more base-line pieces of equipment, more upgrade options for armor, or a mix of the two.
1. Outside of the very, very expensive heavy armor in the Specialist Armor splat, I can't find any heavy armor that is worth getting over a suit of light armor of a higher quality. (Mastercraft Leather for 850 vs regular Power Armor for 10,000, for example).
2. I'm not sure what to make of the rarity classifications for item quality. If equipment power was balanced by credit cost (a suit of light armor, medium armor, and heavy armor at roughly the same cost were all viable for different builds), it wouldn't be an issue - player wealth would balance itself out. But if I can buy a suit of leather armor that's as good as power armor for a fraction of the cost, it becomes important to define pretty clearly what "very rare" specifically means.
3. The price of a quality item depends on a multiplication of that item's base cost, but the scaling of benefits is flat. So it's cheaper to make a cheap suit of armor really good than it is to buy a good base-line item.
Thinking about it, I can think of a few ways to go about balancing it. One might be to make the soak bonus scale differently for different types of armor. So light armor would get +1 soak per quality, medium would get +2, and heavy +3. But even then, that mastercraft suit of leather armor would have a soak of 7 for 850 credits, which makes it better than base riot armor, which costs 1000 credits. But that might be the best light armor can go before you get into the very expensive Artisanal quality, while medium armor can progress beyond that soak point more cheaply. Another might be to add caps to quality bonuses. Or rarity could have a defined in-game effect - maybe the player has to make a roll of some kind to locate an item of that quality, and there is an additional cost based on the rarity to pay if the player can't succeed at that roll.
But I think the big fix for me will be to just homebrew a bunch of equipment to give more options. Rarity should be a choke point for players trying to take cheap armor and make it really good, but if that becomes the case, another option should be available, whether that be more base-line pieces of equipment, more upgrade options for armor, or a mix of the two.