Hello Texas Hawk, welcome to the forums. Your experience playing the Empire is similar to mine (although I haven't moved into the middle game yet). Just a clarification - if the fire control system is spread out between the gunnery stations then it is a distributed fire control system, not a centralized one.
The superlaser comment was mine BTW, not Fyron's.
Andres : I'd say that destroying supply-holding components is a better way to simulate ion cannon damage because it will completely disable its target.
See you all later, I want to get another
War for the Stars entry done today (yes, this is a plug).
