[Q]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Make Armor a serious contender vs Shields for ship defense.

Be sure to make them distinct, though...
Cheap and hard to repair vs expensive and quick to recharge for example.

I think you can have that already in SE IV by giving the armor more hit points.
But what I would like to see in SE V are multiple levels of shields and armor. Then you can give each weapon unique possibilities which level and shield can be skipped and you can create a never ending research tree that gives you better shields and armor and better weapons that defeat this better defenses and so on......