I think its an interesting concept, but ultimately it just seems like another way of getting the same result as shock damage, basically smaller weapons become slightly less effective then large strikes with more power, perhaps it's not worth the added complexity?
Yes and no. They work through different mechanisms and have different effects. Compare small missiles or other low-damage weapons against a small FAC and against a large (6+ armor) ship. The FAC will take the full damage while the big ship takes significantly less. It gives an incentive for the defender to boost armor AND for the attacker to use larger weapons vs. larger targets. Shock damage encourages using active defenses and shields rather than armor to "tank" damage, since your armor won't even stop the damage anyway.
So, if I read this right you propose giving armor cells an HTK value greater than one based on the height of the column? In a bit of a more roundabout way, but I personally think it would be better to use HTK since that pervades the game's mechanics already. Though that would make just using the height a bit too simple, probably.
A straight more columns -> more HTK is not what I suggested, see my previous posts. It boosts large amounts of armor against small attacks but not against big attacks.
