Ok, i'm gonna go brutally honest here: Gameplay > Realism. I always enforced that and always will. ZPM is OP for number of reasons, shields being one of the least impacting ones actually as the 304 is doing pretty god even without it. But the second you accept a ZPM, people are going to ask for supercharged beam weapons of doom. As soon as they get those, they'll want cloak. And with each of those, the game get's more and more BORING.

And personal note, I think its any 304 would have that ZPM, it would be assigned to Pegasus as the Wraith are far mroe dangerous than Lucian Alliance.