Rather than this going off into the realms of angry smilies and relentless sarcasm, how about if those dissatisfied with the number system worked on an alternative system, and then posted it in the EB mods subforum, so that people could try it and see if it worked better than the current system?

Now, the idea of some tweaks (eg counting a pectoral as part of the shield) is quite interesting, largely because it could (maybe) increase realism and could be implemented into (rather than replacing entirely) the current system, to which Qwerty has devoted--it would seem--hundreds or even thousands of hours, and which I find works rather well.

Macroi and Fallen, if you do decide to work up your own system, I'd be interested in testing it at some point. Good luck on that if you do go in that direction, though it sounds like quite a bit of work.