as the title states, i think it would be useful to have shields and phase cloaks toggled on as soon as it's possible to do so while the right mouse button is held down. "possible to do so" meaning right after defenses were temporarily disabled during something like an overload, active flux venting, phase cloak cooldown, entering a battle with full travel speed, or defense-disabling ship systems like Damper Field or Burn Drive.
at the moment, the player has to manually time shield/cloak activation correctly after any of these things prevented using defenses for some time. if the button is pressed too early, defenses will not activate, and the player has to press again when realizing it. if pressed too late, the ship can take unnecessary damage. in a heated battle, especially when the ship is in immediate danger after something like an overload, emergency vent, or risky unphasing, having defenses down for even a split second longer than required -- or worse, accidentally disabling them again with one too many attempt to activate them quickly -- can be very damaging.
this could be solved if holding down the button while defenses are disabled would immediately enable them once they become available. to disable them again, the button should then need to first be released before being pressed again.