TLDR: Balance the Experimental Shield by reducing recharge speed and capacity OR by making it "faulty" and allow some damage to slip through the shield.
First of all great job on this mod. I added it (along with Early Armor Grid) so my younger brother (age 8) could play around with the equipment grid a little sooner than usual. He absolutely loved it.
The Experimental Shield currently has 20hp and a recharge speed (rs) of 6 while the first shield you get in vanilla, the Energy Shield has 50hp and 12rs. Because the Experimental Shield is 1x1 you can fit 4 of them in the same space as a Energy Shield, allowing you to get 60hp and 24rs. The doubled recharge speed makes the experimental shield better (in recharge speed at least) than even the mkII shield (which actually has the same rs as the mkI, just more hp).
I suggest that you do what you did with the Leaky Capacitor. Not just making a lower tier in terms of stats but making it have a disadvantage such as the phantom power draw. Likewise you could make the Experimental Shield "fail" allowing a percentage of the damage to slip through the shield and affect the character's health, or as an alternative there could be a chance that the shield would "fail" and lose extra hp from an attack.
Addition Notes:
Depending on the chance to fail percent you still might want to reduce the recharge speed.
How will it work when combined with other shields. (Likely limited by code so you could add a warning that the Experimental Shield could compromise the other shields.)
