You can unlock a Zoltan ship with one of those fancy shields, although I'm yet to do so.
Bombs teleport into the location you send them so they do indeed skip defensive drones, plus they appear slightly quicker where they're going, and give you a momentary glimpse of the room you send them to (crew, etc.). They don't do hull damage but generally they'll do more personnel and systems damage than equivalent missiles.
During the beta phase I saw that pressure suits were on the cards - the concept was for them to significantly reduce damage taken while in a vacuum rather than negate it entirely, mostly for balance reasons - but cryptically the developers seem to have become mentally overwhelmed with the idea that their game was a major hit on release and have as such lapsed into a slightly comatosed state from which they may do no further development on the game.*
*I assume, in fact, that their statement on the subject is simply ill-worded and they are genuinely still working on additional content - but, boy, does it sound like they've freaked!
