I'm not sure why you're talking about shields and t4's all of a sudden. At the end of the day hives are better in 99% of situations compared to kennels. The argument that factions shouldn't all have equally effective units doesnt make any sense either when you consider the scale we're working with. It's like making aeon nukes cost 30k mass and when someone complains about it you hit them with the trusted "well not all units have to be equally effective :)". Just doesn't make any sense at all.
Also as an extra argument, there is a reason why the uef acu drone upgrades are seen as one of the most useless upgrades in the game. Aside from some very niche scenario's which happens in 0.1% of the games they are more of a detriment than an improvement to your acu.