I loved my internal rationale for my weapons firing and damage:

"Mmm. It would be more hilarious if Jason pressed all the red buttons, so I guess I'm firing everything. No, wait, I probably shouldn't fire a quantum rocket. Okay, that's on another console. Hold on, what the heck do these weapons do again? [...] Oh, maybe I shouldn't fire the pulse catapults. Wait, better idea: they miss! Brilliant. [...] I want to fire weapons again. But I can't just keep firing everything, right? Well, Fred hasn't been on screen for a while, I guess that means there's some engineering problem. Ooh! Weapons overload! And that way my ship actually has damage, too! And I can incapacitate Jason to give Alexander time to grow as a character! Marvelous! [...] I should fire my weapons aga- wait, shoot. I overloaded them. Damnit. Maybe I can get someone to fire a rocket somehow? Alexander, do you know how your console works? No, you're just being a sarcastic know-it-all. Hmm. Well, guess I'm running away again."