The penalties for wearing armor seem a little harsh.

[CoolJ]

I am currently wearing a scrap armor chest, a Mining helmet, Scrap leg armor, and cloth boots. I noticed my mobility is down to 79% and my character feels really slow. Hmm, heavy armor has some pretty nasty penalties I though to my self. No problem. I returned to my hut to fashion some cloth armor pieces to replace the scrap. Well, after switching out the scrap armor for cloth I have a look again....

 

Mobility up to 83%. Wow that really sucks also. So My conclusion currently is that wearing armor of any kind actually makes you more likely to come to a swift end. Best case scenario you lose 15% of your speed in all directions just for wearing light armor.

 

I have noticed that there are armor mods that can counteract some of these penalties but you can't even craft that stuff for a while. So you would have to be lucky enough to find the mod and not just the blueprints for it. I guess if you are playing PVP and you anticipate being shot at, then wearing armor probably makes sense. In single player, against just zombies, the cons far out weigh the pros. In my opinion anyway.