[Suicide Junkie]

Preventing armor from being placed in armor slots is sufficient to remove the armor effect. In GGmod, I left the armor ability on, and changed all slots to be outer hull.

I got directional armor.

There are only four directions for damage to come from, unfortunately, so all four are the same size (90 degrees wide).

You can make your slot layouts very short and wide, however. This will make armoring/shielding the front and rear extremely difficult, and armoring the sides very easy.
- Consider the case of a ship 15 slots wide by 3 slots tall.
Said ship will take 3 armor components to cover each side, but will take 15 components to cover the front and another 15 to cover the back, leaving very little space for internals.