I also have some more complicated shipping needs and have not defined them to the point where I can get an estimate on them, I am willing to help define and probably sponsor further shipping development.

The simple rules of our company are:
if shipping in the US, use UPS options only... i.e. ground, next day air etc.
unless Military Base... (APO) in which case we go with USPS.
if shipping internationally, we use USPS.

I think there may be special cases as well but I'm not going there today. Does my description fit in with what you envision for zone based shipping?