The scaled 1-10 system had more complexity to it, accounting for things like armor and damage resistance. It was better understood by new players (examples were very visual and scaled progression gave more leeway in terms of where your weapon fit). The numbers are even far less arbitrary than the current system as they were paired with decent examples and left enough wiggle room to scale things without needing a lot of thinking about it.
It is pretty much better in every way, but it still has some of the same problems:
Damage ratings are still kinda arbitrary. For example if I make a weapon how would I determine where it falls on the DR scale? Examples give a very vague definition which is more useful than none at all but it still excludes easy judgment for a certain quantity of TnT. The best solution here would be to pair an energy released number to each DR rating so people could calculate DR based on the force of a shock wave, mass x speed of a bullet, or what have you. This also has the added benefit of stopping people from just putting in numbers they don't understand on their submissions which in turn would make for higher quality submissions.
Special cases also present a problem that neither systems ever really addressed other than 'use your best judgment'. Aether Shock Cannons don't really fit into the DR scale if you base it on damage done to a starship. It is a case of if you get hit by it and your shields are down, you die, simply by the nature of the weapon. The same goes for gravity based weapons and a few other things but basically a proper DR system would need to account for this in some way.
And of course in terms of game play, a fixed DR system would need to build upon the systems we already have in place instead of scrapping everything and starting from scratch. Regardless of the solution, in terms of roll out and upkeep, the more similar it is to what we have now the better it will be for everyone to use.
