I'm having difficulties, and decided not to post any more until I have a playable Version.
I'm also waiting on the next patch, because of the bug with Quad to Shields and Quarter to Shields weapons. The energy weapons are all Quad to Shields, and the Energy TORPS are quarter, to simulate the energy torps not having much effect on ships with sidewalls. However, a bug in SE4 means that these weapons do 4 times and 1/4 times their listed damage *all the time*, instead of just to shields. That and the ships keep behaving quite oddly in my tests, and I haven't resolved how I'm modeling the laser-head missiles.
Phoenix-D