Oh good, so they had already changed the armorpart by themselves, guess it's good to see that I'm not the only one that thought this way . Regariding the shieldpart, I just thought along the old Star Wars movies (Episode 6), where the rebels notice a bit too late that the death stars shield is still up. The small fighters that were too close to the shield couldnt evade anymore and simply burned up in it. And fighter are, if you dumb it down a little bit, basically large projectiles. They also used something similar in the beginning of Stargate Atlantis season 2, where the Wraithdarts tried so kamikaze Atlantis, so I just kept thinking along that line.

I think it should be like this:

Shields are good against laser weapons. But bad against missiles and bullets.

Armor is good against bullets and missiles. But not good against laser weapons.

Missiles should do a lot of damage but could be distracted fast by ECM. So it would make sence to build a full ECM support ship.

Kinetic weapons should be more like close combat weapons.

Lasers would be the long range weapons.

The problem about the thing with the shield blocking projectile is this: Players would ONLY build shields on their ships. Why should i build armor when i know the shields could block everything.

I think the system paper, stone, and scissors is the best.

I believe in GCII, both armor and shields gave you some degree of overall protection against all weapons, without quantifying how much.

Shields is a broad term and there can be various types. The GCIII type appears to be a polarization field that dissipates lasers exclusively. Other fictional shields are much more effective. The Star Trek Shields seem to work against anything. In fact I have never heard the term armor used in Star Trek.

I got a kick out of the personal shields used in Dune (and some others) that reacted proportionately against force and could be pierced only by blade weapons.

I am happy with the defensive systems as they are projected for B5.

I was pretty sure I would be wrong.

This is how I build yes, and how I will build my AI's also so they have an advantage, though I'll probably pick 2 types.

Why? Because on higher difficulties the AI counters this, by building more defense of that type but by then you are at war, so you're already winning. On normal difficulties it doesn't, (or won't) apparently. If you just stick with 1 you are easily countered, 2 gives you a lot more freedom while still focusing firepower.
 

What does this mean in game terms. Well drop my dual weapon designed tech tree into a tri weapon designed tech tree game, in a game with let's say 20 races. Some of those races are at war, some allied, the usual. Statistically that dual weapon AI (still using all defenses), will be at a fairly big advantage in a long term game, in battles, until their opponent adapts. Even if they do adapt in a long war, they may have an ally in the war with them, or their enemy may be involved in more than one war, all these things are likely in a larger map size, and either would mean the tri weapon race couldn't just cater their ships to the dual designed race. The dual race, also have less techs to research, so they can focus on the ones they need only and go further in them.

This would make them weaker against a human player, but by then I hope they are already running an advantage. Stuff like this will be fun to experiment with.

In reallity you would have mostly cinetic weapons.

If you would have laser weapons on your ship, the enemy only need to put glass on his ships and the lasers would be completely inefficient.

I think railguns would be the most realistic thing as a space battle weapon. They fire fast and they do not need any gas or powder.

+ In space you have no air, so the railgun round would not even loose speed.

A small round would hit like the hammer of god. 

The most realistic "shield" would be two magnet plates, placed on each other with the + poles, taking the hits from incoming rounds.

But anyway this is a game. We have laser and all the other stuff.

We have to balance this. It is like ying and yang. When something is to strong the other thing is to weak.