Discovery without Armour upgrades?

[Tovig]

My suggestion would be to remove armor altogether, and improve the armor of each shipclass based upon the standard armor upgrade used.

I do agree that if we removed fighter armor and did not improve their base armor, it would bring fighter combat times in line with cap battles, but that might be a huge disadvantage for a lot of groups with less powerful fighters.

Overall, my COA would be...

Fighters/bombers/freighters/transports: x2.5 base armor
Gunboats: x3.0 base armor
Cruisers/battlecruisers: x3.5 base armor
Battleships: x4.0 base armor

And remove the armor upgrades entirely. It would be nice if we could add other equippable items that had different effects, though - like, power cells which increase your maximum power capacity by a certain amount, or reactors which improve power regeneration rate, or "cloaking devices" which reduce the range you show up on sensors (but do not turn you 'invisible')

Yes. This and the reduction of the b/b.