How does Armor work?

[ChubbiChibbai]

How does armor work in these games? I'm constantly running low on health but never seem to lose any armor yet i see lots of armor pickups.

Also why can i edit how much armor i have in mission setup? Is that just a difficulty parameter or does it impact movement etc?

[Danerun]

Health is Armor, so every armor crate increases the currently played classes total health by 1 and every couple boosts the other classes after a mission complete. There isn't an extra overshield/armor equivalent.

Also yeah editing armor value is either a self imposed difficulty or you want to play with friends and not have like 10x their hp value.

Movement speed/ abilities can be boosted by certain accessory equipment pieces like the rangers armors that increase shift running speed or fencer getting more side dashes.

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

As Danerun said, essentially "Armor" in this series = HP. Every red "armor" crate you collect increases your max HP by a set amount (the amount depends on the class you're playing as - it's not 1 to 1) upon mission completion, assuming you survive and finish it.

Eventually there's a wall (when depends on your equipment and difficulty) that either forces you to reduce difficulty, or to farm/grind for armor. There are usually specific strats you can use for efficiently farming. (Or, there are also mods that auto-collect all the drops at the ends of levels. Pick your poison, though I find the farming strats fun to figure out and experiment with personally and that's a big draw of the game for me.)

The level of weapon drops you get is also difficulty dependent, and level dependent (the higher the difficulty, and the higher the mission number, the better gear you get, generally speaking.) So the basic gist of the gameplay loop is get as far as you can on the highest difficulty you can, then drop difficulty and/or farm armor to get further, and keep acquiring better and better weapons that also facilitate you getting further than you could before.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Health pickups restore your HP in-mission towards whatever its current maximum is. Armor pickups increase your characters' maximum HP after the end of the mission, permanently for all future missions. The armor limit in mission setup allows you to reduce your maximum HP below whatever its current value is, either for added challenge or to even the playing field for a farmed-out veteran accompanying a squad of new players.