simon1954 Armor damage is cheap to repair, but its always better to have shields to take as much of the damage as possible. But if you want to retain that 'shape' then there is probably not much that can be done to improve that. So you have to live with repairing armor all the time. But that is cheaper than repairing weapon systems.
Also, armor deep inside a ship really serves little purpose, since by the time the enemy is blasting that far into your ship, your pretty much toast anyway. Its better to ensure your crew can keep ammo in the guns and energy in the shields. If you slow that down, then your disabling your ship with poor performance.
And lastly, if your constantly moving your facing to the enemy, so the enemy is not always attacking one side of your ship, you can get away with less shields and power to that section, since it can recover when another side of your ship is attacking the enemy . The best way to know how efficient your ship is to have a long battle with another ship, and see which energy cores get lighting bolts on them, and which guns can't fire because they don't have available ammo.
