Makes perfect sense to me. 10Kt or all over armor on a 150Kt escort would be thicker than the same 10Kt of all over armor on a 800Kt battleship. To get the same protection you would need the same thickness. And to get the same thickness over a larger surface area you would need more mass (or volume) in armor. Since we can't really mod what what would be ideal, that is armor that only protects certain facings, then this is a good compromise.
And by the way, Car Wars rocks!
I loved that game. Unfotunatly like everything else in my role play phase I had very few friends that got into them as much as me. One thing I liked about Car wars though was it had a fairly extensive set of rules for solo play with random encounters and other stuff. Very cool.
Geoschmo