Both are interesting techniques, but in some ways rolling dice is simply faster while achieving nearly the same end results... except you can't gain dice-rolling skills, but you can gain pencil-dropping skills. I think the importance is this: do you want to get skillful at that?
I think the actual question we want to ask here is "Do we want a shooting mechanic that allows more skillful/experienced players to have an advantage?" In the case of pencil-dropping, granted that skill doesn't directly relate to anything having to do with naval gunnery (or really anything else in day to day life). However, players that practice pencil dropping will probably become better at it, and this could serve as a useful analog to represent the skill of a well-trained and drilled gunnery crew. In numerous historical engagements, crew training and quality appears to have played just as much of a role in the outcome of the battle as the technical qualities of the ships involved.
One other example from miniature gaming that springs to mind is the old "guess range" mechanic that GW used in older versions of 40k, BFG, and (I believe) WHFB. This required a player to announce a range in inches or cm from the shooting vehicle/ship to the target. The announce range was then measured out, and a blast template placed there. A scatter die was rolled and the shot deviated if a hit was not rolled on the scatter die. If the template covered something, it was a hit. If not, it was a miss. This mechanic was used for indirect fire for things like artillery, mortars, and the Nova Cannon in BFG. However, the mechanic was stripped out of GW's systems in the 2000s, and replaced with a pure Scatter mechanic (place the template where you want it within the weapon's max range, roll a scatter die, and move the template XD6 inches/cm in the direction rolled). From what I've read and heard, the main reason GW gave for making this change was that it gave experienced gamers and/or those that were good at doing math in their head an advantage, since they would be able to get their shots on target faster and keep them there, and they were receiving feedback that this wasn't "fair."