FT - No initiative simultaneous fire

We played a rules variant over the weekend that
was pretty successful. Basically we played a 
small game (2 sides 1000pts a side 4 players)
where we didn't roll initiative, and where fire
was simultaneous.

What we did was to move our ships as normal. Then
we laid out colored dice on our targets based on
our arcs and available weapons. I used red for beams
and white for pulse torpedoes. When everyone had
their dice, we rolled them in any order (even
in parallel where there were multiple little battles
going on). We didn't damage assess, we just noted
the damage on the SSD as a number. After everyone
had finished, we all sat down, assessed the damage,
did our threshhold checks, did our repair rolls, 
and went on to the next turn.

Note that this DOES affect how many/what kind of
threshholds you do.

The result was a fast moving, fun game that we
quite enjoyed. It's always seemed artificial to
me that a ship could wait to see what another ship
did to a target before deciding to fire on it
himself. And it always seemed artificial that a
ship would wait to be destroyed instead of firing
at the same time it was being fired at. We put
up with it because it's a game mechanic, but this
seems easier (as long as you can distinguish 
different people's dice).

Has anyone done this, and if so, are there any
drawbacks?

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