They still have 70 shield points I believe.
Phased Shield V has more shield points than Shield V, but that takes a helluva long time to research.
So, its a trade-off. Is your opponent using PPB's, or do you think he is using PPB's? Then better mount those Phased Shields, or else your ships will be butter.
Is your opponent only using conventional weapons? Then use normal shields, at least until you get to Shield III or Shield IV.
Hope that helps,
(p.s. most important thing I worked on in beginning which was not too long ago was expansion. Here's the deal -- you have to be able to build colony ships in one turn with your homeworld on emergency build. If you can't, then your race is set up wrong, goto
http://www.spaceempires.net/home/mod...showpage&pid=1 . I've figured out a pretty good expansion build that involves pushing as far out as you can with colony ships with a supply mod, and trying to get one additional space yard planet set up within ten turns that is able to pump out colony ships as fast as the homeworld on emergency build of course. So by turn 20, on a three planet start, if I'm lucky, I'll have around 35 colony ships buzzing around.)
Brian