I don't see much problem with armour and armour piercing weapons in AIC. Shard cannons are rather weak and costly to research. Time-shifters are even weaker and are wasteless against ships with internal armour - better use normal, hard hitting weapons !
As to racial armours, CA needs phased shields to work against PPB and many AIs use them. OA is usefull in small battles, but when AI send its Main Fleet, the targeted ships seldom live long enough to benefit from OA. The 1.84 "fix" that removed OA pre-generation really done OA in
