[serious post]
Would it be possible to add two things to the combat calcualations?

1. Variable Ammo consumption per Cycle
   This would enable No-Ammo weapons, like lasers, mining laser, geoscanner and such. Magazine size 1 to determine what damage the laser would deal, or what the mining laser would gather, or the geoscanner search for....

   secondary, you could make a difference between single round Autocannon (with a differen mesh and gfx then now) and the gattling MGs which is visually already shooting like 10 rounds per cycle (for that change i would feed the small and medium MG with small rounds, lower production costs and size of small bullets)

   later you can add variations of the EM guns using same mechanics (rapid fire railgun), PPC (no ammo), etc.

2. Damage Multiplier between "x1" and how many round consumed per shot
   for change 1, its already necessary to add the multiplier into the final damage calculation anyway. i would add here another random function to determine how many of those rounds shot deal damage.

that "tiny" change would open up many possibilities for new equip and different fit robots, without changing the whole game balance all together (well, except no ammo laser...)
[/serious post]

I hope noone fears that someone could see lasers that dont consume ammo as a "this is eve copy, since EvE was the first mmo that had LASER weapons!