If the Development team decide that nothing is going to be done to address this backward step, then there will need to be a workaround.
Lets try upping the number of perimeters to four so as to thicken up the surface:
It does thicken the vunverable areas.....but what the hell of a thing to do - all that extra material!
Let's try using the complicated features to try and resolve the issue. Split the process into three so the number of perimeters can be upped only in the areas where the "shell" is weak.:
Okay...it does strengthen the weak areas, but it looks messy....very messy. And why is there some spurious solid layers being dropped in? Perhaps I need to micro-adjust the split between the processes. OR PERHAPS NOT!
Going back to the question that was asked of me in the reply from Support. Do I have any suggestions as to how I would like the top layers to behave? Yes! Like they do in all versions up to and including v4.0.1