Being a person, who occasionally does missions, doesn't know the how to turret steer properly, doesn't know the finesse way of fighting in Caps (uses the method of 'going in all guns blazing'), doesn't use missiles and does it as a form of relaxation and not for making money, this has totally destroyed that option.
The problem, as I see it, is that the addition of missiles, that has made the missions too easy.
Now that missiles are here, and possibly not going away, the choices appear to be:
a) Reduce effectiveness of the Missiles and/or
b) Reduce the reward dropped by the Missions.
By doing this 'Armour increase', it has now forced those of us that didn't use Missiles, to have to chose them to stand a chance of surviving.
This 'fix' appear to have not resolved the real issue (that being that Missiles are very over-powered), but to stick a big plaster over the problem.
'I would like to be half as clever as some people like to believe they are' Life is full of disappointments, it is how we handle them that helps to define us, as a person