It seems sort of ridiculous that you can dump a barrel of repair paste onto light Iocrym armor or slap an armor patch on neutronium to put them back together after a CSC tells you, “Nope, sorry, no can do.” There should probably be limits to what level a particular repair item can affect. (I’d considered making this ticket a ways back, but never while I was at my computer. It was Watch TV, Do Nothing and Xephyr talking on IRC that reminded me to actually do it.)
Relevant ticket: Armour repair items should scale with tech level
As long as the restriction isn't too strict. I think they should work on armor at least 4 levels above their level, so small patches and repair paste would work up to level 5, and medium repair kits up to level 11.
Repair items should respect armor repairTech (if specified) if this is implemented, and XMH should be considerably tougher or have a lower repairTech.
I added level restrictions in 1.8 Beta 1:
A repair item of level n will work on armor up to level n+4 and down to n-3.
We may need to come up with new repair items. For example, we don't have level 6 armor repair items, so the lowest item to repair level 10 armor is medium armor repair kit (level 7).