I know shield cells are being balanced as we speak, just thought I'd throw in my idea.
The major complaint is that while they allow a small ship to hit above its weight class, if a large ship is also using them, then they are largely invulnerable.
My thought would be that shield cells simply didn't scale up at the same rate that ships do. So if shield cells increased in potency on a linear scale, but ship size increased on a logarithmic scale, for instance, shield cells would be potent in smaller ships, but as the ship got larger, the cells would get less and less effective.
Higher class cells would then have diminishing returns, but they could maybe carry more ammo, but still suffer from the cooldown between uses, thus allowing a smaller ship that was doing a great job and maintaining sustained fire (and avoiding incoming fire) the possibility of slowly wearing the shields down by attrition.
The major complaint is that while they allow a small ship to hit above its weight class, if a large ship is also using them, then they are largely invulnerable.
My thought would be that shield cells simply didn't scale up at the same rate that ships do. So if shield cells increased in potency on a linear scale, but ship size increased on a logarithmic scale, for instance, shield cells would be potent in smaller ships, but as the ship got larger, the cells would get less and less effective.
Higher class cells would then have diminishing returns, but they could maybe carry more ammo, but still suffer from the cooldown between uses, thus allowing a smaller ship that was doing a great job and maintaining sustained fire (and avoiding incoming fire) the possibility of slowly wearing the shields down by attrition.