[oleg]

Originally posted by Loser:
...If Weapon Platforms are hit in order of placement, and I believe they are, then putting a few cheap 100% Armor WPs on a planet means the badum has to dish out serious damage before the shooting WPs or Relic/Sensor WPs are even touched. Shield WPs do the same, but are so much more expensive (take longer to build). I think it takes the third level of Phased Shielding to beat out Armor for protection/kilotonne.

And on Units, unless I am mistaken, Armor piercing is a moot point. The unit is not impaired until all its components are destroyed, so the Armor piercing still has to deliver the whole sum of the damage, while Shield piercing does not. Since the components do not need repair, the Armor could be said to recharge, just like Shields, and the only advantage to Shields over Armor in a Unit is the greater protection/kilotonne offered by higher level shielding, which is expensive and takes a long time to get.

I'm not sure on what the dividing lines are, but I'm thinking that it's Late Game before I'm putting Phased Shields on Weapon Platforms.

No, WP are destroyed more or less starting with weaker one, with some element of randomness. There were some Posts with detailed results as I remember. Shield point on WP and fighters are part of structure. PPB does NOT skip unit's nonphased shields. Neither does NSP. Planetary shield is more like "normal" shield and is skipped by PPB, IIRC.