@farmseatmushroom
This is over simplifying, since the units the shield covers are different. This becomes especially obvious on T3. There the units covered are:
UEF: percy, titan, upgraded UEF ACU,aa
Aeon: Harb,sniper,upgraded Aeon ACU,aa
Aeon: + Destroyers, Cruisers, etc.
Remember... Asylum hovers. Multi-purpose.
Harb+shields behaves very different from percy+shields or titans+shields, since shields perform especially well with army compositions that kite a lot or fight many small skirmishes.
And obviously sniper+shilds is completely different from percy+shields, first of all because the snipers can die in a second when not shielded.
How exactly do they behave differently? I apologize as I'm not following your point. It's kind of the same overall, to me. Shields are meant to protect what's underneath, no?
Obviously, snipers would need mobile shields due to their low health. Harbs have their own shields, Percies shoot slow, and Titans have their own shield as well - albeit much lower HP than a mobile shield.
You mentioned :
shields perform especially well with army compositions that kite a lot or fight many small skirmishes
I would agree, hence why the Parashield's main battle units it protects are Percies and Pillars. Both of which need an accompanying mobile shield desperately as one shoots very slow and the other has low DPS.
Harbs on the other hand need shields because, well, they can't take on Percies one on one. And Sera T3 units deal high damage with a little lower hp than other units. And we're including experimentals, too.
I hope this shows that you have to compare whole army compositions of a faction, with whole army compositions from other factions to draw meaningfull conclusionson faction balance.
Trust me, I'm trying to compare everything, haha.
Thanks for the reply!
Hope to hear more from you!
~ Stryker