Hard counters are a bit of an issue here. Personally I would prefer tiny ships to die if you have many larger ships firing at it with their tier of weapon. Or if not die, at least pretend to be taking damage. Its not fun early on to find out that some enemy ships are literally invulnerable, insofar as you cannot kill them at this time. this is not made clear until you waste 10 or so minutes firing all your dakka at them and run out of ammo. It tends to scare people away, learning that you can't kill some enemy ships. In Vanilla, you will always do some damage slowly to enemies, and eventually wear them down. Capital ships will soak up damage to armor for a while in most cases, but that will still deplete at a noticable rate, they start to lose health, then they die, Or, alternatively, they kill you in seconds. In vanilla, power is focuses to offense, and size is a good indication of durability.
Here, Size has little to do with durability. Massive ships die to single shots from some heavy weapons, or take dozens of shots, depending on type and build. Tiny ships eat up thousands of rounds without a dent to show for it, while sometimes themselves taking out far larger ships. Its confusing and scares newbies away.
Its not a bad thing, precisely, but it is going to reduce popularity.
The way I've seen it, Soft counters are usually always preferable. Hard counters are only really something I can stand if the cause is blatently obvious. Like in Starcraft, where a melee unit can't hit a flying unit, but the inverse is not true. That is clear, and the melee unit can't even attack the flying unit. Here, your ships, and you, won't know the enemy is literally a juggernaut despite being out-massed by your fleet 10-fold. Even if you disable all their weapons and engines constantly, and it spins merrily.
I understand what you are doing here, but still think an alternative needs to be found.
Idea, if probably poor.
~Hull Regen only works if you haven't taken hull damage within the last 3 seconds.
~Armor squares only regenerate if they havent taken damage within the last 3 seconds.
Allows a constant stream of fire to wear them down. You must disengage, or at least turn out of the way to regenerate your armor. Similar to flux venting, in fact, for shields. Keep taking damage you lose your defences. Gotta stop fighting to recover.
Beam damage buildup doesn't seem to show up in a lot of cases when it comes to shields, which gives the illusion of no damage.
~According to Alex himself
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=3076.15For beams, the "hit strength" used in that calculation is half the beam's dps - that way, it's independent of the frame rate, how often beam damage ticks, etc.
This means that in the case of the megabeam, without energy pump it's impulse damage is 5k, with pump is 15k.
~
I have no idea how shield AI works.
However, I think the logic I would follow would be
If next incoming projectile would overload shield, drop shield, UNLESS.
It would deal, on impact, more than 50% local armor damage, or 5% hull damage.
If it would deal that kind of damage, taking the hit and overloading would be preferable.