Edit: Thanks to the comments I've decided to change Sung armor to be blast resistant.
Right now, Dwarg, Sung, Lumiere and Urak have particle resistance. Lumiere and maybe Urak should only have blast/thermo resistance.
The problem there is that Dwarg and Sung are your main enemies....Urak and Lumiere tend to be a lot less common, at least in most of my playthroughs (EDIT: Although this obviously depends on RNG. Eg: devstream spamming Lumiere). In addition, Urak aren't much of a threat because their only decent guns are mounted on slow destroyers and big immobile stations. Lumiere though....they're a nasty bunch, although still not in the same league as the Dwarg (ultra-long-range EMP and blast spam at close range) or Sung (Hacking powers, Nandao Bolt Cannon, lots of beam spam that takes down shields quite quickly at lower levels)
Lumiere are an expansion faction. I'd suggest taking particle resist away from the Sung instead. Their primary foe seems to be the Dwarg, who use blast weapons.
Another important enemy of the Sung is the Huari, who also favor blast weapons.
I agree strongly here. I would also suggest giving the Sung greater resistance against laser and kinetic weapons to make them less desirable to keep for a long time after the New Beyond, given their low fuel consumption, good DPS, and high ease of use. It makes sense that the faction based around using advanced technology to expand and conquer should be well equipped to defend against 'crude' weapons and weak against technology that they don't expect to have to counter.
I also support keeping the Lumiere as - is. They're one of my favorite factions to fight against right now, and they seem to be perfectly balanced.
I’m going to add my two cents to the consensus that if anyone gets switched from particle to blast resistance, it should be Sung (unless they’re really, really that worried about friendly fire incidents).
My guess is Sung is most worried about the Commonwealth, whose baseline military weapon is the TeV 9, used by Centurions and CSCs.
The Commonwealth isn't the main enemy of the Sung. They know better than to be too aggressive to those who are stronger than them, given that there are plenty of weaker factions(like the Huari) whose populations work just as well inside slave coffins.
Thanks, all! I've changed Sung armor to be blast resistant. Fixed in 1.7 Alpha 1.