I rather see people throw numbers (That they know to be fact) around then "as far as I understand it" and BS some numbers.

When you are on the Space dock looking at your ship stats it is without your skills as captian

Vesta with Maco XII = 9128

According to http://home.comcast.net/~amicus/Skil...%20Effects.htm 99 Shield skill gets you 30%....it shows a linear plot when I graph it so I predict that 129 is about a 39% boost (or another 9% from your base shields added on)

9128*1.39=12687.92

outside of space dock flying around I show 12697

+30 shield skill only got me an additional 821.5, but it was still a 9% increase from base (6.9% over what you had before) AND it was in fact linear

Why did the Defiant get 500? because its shields just suck that much a .9 Vs a 1.35 mod 821*.9/1.35=547.7, but it is still a 9% increase.

***when you start factoring in shield max consoles you end up with base*(skill+console) so if you have 20% from console and 39% from skill it would be base*(1.59)=buffed shields