Yeah, it seems that trying to raise the difficulty to 50, 100, even 1000 doesn't stop them from equipping it. I think I've stopped them from using it now, with a swift deleting of the itp_primary tag. I'll give it a try and see what happens.
EDIT: Yes, I have managed to fix it for the next version.
As for factions: sorry, but it's not really within the scope of this mod - well, unless the customizable troops broke off and formed their own faction, with the slight drawback that you'd make your enemy stronger each time you change your troops' equipments
New items to equip are perfectly doable (now I need types of item suggested

), perhaps separating the helmets to a new subclass? EDIT: Yes, I think I shall do that first, but I still need more item ideas
The GUI thing, despite being a very good idea, can and would cause a large amount of unbalancing: Instead of paying 250+k denars to give everyone black armour (as with the current system), you could instead pay 5000 or so to get the same effect, unless black armour itself was raised to a ludicrous amount of money.
EDIT2: It is now officially official that you can have up to
8,437,500 different combinations of equipment!
EDIT3:
Multiequipmental diversity. These particular troops are actually brave enough to fight barefoot
EDIT4: There would appear to be a problem with having over 70 dialog options (ie, error, but if you ignore, there's <70 options there, possibly leaving you stuck). I have decided that it's best to only let the player have 60 dialog options (that's still 12 different sets of 5 levels of upgrades equipable), then have a "sell" option which allows you to sell the equipment back, albeit for only half the price. This will also make it a tad easier for
real (

) players to upgrade their equipment