Does the Phoenix still have the heaviest armor out of all four variants?
TL;DRYes, the Phoenix is meant to have slightly better armor than the Andromeda, though the speakers say balance is still being worked on and armor system changes may come.
Short answer, yes. I feel like there's probably a bigger discussion that needs to be had here, probably for balance reasons and other things. But yes, it has different armor than the Andromeda. It's better than the Andromeda, not by much really, but it is better. I think there should probably be changes in the future with how the armor system works, but I don't know what those will be.
I see some conversation in chat about the armor, about whether it's better than a gunship or something. He said it's better than the Andromeda. There's still a whole lot of game balance that has to go into all the ships in Star Citizen. So right now, as far as the armor for the Phoenix, we're only saying our current intention is for it to be a little better than the Andromeda. That's the only comparison we're making as far as armor goes.
There's a whole other balance team that are looking into these things, and they're thinking about these things, and they've got spreadsheets and they've got a lot of calculations, and they know a lot more about it than I do, and it's definitely something they have on their mind.