all docked entities within the range of explosion do get checked for their shields and the damage gets passed down the chain ... resulting in an multiple of damage being subtracted from the motherships shield.
Example picture: {F77}
hitting the red x marked spot as example causes all 4 docked entities to take damage and transfer it to the mother ship below. And that will take the hit plus the hits from all 4 entities for a total of 5 times the original damage. Longer chains would cause even bigger effects