If you take the Armored archetype, you get the Armored ability which says "Reduce any physical or energy damage you take by 1 while you are in the Green zone, 2 while in the Yellow zone, and 3 while in the Red zone." If you take the Powered Suit power source you can get the Damage Reduction ability which says almost the same thing "Reduce [physical or energy] damage by 1 while you are in the Green zone..." Or you could instead take the Artificial Being power source and get the Created Form ability which says "Reduce physical damage to yourself by 1 while you are in the Green zone..."
My first question is if you can stack these abilities. If you pick Artificial Being with Created Form and Armored, do you reduce physical damage dealt to yourself by 4 if you're in the Yellow zone?
I was also wondering if they're all intended to be slightly different. I understand it as Armored reduces both physical and energy, Created Form only reduces physical, and for Damage Reduction, you have to choose at the time of character creation if it reduces physical or energy (but not both).
They do stack and we have an example from the initial RPG session with Craig's character Dynamo. As to whether it's intended that some Damage Reduction abilities be different between some archetypes and power sources I think it is.
That said, when Craig created Dynamo, Christopher seemed surprised that the character creation rules let you do that and suggested he'd allow it for Dynamo but was going to take a closer look at it. The rules we got still don't forbid it but maybe it'll be mentioned somewhere else in the final book. Or maybe they decided it was fine after all.
It's been over a year since they created those characters so if a change was going to be done I would've expected it to be that way in what rules we received.
I think it balances out over all since one is using multiple Ability slots to get such coverage... in short giving up abilities that could do other things to withstand more damage.
Besides, an artificial construct designed to be an armored tank does deserve to be better protected than your usual artificial construct that is only more durable than a normal person. It is the difference between something like the standard Iron Man armor and the Hulkbuster Armor.
In the end, the ultra-protected hero will not be able to do as many tricks as other heroes that are not as innately protected, but will likely be able to use that to their advantage in some situations. Of course, they will also tend to be type cast (so to speak) as being the meat-shield... and many villains will naturally see them as a significant threat... thinking if they take down the shield protecting the others, the others will fall easily. Such is the life of the Tanker Hero (Thing, Hulk, etc).
I thought I remembered Craig saying something about that during character creation, but I didn't remember if he actually did it. I suppose another reason being extra tanky in this game isn't really overpowered is because it does nothing to prevent the threat of the scene tracker running out. I've only gotten to play a demo of the RPG at Gencon last year, but it felt to me like if the heroes are going to fail at something, it's more likely to be because they wasted too much time and didn't accomplish all their goals than because they all got knocked out.