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[TaLaR]

Blocking HIL with shield is an extremely efficient action compared to letting it hit armor even for few seconds. It should be prioritized over blocking most other types of ordnance in situations where AI has to choose.

It isn't easy to demonstrate since it only happens in a fight against multiple ships, but current priority is way too low. I've often seen AI prioritize blocking a highly scattered wave of Annihilators (half or more of which would miss) over few seconds of HIL damage - that's a very bad trade.
Worst case I've seen is prioritizing a mere threat of other projectile guns (so, not insta-hit) pointed it's way by other ships over actually firing HIL.

Somewhat decent demo case is a Conquest vs 6 sim DEs that are packed together in interface (2 Enforcers, 2 Sunders, 2 Hammerheads). One of Sunders has HIL.

[Megas]

SIM HIL Sunder is a priority target I try to destroy immediately (when testing loadouts against a small mob).  It is a royal pain if allowed to live.

[intrinsic_parity]

I wonder if this is because beam damage to armor is calculated differently than projectile damage? IIRC it's just reduced by a factor of 1/2 rather than the projectile armor damage reduction formula.

[Wyvern]

IIRC it's just reduced by a factor of 1/2 rather than the projectile armor damage reduction formula.

Common mistake, but no, that's not how it works.

Beam weapons use the same formula for armor damage reduction as projectile weapons:
damage dealt = damage-of-hit * hit-strength / ( hit-strength + armor )

For projectile weapons, hit strength is just the damage of the hit.
For beam weapons, hit strength is 1/2 the beam's raw DPS (adjusted by damage type as usual).

So, the HIL does 500 DPS, x1/2 from the beam hit strength calculation, x2 because it's HE, for a hit strength of 500.

Where this gets complicated is burst beam weapons - the "raw DPS" I mentioned above is not the DPS listed in the codex, but the DPS value you can find in the weapons.csv file; essentially, it's based off of how much DPS the gun would do if it were firing continuously.  Which is why the Tachyon Lance is so ruinous against armor: its raw DPS is 1500, which gives it a hit strength of 750.

And just for reference, here are the hit strength values for vanilla burst beams (technically as of a few Starsector versions ago, but I don't think they've been changed recently.)
Burst PD Laser: 175
Phase Lance: 500
Heavy Burst Laser: 200
Guardian PD System: 500
Tachyon Lance: 750

[intrinsic_parity]

IIRC it's just reduced by a factor of 1/2 rather than the projectile armor damage reduction formula.

Common mistake, but no, that's not how it works.

Beam weapons use the same formula for armor damage reduction as projectile weapons:
damage dealt = damage-of-hit * hit-strength / ( hit-strength + armor )

For projectile weapons, hit strength is just the damage of the hit.
For beam weapons, hit strength is 1/2 the beam's raw DPS (adjusted by damage type as usual).

So, the HIL does 500 DPS, x1/2 from the beam hit strength calculation, x2 because it's HE, for a hit strength of 500.

Where this gets complicated is burst beam weapons - the "raw DPS" I mentioned above is not the DPS listed in the codex, but the DPS value you can find in the weapons.csv file; essentially, it's based off of how much DPS the gun would do if it were firing continuously.  Which is why the Tachyon Lance is so ruinous against armor: its raw DPS is 1500, which gives it a hit strength of 750.

And just for reference, here are the hit strength values for vanilla burst beams (technically as of a few Starsector versions ago, but I don't think they've been changed recently.)
Burst PD Laser: 175
Phase Lance: 500
Heavy Burst Laser: 200
Guardian PD System: 500
Tachyon Lance: 750

Wow, I didn't know that. Very interesting, thanks!