Say a Troll with Quickness 4 is utilizing this, are there penalties to Quickness (and related skills) or combat pool?

Orthoskin Level 3 +1/+2
Titanium Bone Lacing +1/+1
Rapid Transit Line Helmet 0/+2
Forearm Guards 0/+1
Full Body FFBA 4/1
RTL Heavy Jumpsuit 2/4

What if the troll also has 2 cyberlegs with 10 points of ballistic and 10 points of impact armor on each leg?

(10+10)/5=4 points of ballistic and impact armor. Is this +4/+4 armor?

11/14?

Said troll would have 7 Balistic [1+1+4+(2/2)] but only 4 points would count due to the Quickness/Combat Pool penalties, but since his Quickness is 4, there are none for the Balistic side.

However for the Impact rating, it would have [2+1+2+(1/2)+4+1 only for melee attacks] for a total of 9 (10 vs Melee) and a total of 11 points against the combat pool limit. So 11-4=7. 7/2=3.5. Round down, and the troll has -3 combat pool for looking like a punching bag.

And if the Troll had said cyberlegs you'd have to divide the number by 5 (1 for legs, one for arms, one for front of the chest, one for the back, one for the head).

The SR combat system is abstract, which is why I really hate the armoring of cyberlimbs. Somehow, the armoring of the legs, such as you did, will give +4/+4 to all hits.

Which would increase the rating to 11/13 (14 vs melee) at the expense of adding +4 TN mod to all Quickness tasks (for increasing the applicable balistic by four), and an additional -4 to the Troll's combat pool (As you added 4 to both ratings, it subtracts one combat pool per two points.)

After reading through the long armor thread and re-reading some rules, it looks like you are close.

But according to my understanding, there is no layering, thus no combat pool penalty. There is a penalty to quickness, though.

Or did I miss another rule scattered somewhere?

edit: evidently I got the quickness and combat pool penalties backwards. I guess because M&M says the bonus doesn't count toward layering, but does count toward quickness modifier. But if you're not layering, I didn't think there was a quickness modifier, only combat pool mod (BBB.)

Is there a contradiction between the books?/edit

Four words: Force eight mana bolt.

The Combat Pool penalties are calculated even if no layering is done. See p. 285.

The Quickness-linked penalties appear to only apply if layering is done.

Combining FFBA (4/1) and Jumpsuit (2/4) certainly cause the Layering rules to be invoked, even though the FFBA doesn't add into calculating penalties. Some GMs won't calculate penalties to Quickness-linked skills if only one "real" Armor is present, such as only Heavy Security Armor and a Security Helmet. They would still calculate Combat Pool penalties, as this rule is used whether layering is done or not.

@Limping Jacob: Comparing a normal Force 8 manabolt to a Force 6: The target will average 17% fewer successes rolling damage resistance. The caster will average 33% fewer successes rolling drain resistance. Interesting, eh?