[Suicide Junkie]

Shields vs armor have been like this since SE3, where the ratio was even worse. 4 armor points vs 24 standard shields vs 32 phased shields IIRC.

Adding 3 new levels of Standard armor with very minor additional benefits (as well as moving it to the bottom of the list in components.txt) would help the AI by allowing it to use all types of armor with calls from the design creation file.

Armor is a cheap, early game option.
I do like the idea of balanced armor vs shields (see P&N for proof)

However, consider all of the scifi to date... In those that had shields, was the armor ever even comparable in strength?