I didn't mention the power generation rate changing because I didn't notice it. I was talking about shield cap and regen and power cap
Also also also also:
If we use ion effects on our ships, we'd be getting a 50% reduction in incoming fire, effectively doubling effective shield hitpoints. Not sure if the block count changes much, but in unmodified configs the ion effect system is usually smaller than the shields themselves, so it turns out to be a net gain over throwing on a bunch more capacitors. Does require more energy use, though.
I'm reading about ion effect and apparently the max is 60% (unless they've changed it at some point), which gives you effectively 2.2x shield health and regen (and block health, but block health is so low it hardly makes any difference).
It's based on total ship block count though, not shield block count. I'm reading mixed reports that say you either need 5% or 10% of total block count as ion effect to get the maximum bonus. Either way, it's a lot more effective then just adding more shields and rechargers (and probably cheaper too, though I don't know the cost of ion effect blocks)
This sounds like a really, really valuable and powerful effect, I'm glad you mentioned it since I had no idea it existed.
(now to look up what other defensive effects you can get)
Edit: it seems like I misunderstood something, tertiary effect blocks like explosive effect apparently do increase damage like linking another weapon block, so your original idea of linking some explosive effect on there was a good one - sorry about that.
That also makes me wonder if we should make the turret 50% missile/beam/ion to punch through shields with faster moving missiles, and the other 50% as a slower missile/beam/explosive that follows behind and deals a killing blow after the shields are (hopefully) gone. Maybe even 75% missile/beam/ion since blocks are so fragile once the shield is gone.
...of course that would use a lot more power and make it a lot more expensive, so maybe not worth it especially since the purpose is mostly to keep people away. It's something to think about anyway.