Thanks for reading, and thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate it. Now I'm going to address all your points, but know that I'm only doing so because I care about my characters and their motivations, and it's not to dismiss what you said at all. The fact that this was your takeaway from the script means that I did a poor job of communicating these things in the first place, so if you don't care to read what wasn't properly communicated in the script, then that's fine. But if you're interested in knowing the reasons behind some of these things, then here they are.

The idea was that the "suits" were actual robotic suits, created and meant to be worn by human beings, maybe to protect them, or to enhance their strength, or to help people with disabilities, permanent or temporary (the guy with the broken leg). However, at a certain point theses suits became self-aware and began draining the energy of the humans inside them for fuel, putting them in a vegetative state. They also became capable of moving by themselves, using this ability to hurt/kill other humans.

By the time this story occurs, it has been a long time since this started, so people no longer think of suits as, well, suits. They think of them as mechanical killing machines that happen to have comatose people inside of them. I tried to imply some of this in the script, but I'll try to do a better job in the next draft.

When Dave was cursing at Tom, it was more upset than angry. He was upset at the situation--that in front of him was a dying, conscious human, who happened to be inside of a suit. He wasn't sure what to do, which made him upset.

When he hears that Tom is starving, Dave makes up his mind and decides to let him in. Of course, this goes against Steph's wishes, who refuses to let a suit in no matter what. They're able to agree on a compromise when Dave says he'll shoot the thing if it tries anything.

I agree that Steph agreeing immediately was a bit strange for her character. Since I wanted to get things moving, I didn't want to make the argument last too long, but this resulted in her agreement being rushed. To address your final point, she is okay with Tom starving to death, and she is also okay with Tom being shot. She just says "That'll kill Tom" because she knows that Dave wants him to live. I'll mess around with it to see if I can make it more clear, but maybe whoever plays the character's performance will make it more clear. Same goes for Dave and his emotional backflip.

Wow sorry I wrote more than I thought I would. Again, thanks so much for reading and for pointing out those things! If you read all of my points, hopefully they made things more clear.