I've never seen or heard that happening, so i'd say it's rare bug. I would say anti-piracy method, but this is Stardock were talking here.

http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb26/angronn/untitled.jpg

Here's a picture. It appears that the shield texture is actually a translucent copy of the front screen background. Hence, when I took this screenshot (playing Entrenchment) the shield design was the fellow in the chair from the front screen background, and when playing vanilla Sins, the Sins of a Solar Empire logo and text appears instead.

I don't know if I can be bothered with a full uninstall/reinstall. It's not that big a deal. I was just wondering if it was intentional.

EDIT: Just so it's clear, the man is showing up on the planet because there's a shield generator there, and the design is easiest to see on a spherical shield. It does show up on all capital ship shields and the Advent shield ship as well.

I'd got that by now.

Thanks for the help.