In one game I played Last weekend, I happened upon a strategy that worked very well. I went out and swiped as many ancient ruins as I could find until I discovered the Massive Shield Depleter. Then I just researched ship construction. I had battleships with a large mount MSDs and peashooters tearing apart my opponents. A little luck required, but almost no research cost.
This points to the importance of 'first shot power' -- if the first shot takes all your shields down, you're crippled. That's a hard factor to take into account, though...perhaps in your spreadsheet you should weight the damage of the weapon and reduce the importance of space and fire rate. With a formula of (Min D)-(Space*0.5)-(Rate*10), the WMG jumps to the top of the list, followed by the Cap. Ship missle. The PPB drops to #10...but its other abilities still make it one of my Favorites.
