Tichrome armor has less penalty, while having higher energy resistance, which is arguably more useful of a resistance about the time you get it since faceless are pretty tough in groups (I've never worn it, but I'm assuming you get T-bars after fixing gloria?). But yeah, you really aren't going to melee anything in a tin can without sprint, which I assume you don't have :/
Not to say metal armor characters are bad, they're actually massively powerful really xD But yeah, if you were just going to make a metal armor hammer warrior without agility feats.. your character might just be screwed:(
Edit: Don't you need tailoring for metal armor, though?