The increased use of Shotgun is due to the nerfing of the Blast Gun. Before I used Blast Gun to deal so much damage with my initial attack that I used the other ships less. Also, abilities that previously went to the other ships were now being used in its place, which meant the ships I'd previously had them on needed replacements. Considering energy costs, the Shotgun abilities were the ones swapped in. With less one shot kills from the initial attack, that also meant the other ships were more often doing attacks, resulting in the use of the Shotguns. In the future I will look at other options as well. When I'm not feeling so tired I will see about trying a Sniper run, which would then let the other abilities go back to where I'd had them.
I did not end up using Therapeutic Grapple. I had a plan for it, but as I started doing things it ended up not making sense. Part of that was I felt like I messed up the order of how to do things, and it no longer made sense, so I adapted the plan. It still finished the fight in the expected 2 turns. At some point I will probably retry, as it sounds like a potentially powerful tool.
On the Phantom Ray, it would be nice if the card mentioned the damage amount so players can do that objective comparison before choosing it, especially if the cost is going up.