I personally wish SCB's used your system pool to inject power to the shields instead of ammo (while retaining the heat penalties, and maybe adjusted). It'd make the sys upgrades useful as well as making SCB's viable for explorers.
Or, lower the heat penalties for SCB's and introduce a new module (limit 1 and force a cooldown) that shunts the power from systems to shields. Make it generate the heat that the current SCB's do.
The difference between the two modules would be that one has a limited amount of ammunition and low heat generation. The other having no limit but high heat generation. Allow the new module to be affected by the Feedback Cascade special effect available to railguns. Bam.
The new module would be limited by its heat generation, "reload" or "recalibration" time, and would only be able to convert available systems capacitor to the shields (including power added to that capacitor during its charge time, meaning you'd get a variation in capability between recharge rate and capacity to create variations in types of effectiveness.)
Just some thoughts. I know I'd love one, and with the amount of power stored in even the largest capacitors it wouldn't be overpowered when compared to current SCB's, which would still provide more shield strength. It would just be re-usable.
I'd combine one with Thermal Vent weapons finally giving them a use outside of attempting to counter thermal shock. (well, I lie. Thermal vent does have other uses.)
