I read somewhere that the armor distributes blaster bolt shock through it so all the Stormtroopers get knocked unconscious. They don’t die, otherwise they may as well not wear it at all as they fall over after one blaster bolt.
But as with everything in Star Wars lore, that’s probably a desperate retcon.
I played some last night going in completely blind. I enjoyed it, but there isn’t really a tutorial, just tooltips that come up periodically. Unfortunately my town died after a few hours because I didn’t understand I was supposed to be preparing food for as soon as possible (crops grow on a year cycle, so you need the seeds in ASAP). Makes logical sense, but the game doesn’t tell you and then I was stuffed.
I think it’s totally fun as a sandbox/run-based game, but if you’re looking for something more you’ll need to wait.