[Onyx]

They are built into the hit points of the armor. The size is used as a balancing device. Light armor has more hit points per kiloton than heavy, but due to being so small (each piece has a far smaller amount of hit points), it ends up offering more easily penetrated defense than heavy armor does. Really big armor would have the same affect that heavy does to light (and medium).

If you use scale mounted armor components (each hull has the armor take up 5% of the space or whatever), it would make large ships have vastly superior armor capabilities compared to small ships. Not only could they potentially have more hit points, but their single armor component would have far more hit points per component than a smaller ship's would. This would make the armor act more and more as stock armor the larger the ship hull is (due to having more hit points per component as compared to "internals"), which in my estimation is contrary to the whole purpose of leaky armor.

Remember, the more hit points a component has, the more likely it is to be the one selected for being damaged. The more hit points a component has, the more biased these algorithms are towards selecting it. This is the cornerstone of the leaky armor paradigm. Also, it is what really allows heavy leaky armor to be stronger than light leaky armor in the B5 Mod.

Very helpful information. Thanks!