For a while I seen this heavy vehicle trait as superfluous. After all doesn't the rules already say in many places that heavy vehicles are not stopped when only suffering light damage from op-fire. But reading this trait listed on page 40 may be implying even more than that. This is what struck me "armor is reduced by one for the duration of the activation " So this trait seems to be saying it gives an additional bonus over light vehicles. Which is that the -1 armor penalty does not last forever like it does for light vehicles. The next round the tank would be back to full armor strength yet still have the -1 movement penalty. This is interesting and I like it.

Only - the effect of Having Heavy damage is that your armor is reduced by one. So even After the activation that red marker will make itself felt. The example under Sturdy demonstrates this clearly.

Hefsgaard said:

What are you talking about? You need to reread what I wrote. Nowhere did I talk about heavy damage.

I know what the rules say about the effects of light damage. I don't need that pointed out. If you reread my remark above you should have been able to see that I was playing devils advocate and pointing out that what I highlighted in bold could be taken to mean the -1 armor penalty expires. But only for heavy vehicles, since they alone have the Sturdy trait. A weak point, admittedly, but I thought I'd toss it out there for discussion to see if anybody also thought it could be taken to mean the -1 armor penalty was only temporary.

Capital naval ships come to mind while thinking about vanishing damage. Damage control on US BB's and CV's were very good during WWII. Much better than the Japanese. Battle evidence proved that a capital ship could take massive amounts of damage as long as it didn't happen in to short of a time. A superior damage control team could keep up with light constant damage over a long period of battle, and a capital ship was only really ever at risk of sinking when to much hit at once to overwhelm the repair men and firefighters. To think of it in hit points lets say a BB has 10 hits point. One attack does 8 points to really damage the ship followed by another 5 shortly after. To much to handle and she sinks. On the other hand take a small strike that does 2 HP's then another and another and another separated by just enough time to put out the firers and stop the leaks. After a time you say, what the hell, I have done 20 points of damage to your ship so far, why has it not sunk yet? Answer. Damage control keeps it going.

Now why does this apply to tanks. Simple damage can be mitigated by the crew with a little rigging. Therefore you don't have to try to hard to imagine that perhaps sturdy vehicles can remove the -1 armor penalty after the round is over.

Not just battleships and other dreadnoughts, the old SOLs also had a lot of stamina, and the ability to repair a lot of damage over time, even at sea.
Tanks are more like eggshells. Either you mannage to crack it and it dies, or you do not in which case it is almost unscratched. At least until the advent of such features as reactive armor or ceramic armor. But is it almost impossible to take out a tank by hitting it with a serie of weak attacks.

And you are right. I did confuse the issue with a wrong qoute. Sadly the issue is still at the rules for the Yellow marker is also -1 armor.

Lebatron said:

In my opinion, this is a poorly worded phrase. I think the intent is to effect the damage immediately (due to the game mechanics of TOI). I'm pretty sure the damage doesn't expire, but you could send an email to FFG to confirm.

No, the damage is not temporary. It stays until the end of the game or repaired by engineers (special cards). See page 28 of the TOI rules. The "Vehicle Damage" box is pretty clear about all this.

BazookaJoe is the only person who has read my original statement carefully and understood what I was saying.

The vehicle damage box on page 28 is of coarse familiar to me and a careful reading of my statement could tell you that. Yes here it defines what light damage does to a vehicle. And the Study strait defines additional exceptions for heavy vehicles. A literal reading of the Sturdy trait does seem to say that for heavy vehicles only, the -1 armor penalty is only temporary. Of coarse I don't play it that way, but I suppose one could and actaully point out to you that the rulebook supports his interpretation. FFG needs to make an errata fix for this because the wording in bold is clearly wrong. But wouldn't it be funny if they said otherwise. Then we would all have tougher tanks.

I did read your post fully and I do understand what you are saying. "I was just cutting to the chase", as they say.