Probably a better formula for weapon strength would be:
Code:
((Range_x*(x*Dist_Accuracy_Penalty))/MaxRange) / (Tonnage * RateOfFire)
It's not entirely accurate, but it gets closer to what weapon strengths actually are. My personal preference from CB v.1.0 is ships armed mainly with missiles and torpedos, with a few ships using heavy mount DUCs; and my fighters have mixed arms, with a mix of torpedos and lasers for anti-missile duty, and DUCs and torpedos for anti-fighter and some anti-ship support. The anti-missile fighters tend to be launched in groups of 3 with light weapons (has about the firepower to take out one or two missiles per volley), while the anti-fighter/anti-ship tend to be launched in groups of 8 or 10 with heavy weapons (has about the firepower to take out smaller stacks of fighters and do minor damage to ships per volley). Plasma tended to be left out in order to balance costs between minerals and radioactives; enough rads were already going to shields and engines, so the more mineral-heavy DUC, torp, and missile weapons gained dominance, and lasers were left in their cheaper, light forms. I might have opted for light plasma weapons for anti-missile duty, but light lasers offer more versatility, since I have fighters act as a screen, with strategies set to target the farthest missiles targeted on other friendlies, allowing for a wider range of coverage, at the cost of accuracy penalties (I think this is made up for by having a large screen, so what the front misses, the back has a chance to clean up on).
I still need to look more into the balance between weapons in versions 1.4-1.6, see if things are different, but I would imagine I would use Plasma a little in the early game when there isn't as much a drain on radioactives, but switch back to the Missile-Torpedo-DUC triumverate in the mid- to late-game.