There should be more energy based small port heavy weapons for those heavier interceptors. Also, the gauss cannon should have more variants.

Gauss Cannon Mk3
License: 9/9/8/-/- and/or Veteran badge.
Damage: 1200
Velocity: 195m/s
Energy: 30/blast
Delay: 0.4s
Grid Usage: 8
Mass: 1000 kg
Volume as cargo: 1 cu
Good auto-targeting

Looks good imho, but the levels don't need to be as high as you made them.

People could always get it at corvus :-/

Shadoen, that is the point of the Veteran badge.

This should be showing up tonight.

Yay!
I could kiss you right now Inc :)

up the damage by 100 and the energy usage by 5 if its going to have such high level requirements.

level requirements are only 7/7/6

It is lame that this has a grid useage of 8. Must we limit ourselves to 2 s port light fighters to use the cool new weapons? A ship with more ports has the automatic disadvantage of limited energy for the increased energy useage. Not to mention the large cross section and poor handling. Let's lighten up on the restrictive high grid useage numbers.

You can easily use 2 gauss with a flare. The only thing 8 grid usage prevents is a triple- or quad-gauss loadout.

A pilot cannot fully arm a Hornet or Rag using these. Why does this limitation make sense?

The only reason to fly the cumbersome heavies is to arm more weapons. Why exclude heavy pilots from using the new weapons?

Because fully loading a 4/5 port ship with the new weapons gives them too much of a one-shot punch?

I suspect the real reason is simply that Inc wants to work on creating more variety among the available items, and changing around grid requirements is a step along that path. The total grid power available isn't a hard value, but one you get from your powercell, so I'm anticipating the addition of higher (and lower) grid values when new powercells make their inevitable debut.