First I gotta say that all in all this is a great game and I've enjoyed many hours of play.

But I totally agree with this post, the in-game descriptions are way too vague for things that are critical game stat modifiers.

A component description reads: "Greatly increases shield, ecm, and armor for all ships in the fleet"

WTF does "greatly" mean? Is it a % modifier or a specific number? Greatly could mean 5 or 5000, 5% or 500%. You really couldn't put that in instead of "greatly"?

Unfortunately, the only way I've found to figure out critical game mechanics/modifiers that should have been described in-game is to test them myself. Save the game, research the component, build a ship with, and a ship without the component and see how it's defenses are really changed...oh wait they only change in-combat, great, now I have to go find a fight...sigh. Or do an internet search and read through several forum posts from the beta that explain it but may not even be accurate anymore.