I just had an idea, concerning the no-flickup. (And so far I think the suggestions range from team members aiding you to stand up, or push up leading to exhaustion but a faster stand up ...)
How about the time of standing up ("You sit up") is adjusted slightly by your heavy armour skill? I don't know the delay, but let's say it is 6 or 8 seconds, and with a very high heavy armour skill you could put that down to like 4 or 6 seconds or similar? Just so that there is a small difference between someone with heavy armour +80 and someone with heavy armour skill 40.
Another suggestion of course could be to allow a flickup (instead of hardcoding to prevent this move), but at a big price to pay (fatigue, exhaustion, higher chance to fail etc.. etc.. )
If you don't like the "flickup" message while standing up, in this case it could simply be a different message, after a i.e. 2 seconds delay for the "stand up action".
And a message like:
"HEAVILY_ARMOURED guy tries to stand up as quickly as possible, using his hands to push himself to his feet."
Oh, by the way ... even though this might be overpowered, but since the thread title suggested ideas in how to make heavy armours more popular (or the poll at least tried to):
- How about that heavy armours protect a bit more from certain special attacks? Let's say elbow of your dwarf opponent with high strength has a 20% chance to pull you to the ground if you wear no armours, but if you wear heavy armours like a heavy platemail and he hits that platemail, the chance to go to the ground goes down to 15%? Anyway, just adding more ideas here ...
Best race: halflings.