[Escaflowne]

In either case, whether it is Crystal Armor or Shield Regenerators, I think they are too weak by default and need to be upgraded.

Unmodded shield regenerators are a joke. You can't get any useful amounts of help from them because you would need to fill the ship with them in order to give you a useful amount of shielding in the middle of a fire fight.

In my game I modded them by boosting thier regen rate by a factor of 5. I put 3 of them on my ships and then they give a decent amount of output in the middle of a battle.

As for Crystal armor, I respect it for its low cost, high durablity, and light weight. But its shield regen properties are worthless. 25 points of shields from an incoming bLast isn't going to dull anything but the smallest and weakest weapons. Anything able to do a decent amount of damage will plow through the skeleton shields, rip through the armor, and tear into the ship.

But that's just me venting about the lack of usable shield regenitive abilites in an unmodded game.