I don't think this is vital, since the current availability seems adequate to me, but I rarely use them except to raise my skill and in emergencies. If players wanted to use them regularly, they would probably run out, at least until they encounter Ranx.

Armor dealers and major stations restocking ammo repair consumables would be analogous to ammo restocking. It would remove the need to hoard and manage them carefully.

However, in order to avoid being consistently cheaper than station repairs, they would probably need level restrictions or decreasing effectiveness with level, and maybe price rebalancing.

Maybe some UAS foundries in EP could manufacture these from ore as a service beyond making armor segments.

Tinkers could make various low-level segments from ore or armor.

A special "salvager's bay" cargo hold upgrade looted from salvager nomads could be [u]sed to cut up the three titanium bulkhead types into armor patches, and possibly perform some useful services like occasionally getting extra loot from wrecks.

A TL2 patch nanofac device could slowly generate small armor patches if you have <2 in your hold, similar to the thermo cannon nanofac. This would be in the same price tier as the laser and kinetic booster or it could display as TL 2 but actually be TL3 and be priced slightly higher once identified.

A mid-tier photo-organic type armor could breed armor patches with sunlight instead of repairing itself directly.

Players do have the option of using Sung armor before the Ranx arrive if they really want to focus on self-armor repair, although it is not an excellent choice. It might be more competitive for playthrough options where more station classes were hostile (e.g. a hypothetical pirate or outlaw player class)

Oddly the playtype that would seem to most benefit from more armor repair items, players using meteorsteel/worldship armor NOT in the Manticore, can make use of the Restore power to totally avoid ever needing to patch armor. (It's super hard to find Meteorsteel at a level when you might want to use it now, though!)

george moromisato 23 Feb 2018:

I haven't made stations restock repair items, but in 1.8 Beta 1 I added them to Commonwealth Dry Docks and Corporate Shipyards. I think that will help a little bit.