This just came to me: A way to make different damage types more meaningful and gameplay more varied and diverse.
Instead of just making weapons that do different damage types simply shoot beams of a different color, make weapons of different damage types have different styles of attack. Laser damage could be a staight beam, while concussive damage would be explosive shells, particle damage could be from weapons that shoot a cone of energy, and so forth.
There's a little bit of that in the game already... expand it.