[tesco samoa]

Have you looked at the advanced research trait's armour ???

That will throw a monkey into your thinking.

Organic and Crystaline Armour.

But back to the topic of Phased Shields vs non-phased shields. Use them both but only one kind per ship class.

Make PShield ships and copy that design and make a non PShield Version of the ship. Build both. Use them together. Forces the opposing player to react to your ship configurations. Forcing you to react to there new ship configurations.

I could understand the debate over this if ship combat was one on one but it is not.

When you have fleets of 100 greater... Staying power is very important. AS is quickness to ship construction and deployment of ships.

You have to look at the cost of each ship component vs its benifits and decide if this ship build is an economically viable solution. If you can afford it build the best.

Weapons that skip shields and armour have a longer reload time. If your ships are non phased i will attack you with PPB's
If your ships are Phased then I will attack you with PPB's but I will also start attacking you with weapons that cause more damage on the initial strike. But the PPB's will be there because they fire every single turn.

I am losing track here. Rambling sorry.

But my point is that for shields both are viable.

It all depends on what you need to build to survive the first salvo from the enemy.

Which in the long run is a balance of shield type and armour type ships.

Space and the purpose of that ship.

So when your running your simulators build both types of ships and have some fleet engagements with those different types of ships.

You will find that you need both.