Supernovas!

[Treewyrm]

Mjolnir, it's all fun but rather pointless. Why? Because there are many other factors playing important roles, and like you noted yourself that you don't even take recharging into consideration (shield passive regen and re-activation), but that's quite important one. If you want to have at least some accuracy use time line, calculate recharging, throw in some randomization representing misses (or shall we say that everyone is 100% accurate? or all opponents are sitting ducks? gunboat maneuvering anyone?) and so on. That at least will have some feeling of authenticity in it, of course if you really want to go in-depth for it.

I don't see big mess made out of it. You say you are changing shields. Not telling that you shouldn't, because that's ultimately your choice, but simply saying that I don't do that (or, to be more precise, I can't due to rather limited equipment sold on bases my characters are allowed to dock), even so I don't really see mess out of it. And nobody forces you to do that, it's something that you do voluntarily, for what reasons there be. We already have different weapon types, it's a legacy of original game, we already have faction-specific weapons, again something that has been there already and simple being continued on, and much more. How is that a problem and where exactly it creates a problem that affects gameplay on noticeably negative level.

If bringing any variety is a mess, well, that's a whole different perspective then.