As the title says, currently the 4 Shield Compensation skill are not too useful, and surely not on par with their armor counterparts (while costing the same amount of skill points).
Due to hardeners being vastly superior, and the lack of a multispectrum passive modules, Shield Resistance Amplifiers are seldomly used, except maybe for the EM one because of the innate resistance hole of shields.
However, all 4 Shield Compensation skills are still a requirement for all masteries of ships that favor shields
My proposal would be either to introduce a new passive omni-tank shield module that benefits from those skills, or to conglomerate all 4 skills in a single one (refunding spent skill points) that affects all 4 amplifiers.
You think ‘masteries’ are useful for anything more than giving you a general idea of what skills you could train that might impact your ship. Masteries are not a complete list however, and neither are all listed mastery skills needed to optimise your ship. For example, masteries can suggest armor skills for a ship that’s usually flown with shield tank. Also, Masteries fail to mention the most important skill that impacts a ship, which is the ship skill itself. As a result, masteries often confuse people more than they help.
Many years ago, all shield resistance modules had a passive mode, which these skills added to. Needless to say, this meant the passive shield modules never got used. What you are suggesting would functionally reverse these changes.
I’m aware of that and am already ignoring them, that was just a side note, Shield Compensation skills are almost useless whether in or out of the masteries
(but I admit it pisses me off they are the reason I can’t get the golden icon without wasting 36 days on them)
I’m aware of that too, what I’d like would be to have those skills balanced between their usefulness and skill points cost. So another option would be to just lower their training time multiplier, as they are now they are hardly worth a 1x
