If the weapons are going to essentially be the same for each race (Hurr and Minbari Molecular Weapons are identical), all you need to do is create one set of weapons and copy/paste them for each race. Create the basic, improved and advanced weapons of all 7 types, then splice them together as appropriate for each race. Simple find/replace of the tech area names will get the tech reqs set in a hearbeat. I think this would be the easiest, and therefore best, solution. You could even use SJ's tech gridder program (on
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu under tools somewhere) to make all of the weapons from 21 base templates (basic, improved and advanced of each category). It can make single area component lines quite well.
I'll post a little tutorial on the tech gridder for you if you want it.