Would be useful if we could somehow use tags in shield and weapon definitions that set how much of the damage a shield absorbs. If less than 100% the projectile would travel on but only do a fraction of its normal damage upon impact. Preferrably this could be somehow defined/changed on a per-weapon basis for each shield so we can have weapons that pierce shields with little power loss and weapons that do almost no damage to shielded targets with different shields absorbing them in different ways, if not that at least a modifier per weapon (both add and multiply).
If this property cannot be reasonably stored in the projectile, i.e. it cannot remember whether it already went through a shield just make it apply to explosions that happen within the shield's radius.
I'd assume it would be useful if the absorption wasn't limited to the 0-100% range so damage inverters and boosters could be implemented if someone wants them, though I personally don't have any plans to use them. On the other hand I wouldn't want absorption rates of shields and weapons to add up to something outside the range unless the modder specifically wants that to happen...
No, the multiple weapon workaround is not adequate because if I had, say, ten different shields with different absorption rates I'd need ten different weapons for each "real" weapon on a unit which would easily surpass the sixteen weapons per unit limit (not to mention would be a fucking nightmare to deal with).
