(this is a redo of some ideas I had ages ago to make the game more strategic, rethought out for game changes that have happened and to be clearer)

NOTE: all the numbers used are simply placeholders for examples, extensive testing would have to be done to properly balance the numbers. As well as all names being place holders for examples, if implemented Dan and his team can decide on how to name everything to keep wording consistent and such. All of this being said, dont argue about the #s and names, let the gl team deal with it.

1: "Shield Limits"
At the moment shields act as auto-replensihing HP that you must first go through to start hitting hull, and while the choice of either stacking hulls/shield is a debatable subject, at higher ranks its no longer choosing one but just stacking as many as of each that you can afford. To give higher ranked players some more strategy as well as something more for low ranks to obsess about I propose we change the way shields work a bit.

The change consists of 2 things
A: Give shields a limit to how much damage they can absorb per hit and have the rest damage hull.
i.e. Player A hits Player B for 100 damage, Player B's shields can only absorb 50% of the damage however, so both Player's B shields and hull take 50 damage each. Rather then having Player B's shields just take 100 damage.
B: Give players a way to specialize their shields to either give them extra HP, or allow them to increase the amount of HP that is mitigated per hit. Implementing this would require it to be done through a new type of module that is unlocked along with each tier of shields, higher tier researched allow for more specialization.
i.e. Player A is given the option of having any combination of "Shield Modifiers" that either give 5% more damage mitigated by shields, or 10% more shield HP, as long as the Modifier count does not exceed 3.


Now with just this it may sound like im trying to make shields crappier with an essentially fake choice due to their being one best way to optimize the shields, but take into consideration my second idea.

2: "Weapon Specialization"
Give players the option of specializing their weapons to deal with Shield Limits. The options being, Mass Weaponry vs. Energy weaponry.
Mass weaponry would specialize at penetrating shields making.
Energy weaponry would specialize in doing more damage.
Choosing specialization would be done in the same manner as choosing how to specialize one's shields. Either modules that are unlocked with each research tier of the respective type of module, a branch for both weapons/shields, or a branch for weapon specialization and another for shields.
i.e. Player A is given the choice of having their weapons do 15% more damage, or have enemy shields mitigate 8% less damage then they normally would.

The end idea is to give players a way to specialize that give them an advantage against other specialization's and a weakness to others. Now I can see how if you were able to switch specializations quickly/easily it would make you even weaker when offline, so I propose that there is a 6 hour wait time to switching the modules that allow you to specialize when they are of the same main module type (AKA different cooldowns for shields/weapons).

TL:DR, Would you like to see a bit more RPG elements in the game and let others make sure the game remains balanced?

Now, rip the ideas apart and tell me how they will ruin the game and how because of these things im a bad persona and should feel bad.

I like the idea would make higher end combat a lot more fun

For your 2nd point, I've thought of something similar here:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11785

And the first one, that makes complete sense. Have the modifiers: Total shield health, Absorbed attack (going to shields, not hull), and perhaps even shields "reflect" a small % of damage back to the attacker.

The modifiers could even be done in the same way as the weapons thing I've got above.

Eh, yours are more of additions to make certain actions within the game easier.
The idea of this is to add a new layer of strategy.
As for the shield reflecting some damage, a possibility but unless shields would still need a boost to make them more competitive with hull I dont think it would happen.

plus 1 especially if shields reflect small amounts of damage say 5%?

and also i like your ideas more than spyders

In a lot of Sci-Fi TV shows I always see the ship rocking back and fourth and sparks everywhere even though shields are still at 95% strength.