I believe that there in game are more people like me who like to make their characters/ships look cool but must chose between look and efficient. Some solution to that would be having option to set weapon animation on ships as part of 'costume'. Similar to Champions Online, where weapon look is set at tailor and don't depend on what you have equipped.
For example I really like Voth antiproton animation but my build is more usefull with tetryon/polaron weapons which animations aren't so nice for me. Or at other ship (Fleet Escort Retrofit) I have Fluidic weapons, but theirs animation make my ship look like small glowing yellow ball when fire. So I set at space tailor Voth weapons animation (unlocked it first by obtaining at least one actual Voth space weapon) and all my weapons no matter what dmg type they are looks like Voth weapons. X DHC -> looks like Voth DHC, X turret -> Voth turret, etc.
To be honest in PvE such cosmetic change as weapons dmg type animation won't disturb anything in game. And in PvP it could simply be automatically switch off.
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