You said it yourself. Hardened Shields are intended as an upgrade to low-efficiency shields and they're quite excellent even on the better ones - if you can spare the OP. 1/4th (hard) flux shaved off every single shot is quite significant.
Blast Doors could use a makeover, agreed. Crew aren't just disposable - they're a complete non-issue now. If you have enough Elites to crew your ships, simply fill up the entire rest of your 'crew tank' with cheap rookies. They won't impact combat performance but will gain XP quickly. You'll never run out of Elites. I kinda feel like this needs looking at again to give crew some kind of downside. Supply cost wasn't *horrible*.
IPDAI is excellent if you know when and how to use it, it's just not a general upgrade for all configurations. AE is now too expensive, agreed. I've never used it in 0.7. Heavy Armor is fine the way it is. Making it work off percentages would be extremely overpowered on high-armor ships and underwhelming on the rest. Front Shield Generator is what it is, a makeshift generator. It can keep Hounds alive in mid and late-game engagements. Solar Shielding is underwhelming because its main selling point is an effect that's extremely situational and avoided if you're a decent navigator. It would be *extremely cool* to turn this into a hullmod that removed shields from the ship but gave it a flat 25% or so beam resistance, as well as the solar perk.
For Hardened Shields, you also have to consider that 1/4th less flux translates to a theoretic increase for both flux capacity *and* flux vent rate. If you were to sink 12 OP into capacitors instead of buying Hardened Shields, it would take you longer to dissipate than it would 100% of a Hardened Shields build with the same number of vents.
I played around with 'high-tech' Hounds in the old version with SS+ a bit. They seemed to do really well. Hounds are among the fastest ships in the game, and if they take part in fleet battles then they have the advantage of being able to always disengage and vent quickly. One-on-one against a fast enemy, a Hound will have much less breathing room.
Heavy Armor: Yeah, I use it a lot. The downside is very slight, and phase ships as well as bigger ships with spare OP in particular will benefit. Armor doesn't scale linearly, as in, the damage resistance effect will get better and better the higher your armor value is. It doesn't do much for some ships. Mostly those that already have abysmal armor rating but great shields. Hyperion will be made of paper whether you add 100 armor or not. Ships that are fast and stay out of the brawl zone also can go without it, like the Heron. Which is a bit short on OP anyway.
IPDAI: Useful on ships that have lots of Tac Lasers with +gyro speed. Railguns are also extremely accurate and able to take out some missiles. To be honest, I don't use IPDAI as much anymore in this version. Reason being that dealing with missiles is always a secondary to killing the thing that's firing the missiles. And Tac Lasers without IPDAI are much less fussy and will concentrate on fighters / frigates - which they're extremely good against.
Front Shield Generator - Seems a bit of a liability since those ships that don't have shields tend to be heavily armoured instead. With this equipped on a hound, you are going to have a bad day as that hound will avoid taking damage to it's hull, only to end up overloaded and vulnerable in battle. Perhaps if the AI for hounds would only put up the shield for serious threats to damage, it may be useful. Alternatively making it much more efficient might help make these useful.
Front Shield generator is different from what you are thinking of which is front shield emitter. Emitter sets Omnis to front shields and doubles the length of the shield arc while generator gives ships that don't have shields a 90 degree front locked inefficient shieldFront Shield Generator - Seems a bit of a liability since those ships that don't have shields tend to be heavily armoured instead. With this equipped on a hound, you are going to have a bad day as that hound will avoid taking damage to it's hull, only to end up overloaded and vulnerable in battle. Perhaps if the AI for hounds would only put up the shield for serious threats to damage, it may be useful. Alternatively making it much more efficient might help make these useful.
Front Shield Generator isn't that useful for ships that have no shields to begin with. It's useful for ships that have small-ish flux-expensive omni-shields, especially when combined with the Stabilized and Extended Shield mods. It makes them much less vulnerable to being flanked, more flux-efficient, and more able to flick the shields off and on again to clear small amounts of hard flux in the midst of combat.
Ah, whoops. :-[ Nevermind then.Front Shield generator is different from what you are thinking of which is front shield emitter. Emitter sets Omnis to front shields and doubles the length of the shield arc while generator gives ships that don't have shields a 90 degree front locked inefficient shieldFront Shield Generator - Seems a bit of a liability since those ships that don't have shields tend to be heavily armoured instead. With this equipped on a hound, you are going to have a bad day as that hound will avoid taking damage to it's hull, only to end up overloaded and vulnerable in battle. Perhaps if the AI for hounds would only put up the shield for serious threats to damage, it may be useful. Alternatively making it much more efficient might help make these useful.
Front Shield Generator isn't that useful for ships that have no shields to begin with. It's useful for ships that have small-ish flux-expensive omni-shields, especially when combined with the Stabilized and Extended Shield mods. It makes them much less vulnerable to being flanked, more flux-efficient, and more able to flick the shields off and on again to clear small amounts of hard flux in the midst of combat.