Anecdotally, I’ve heard that the first point does work, and limits the NPCs to shoot within the confines of whatever powerplant they are spawned with. I dont think it will change the behaviour of how they shoot, you would need to mess with ai/pilot settings for that iirc.

For shields, yes you can give NPCs player shields and it works fine, I’ve done that myself. The biggest thing to lookout for (speaking from experience ) is to make sure you spell the new shield equipment correctly, as it is formatted differently to the NPC shield equipments.