One minor correction =)

1.200000 => 1.000000

I think the second number should be 1.100000 for 110% dmg =) Nothing too important but it just catched my eye, good info ! =)

It's a good thing to quote... indeed, choosing weapon may be more crucial if the effectiveness is really different, depending on shield type...
thx m8.

Marodeur, thanks for noticing my typo .

In my mod, I have left this alone, but it is very tempting to make the effects MORE extreme to see what happens.

It might generate some interesting feelings while playing "ARGH! I HATE THOSE STUPID GAIANS AND THEIR MOLECULAR SHIELDS!!!!!" (I don't know if that is what they have, just using it as an example).

Actually, the differences can already be quite pronounced if you go suddenly from "right" to "wrong". If you've been facing enemies packing lasers, and suddenly run up against enemies packing plasmas, the increase in damage you feel is not going to be a mere 20%. It's not even going to be 40%. It's going to be a whopping 50%, because you're going to go from taking 80% damage, to taking 120% damage, which is a 50% increase over the pain you've been feeling before. As a result, you're going to find your formerly stalwart shields dropping REALLY fast. Obviously, this difference is considerably less pronounced the other way around, where you go from 120% to 80%, resulting in only a 33% reduction in the damage you feel, but it's still much more noticeable than the 20% modifier would lead you to believe.

Shield choices later on become a moot point, however, since once you start mounting L10 shields, you really only have one choice: The L10 positron. No other shields are sold in stores, and, due to a slight oversight in development, do not drop.

Because NPC ships mount special "NPC" versions of shields, which are non-lootable, rather than normal LF/HF/Fr shields, shields will never drop. However, the missions\lootprops.ini file DOES include drop probabilities for shields, indicating this WAS intended to happen.

I have managed to correct this bug by modifying the entries in ships\loadouts.ini, changing the NPC field loadouts to mount standard shields of the same type players use. This change has the benefit of being entirely serverside, and clients need to download nothing to apply this fix, and furthermore, NPC shields will now regenerate as player shields, making them slightly more challenging.

Now I'm trying to improve NPC accuracy and flight patterns.

Norfleet, I would like to try your mod. I know how to edit some of it myself, but hearing you've done all the work in replacing the NPC shield generators, could you please upload somewhere or email me your loadouts.ini file? I would love to see the added challenge the AI with actual shield generators would give.