A working "Eddie" suit, named after the junk Eddie Vazquez tried to wear before he got snuffed by a gauss fragment.
The design is based on good old flak armor, designed to keep a soldier alive and protected from Shrapnel.
Our ARM flak suit is made from re-casted scrap metal plates woven into heavy Fabrics. The full armor package includes a 10kg jacket over the torso and arms, and another 10kg for thigh and shin guards that protect the entire legs.
An optional 10kg solid cast metal mantlet of about an inch in thickness can go over the front chest as well, if the soldier wishes to carry that weight.
Flak armor should reliably protect against most gunpowder weapons, and is designed specifically to keep a soft squishy greenhorn alive against shrapnel and assorted blast effects (within reason). It won't take a direct hit from a military gauss round, but it could possibly make a difference between life and death in such cases. It could also make a difference in the degree of damage inflicted to the squishy soldier underneath when he gets shot. It adds that much resistance and ablative capability against laser rifles as well, but shouldn't be expected to take anything more than glancing sweeps.
Flak armor is made from reliable, cheap, passive, easily available materials that cost next to nothing to put together.
The other thing I'd like to do is upgrade or redefine the Defender Longcoat and Ablative Armour. Perhaps a hexsand composite could go into our ablative armor, and a softer version that still ablates well under wnergy weapon fire could be made into overcoats. I don't think the precedence for our existing longcoats stopping military gauss rounds is good enough, and an ablative hexcoat could perform better under fire of multiple types.
Ablative armors should be tested to the point where they can be proven to fail gracefully against military grade small arms without endangering the squishy guy wearing it. I believe composites are the future of our medium tier armor as they could provide both the heat resistance and hardness to withstand both energy and kinetic weapons of the modern battlefield.
That's the sales pitch.