[PvK]

Besides, it seems to me there is balance between armor and shields in the unmodded game. PPB and SD are powerful standard-tech counters to shields. The only armor counters are Shard Cannon (low-damage expensive racial tech) and Null-Space (expensive, low damage, low range, low ROF). Armor balances itself by being relatively weak protection, but it is still somewhat useful in some cases. Moreover, racial armors can be effective.

I wouldn't object to some changes to armor to make it a little stronger, but I think trying to make it competitive vs. shield effects would be overcompensating and changing the design.

As for Emissive Armor, in most cases it isn't very useful, and it is expensive. One suggestion would be to increase its structure (say, to 80kT), which wouldn't do a whole lot but would at least make it as good as standard armor discounting the emissive effect. It would also give players a way to make tougher armored ships, albeit at significant expense.

Shield REgenerators are pretty pointless as is. Reduce the cost and/or increase the effect a lot. There is little danger of them becoming uber-defenses when they are high on the tech tree and there are shield-smashing weapons around (not to mention the destruction rate in fleet combat).

One topic we haven't touched on is mounts. The AI always uses them, so they can't be balanced to the point where unmounted weapons are as good or better in some cases. There are several options available, but I'm not sure which if any of them would be acceptable for this mod. That is, many changes to make them more balanced would change the gameplay/design. One simple subtle thing might be to remove the advantage to structure of mounts. That'd also help make armor more valuable by comparison. That is, currently unmodded gives more of an advantage to structure than the size increase, meaning big weapons increase the durability of the ship.

PvK