I am late to the party so I do not have much to add that hasn’t already been said, however I will say that I find shield disruption to be an underutilized mechanic when it comes to balancing shields.
I think you can safely buff shields across the board if the instances where disruption can occur increases. If every weapon strike contributed some disruption to shields, then you could have shields with 1000 health while keeping the game flowing. The pace would be short stretches where the shields are up, punctuated with opportunities for direct damage. Once the disruption is shaken off the shields come back online and ships have a chance to lick wounds.
Under this system, “big” damage weapons are used to keep the shields down permanently, disruptive weapons are important to get shields down faster and more regularly, repair modules are more valuable and have a better chance to expend their full resources every time shields come back up, and shields stay relevant for a longer stretch than just at the beginning, disruption resistance modules are more valuable. It gives another variable to tweak the balance between weapon modules and lets the shield modules feel more powerful without making them dominate over all other mechanics in the game.