Sorry for the necro, but a year and a half later, I just ran into this same bug. I had to use my bridge officers to distract everything long enough for me to run up and use the shrine. Everything is exactly as the original report states. Took them to 1/4 health and then spent the next ten minutes wondering why they…
For a second there, I thought I had missed a new material type. I had visions of puttering around Sol system in a latinum-plated Connie for giggles. But for the actual question, nah, not likely.
Shared storage among your characters. Like for example on my baby Fed I have a couple of Mk II Disruptor weapons Bound to Account. I dropped them in my account storage bank and picked them up on my Romulan :) But you can store EC there too. I also throw all my crafting junk in there just because.