This is one of the weirdest things about Ogame. Smaller ships like Light Fighters are so strong that it is often better to just build a large army of small ships. Getting a few large ships in there may be helpful, but not at all required to win the fight. Someone compared the effectiveness of each ship by calculating their total cost using the ratio 2.7:1.7:1 and making battle simulations where each side has the same total cost of ships. (ex. Battleship required 15 times more resources as light fighters, so he made 100 Battleships go against 1500 light fighters.) and found out that a large number of light fighters only lose against Cruisers and Deathstars. They annihilated Battleships, Battlecruisers, and Destroyers.

So, what's my suggestion?

The way shielding works right now, it bounces back any attack that is weaker than 1% of the total shielding power. So if your Deathstar has 100,000 shielding power, it can only be damaged by ships which have more than 1000 attack power. In other words, a ship with 950 attack power will not damage the Deathstar at all, but a ship with 1050 attack power will deal full 1050 damage to it. So this 1% bouncing effect is all-or-none and makes no sense to me.

If you simply make it so that the shield always absorbs 1% regardless of the attack power, the combat system will favor bigger ships more while not making smaller ships completely useless.

Here's a small comparison between the two systems, using 15 light fighters (4000:10:50) against 1 Battleship (60000:200:1000), where all technologies are set to 0:

Current system:
Lightfighers deal 50 damage each for a total of 750. Battleships's shield absorbs 200 of the damage. So the lightfighters deal 550 damage in total

Proposed system:
Since shields now absorb 1% of their total amount from each attack, each attack against Battleship will deal 2 less damage. Lightfighters deal 48 damage each for a total of 720. Battleship's shield absorbs 200 of the damage. Light fighters deal 520 damage in total.

So the difference in damage dealt in this case is less than 10%, which doesn't completely change the game dynamics but makes shielding technology more intuitive and curbs the dominance of small ships.

Shield domes and Deathstars would probably need to have their shielding powers reduced, but that shouldn't be a big issue.

I don't think you understand my proposal. This change would increase the power of deathstar so much that it would need to be nerfed a bit.

This change would decrease the power of Light Fighters, Rocket Launchers, etc.

That is technically correct, but your wording suggests there's a misunderstanding.

Since each incoming damage will be reduced by 1% of shield value, any attack with less than 1% of the shield will be neglected anyway. So the bounce effect practically stays the same. Nothing will get "removed."

Example: Let's say your Deathstar has 100,000 shield power.

In the current system, if a ship with 1050 power attacks the Deathstar, the full 1050 damage is dealt to it.
But if a ship with 950 power attacks the Deathstar, the Deathstar does not receive ANY damage at all.

In my proposed system, if a ship with 1050 power attacks the Deathstar, only 50 damage will be dealt to it.
If a ship with 950 power attacks the Deathstar, the Deathstar does not receive ANY damage at all, same as the current system.

You can see that this is a huge buff to units with high shield values, and Deathstar would be too good. So I also suggest reducing its shield value.