Updates in this patch:
Regarding the player's base shields: I made a change shortly after launch that improved the collision detection across the player's shield quadrants. This means that enemy fire is more concentrated on any given quadrant, which is correct, and makes shield management more meaningful - but had the unintended side effect of making enemy fire much more deadly as it was no longer being distributed across multiple quadrants. To remedy this I've increased the player's base shields to bring the game's difficulty back down to where it should be. If you felt like you were dying too often, this was probably why.