Almost 200 hours in-game and I only found out today thanks to this mod:

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/4550/?

This should have been part of the main game... I know legendaries are nice and all, but come on!

We can mod the hell out of our guns and power armor, but we can't craft medium or heavy armor?

Lol that's how I found out about armor variations too. I just assumed that the prefixes "heavy" and "sturdy" were just another mod. Fallout 4 is pretty rough when you look at it a bit more closely.

The color of the armor changes according to its mod as well. Also how did you blast a bunch of Raiders and not realize that they had different chest pieces?

Vanilla mods also change appearences but he is talking about armor types as in "normal", "sturdy" and "heavy".

I actively looked for a set. One of the loading screens has a model of a guy standing in a full suit of heavy combat armor. I never found a set until I was 28th level, and it missed the right arm piece. I didn't finally get my hands on that last component until I was 52nd level.

Yea I figured it out when I switched to third person view and realized that my armor looks like a toy for 12 year olds, strapped with belts, while raiders looked like space Marines. That was a small hint, I might not be wearing what they do. I wonder how this missed you. The normal armor looks like a parody of actual suit. Good thing it protects your belly right, lets expose all the important ribs and limbs.