Actually, David, It's not a bad idea, dropping the damages.
I figured out the meson guns by figuring out the volume of the sphere annihilated and then dividing by 8 to get base damage, Pen is irrelevant, divide by meson screen factor...
And yes, those damages do correlate directly to dice.
the x10DP for ALL CRAFT, including vehicles, not just starships, was in the Referee's Gaming Kit.