How come the Battle harness only has a single upgrade slot?
Filtered Rebreather, Targeting Computer, Jump Pack, Thermal Capacitor would be a standard loadout for useful battlefield Power Armor i'd have thought?
That's 4 slots meaning you'd have to have a Flight Frame to make it according to the rules as written. Is there no way to increase the number of upgrade slots?
That seems ... absurd.
This is not backed up by anything in the text, but the term 'battle harness', to me, implies, that it is a harness similar to what was worn under medieval armor.
Here, the assumption that I am making is that it is intended to be worn over light armor (rather than hold together, like the medieval harness), and you would get additional upgrade slots in the light armor itself.
I can't immediately find anything in the rulebook that says specifically how you determine your total number of armor upgrades in this case (whereas it spells out how to determine AC bonuses and various penalties), so this may be wrong, but it's not clearly against the rules.
The description of the battle harness even notes that it is a powered armor frame, which suggests that it's not intended to be worn just by itself.
It's "just" a lv5 armor, roughly in line with the others at that tier in this respect (a few have more slots, true, but most also have 1, if any). But with significantly better AC, free +4 strength, etc...
What it isn't, is a 40k/starcraft type power armor. That's just not its job. Arguably, that should be higher lv anyway.
I'd say an armor of that level (or any level, really) simply cannot be that good comparatively, it would make everything else obsolete and useless.
As for increasing the number of slots : be a Guard ? Or an android, I guess ? I don't expect relying on your 3+ slotted light armor would work, though. Not entirely sure, but still.
Or, until we get more hardware in the game, ask your GM nicely.
For what it's worth - now that I look at it - it also looks like upgrade sloots are a common weakness of powered armor by design, at least right now.
The samples we have rely on other unique strengths : more specialized, less customization. And I for one am fine with that ... as long as we get more variety in the future :p
I tend to see the Battle Harness as the green colored, armor-looking parts of Master Chief Mjolnir Armor. It's intended to be used in conjunction with a light armor (the black, suit-like part) to provide more augment slots and (at higher levels) more AC.
As Nyerkh said, you can bolster it even more by playing a guard or a armor storm soldier, which also benefit from a 50% discount on whatever you put in the additional slot.