The stats behind the shield bypass augments(and the unused ones for kinetics and missiles) have never worked. The issue has been reported quite a few times now.

Shield leach/punch are the only ones that don't work, to my knowledge. Most of the others just modify damage/rate/range.

However, Shield Punch is the only weapon tech in the game where you can 'ignore' a percentage of the defenses and apply dmg 'directly' to the base hit points of a ship. This is a huge advantage in our simulated combat. 

Lets say you have a ship laden with nightmare torpedoes and its attack value is 2000.  

You are attacking my ship which has Doom rays also with an attack value of 2000 ~but I have shield punch. 

Assume both ships have about 300 defenses each and both ships have about 750 hit points each. 

We both have same range at 1200 or whatever the max range is. 

When you attack me you MUST get past the defenses first then attack again

However I have shield punch, I can apply 1200 dmg 'directly' to you and you are done before you get your shot off to finish me. 

At least this is how I expect it to work which is why beams (with the leach/punch) techs are FAR superior to missiles or guns. 

Well beams look cool, so i would love them to have some slight advantage.

I think the blasters from the 'Defiant' in startrek looks even cooler, imagine having that in the game!

I will tell you what looks less interesting in the game - Kinetic weapons.

Edit: actually, looking at Youtube combat scenes for the Defiant, it seems to prefer close range strikes which seem to be quite devastating to the enemy. That's interesting, having options in the game for close range weapons that have higher attack but you have to survive long enough to get in close.... oh, thrusters would then become useful too!!! hmmmmm

But this is implemented like this:
<Stats>
      <EffectType>ShieldStrength</EffectType>
      <Scope>Fleet</Scope>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
        <TargetRelation>Enemy</TargetRelation>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType>
      <Value>-0.5</Value>
    </Stats>

Shield punch is implemented like this:
<Stats>
      <EffectType>IgnoreShield</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>0.66</Value>
    </Stats>

edit: I tried 2 plasma projectors + shield leech (12 beam damage, 0.5 ignore shield) vs. 24 shieds. It had to shoot aagainst shields 4 times, which is the normal behavior of 12 beam damage vs. 24 shields.

No, but I tried value 1.0, which makes it ignore shields completely i.e. just do damage to the hull while shield points remain unchanged.

I think the reason why you need to specify target relation is the entry scope. If scope is not set it defaults to 'local' (meaning only one target, I think). Target type ship probably has to be set, since it doesn't make sense to put a default there (it can also be 'planet', 'colony', etc.). If target relation is not set, it defaults to 'self'. And the way I understand it, this makes sense. Similar to attack and defense ratings, shieldpunch is a property of the attacking ship. And above 1.0 it also works as one would expect - more or less.

Is there a 'good' fix for it Horemvore? I am currently setting the value to 1 but if there is another line of code or more that needs for it to be added in order for it to work correctly I am happy to  put it in.

I just tried it too, no effect

I have yet to see a place in the xmls where this doesn't apply.

If base is zero (which I would assume for ignore shields), multiplier shouldn't change anything for the result.

One interesting thing you can do is add the line:

<ShipComponentType>BeamWeapon</ShipComponentType>

This way it displays the amount of shield punch (0.5 / 0.7) with the symbol directly in the tooltip of the support module.

We have found the problem, it had to do with a change made to haw Defense points work, we are fixing it and it should be corrected in the next patch.

Thanks for the report. 

Woot Woot! Great!

That means my Borg will get fixed too Adaptive weapons inc!!!

It isn't fixed. Ships with shields still take no beam damage, no matter how many times they are hit.