The shield generator seems to eat way too many dimensional shards.

• added a stack of shards
• spawned a ghast
• activated shield
  Instantly ate the whole stack after only one kill.

Granted this is a large shield with over a stack of shield template blocks. Is it supposed to use a shard 'per' shield block? that would explain this insane consumption.

1.1x - 6.00

yes, it is per shield block. A better solution is to only enable this for a smaller sub shield and have the rest of the shield normal non-damaging but solid shield. That's also more efficient for power usage