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Been tossing an idea around in my head for awhile about a DT rework mod. Damage Threshold is far superior to the DR-only systems of FO3 and 4, but I still think it's a bit off. I'm fine with some weapons doing more damage than others, Fallout is an RPG after all, but it hurts the usability of a lot of low-damage-high-DPS weapons (sure, they're useful on unarmored enemies, but you know what else is useful on them? Your 120 damage Gauss Rifle). I think DT is fundamentally flawed, and those flaws become very apparent when you play a mod that adjusts the balance in any way. Have you ever tried to fight super mutants at black mountain with Jsawyer Ultimate? If you don't have a unique weapon with real high damage, or some particularly min-maxed perks, good luck piercing their DT below level 15. Any time the damage gets shifted in New Vegas, the entire system kinda falls apart, and DT is either worthless OR you're unable to reliably fight anything until, in the blink of an eye, every enemy is equally a joke to you. And god help you if you didn't feel like speccing into Repair to craft a metric ton of AP rounds this run.
So, with that in mind, basically the mod would work like this:
1. At runtime, run a script to gather the DT value of all armor in the game (you could do this manually, but that would take a long time. Plus, this would allow for some mod compatibility, although the later steps will inevitably ruin that)
2. Replace DT with an equal number of a new custom value which we'll call "Penetration Value" or "PT" for now. ie. 20 DT in vanilla becomes 20 PT after the mod.
3. Remove DT from all armors.
4. Add a Penetration Value to every ammo in the game. Similar to ammo modifiers like "DT x 3" for hollowpoints, every ammo in the game will have an associated penetration value. You'd have to hand-tune all of these one-by-one. Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better either, since IRL 7.62x39 ammo isn't always as good at armor penetration as good ol' 5.56.
5. Now, when firing, if your ammo's penetration value is under your enemy's penetration threshold, you'll only deal 10% damage (like how vanilla DT works when you don't pierce armor). If your ammo's PV is higher than their PT, you do full damage, minus any DR they may have
6. After that, basically every weapon in the game would have to have its damage re-tuned as well, since the game is balanced around needing to have high damage to pierce armor, and with this new system, things would get overpowered quickly.
The DT rework would also by nature serve as a full-game balance retune. It would, however, breathe life into a lot of underutilized guns that don't make it to the late-game. I think it'd be neat, and it would also let the player tell at a glance if they can trust their armor in a fight just by looking at an enemy's gun.
Bitch to do, though, which is why I'm writing up this concept instead of actually making the thing myself, lol.
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Plus the argument you make at the start fails to account for the weapons fire rate. Yes, that 120 damage gauss rifle will kill a single unarmored enemy as effectively as a LMG, but when there's half a dozen cazadores about to fly down my throat, I'd rather have the fast firing bullet hose than a cannon that needs reloading after every shot.
TBH I'm just dead against reworking the existing DT system, because its simple and informative in a way few other game devs seem to appreciate. Combat armor in good condition will absorb 15 points of damage from any given attack, end, so you know how it will compare to leather or steel. Compare that to the convoluted bullshit Bethesda produced for Skyrim and F4, where it may as well be a random number and you just have to trust that this armor is better than that one because the random number is bigger, but there's no way to tell how much better.
Also, re: the "all or nothing" approach with the amount of energy it takes to penetrate the armor, that's what DR is for imo.
Anyway, either way DT is a solid system, don't get me wrong, but I think it absolutely has flaws, and either way regardless, it would be interesting to see how the gameplay changes with this system implemented. This concept is less about fixing problems and more about taking a different approach, it would have its own flaws too.