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[Arcagnello]

I'll thow a fun one in for you guys.

Overridden, double Heavy Blaster Aurora is the thing of nightmares. It's probably the only ship you can feasibly override that can also support a viable 360° shield + hardened shields.
Playing it against swarms of smaller ships reminds me of those nature videos about woodpeckers eating other baby birds in their nest (don't watch those if you're eating) one at a time. It's absolutely brutal and the enemy can't do diddly squat about it.

It gets even more lethal with mods since there are a couple hard flux energy weapons that come in the same ballpark of the Heavy Blaster's DPS but have better flux efficiency (altough less damage per shot)allowing it to just keep hammering the helpless enemy longer before backing up to passively vent.

Edit: YOu can also play it with double Ion Pulser & lots of IR lasers to heavily specialize it to deal with small ships/heavy flanking, but the huge damage per shot of blasters works the enemy down a lot faster, especially if it's bigger.

[Serenitis]

Overridden, double Heavy Blaster Aurora is the thing of nightmares.

Yes. But only for anything smaller than itself. When faced with equivalence or more it falters.
Excellent DPS, but mediocre armour penetration. And is mostly reliant on Sabots for shield breaking.
It's the quintessential 'bully' ship - It can punch down really well, but is largely incapable of anything else.

Makes for a fairly decent flagship if you like playing support/damage control. For a while...
But it will always be superceded by ships which can tackle larger targets.

[Arcagnello]

Overridden, double Heavy Blaster Aurora is the thing of nightmares.

Yes. But only for anything smaller than itself. When faced with equivalence or more it falters.
Excellent DPS, but mediocre armour penetration. And is mostly reliant on Sabots for shield breaking.
It's the quintessential 'bully' ship - It can punch down really well, but is largely incapable of anything else.

Makes for a fairly decent flagship if you like playing support/damage control. For a while...
But it will always be superceded by ships which can tackle larger targets.

True, unless you go full meta and stuff it with Sabots, at wich point you're probably going to have to axe security overrides and find better flux/damage ratio sources like the good old Pulse Lasers, although triple medium combat lasers are not a bad option either considering you have an armory and a half full of sabots.

[intrinsic_parity]

My favorite aurora is 2x HB, 2x medium sabot pod 4x small reapers, expanded missile racks, max flux stats, hardened shields. I think I squeezed some PD and a few more hull mods in too.

[Retry]

Overridden, double Heavy Blaster Aurora is the thing of nightmares.

Yes. But only for anything smaller than itself. When faced with equivalence or more it falters.
Excellent DPS, but mediocre armour penetration. And is mostly reliant on Sabots for shield breaking.
It's the quintessential 'bully' ship - It can punch down really well, but is largely incapable of anything else.

Makes for a fairly decent flagship if you like playing support/damage control. For a while...
But it will always be superceded by ships which can tackle larger targets.

Mediocre armor penetration?  The only weapons that have greater armor pen than the Heavy Blaster are larges or missiles.

[Serenitis]

Mediocre armor penetration?  The only weapons that have greater armor pen than the Heavy Blaster are larges or missiles.

Or literally any equivalent weapon that does HE damage rather than EN.
Heavy Blasters are not "good" against cruiser or capital armour. They only do well against destroyer & frigate armour due to the much lower damage blocking letting the DPS through far quicker.
Heavy Blasters also cannot be sustained as most HE weapons can due to thier extreme flux output, which even the SO Aurora can't handle for more than a few volleys.

It's a good setup. But it has limits. And those limits will absolutely force you to fly something else eventually.

[bobucles]

Heavy Blasters are extremely lethal, but they do pay a hefty premium. They don't have any bonus against shields, which means you're likely to lose the flux war against an equal ship. If their shields never drop, you never win. They also have no bonus against armor, so it takes more effort to deal the killing blow. The short range also makes them bad as dueling weapons. The Eagle looks like a great ship to use heavy blasters, except the guns get pushed way back and it ends up very difficult to get in range. Extremely lethal on paper, but difficult to succeed in practice.

HBs may be handy to mount on a phase ship. Phase ships love burst damage, while short range and high flux doesn't hurt the cloak. It's not a bad match.

[Retry]

Mediocre armor penetration?  The only weapons that have greater armor pen than the Heavy Blaster are larges or missiles.

Or literally any equivalent weapon that does HE damage rather than EN.

Strictly false.  Among medium weapons, Heavy Mauler has 400 effective armor damage per shot, Heavy Mortar 220, both less than HB's 500.  Assault Chaingun is only 180 effective armor damage, significantly worse penetration, though sheer HE DPS still keeps it on about the same level against armor (at least, until 0.95's Chaingun damage nerf).  There is no competition in HE small weapons either.

Each of those weapons have their own advantages, of course, but only the Assault Chaingun actually has a chance of digging through armor faster than the HB through sheer volume of fire, and then only against specific targets of the lighter-armored spectrum.  In order to get greater armor penetration, you need larges or missiles, as I originally stated. (or an Antimatter Blaster, I guess?)

Heavy Blasters also cannot be sustained as most HE weapons can due to thier extreme flux output, which even the SO Aurora can't handle for more than a few volleys.

Underlined portion is completely untrue.  An Aurora with SO and no vents comes out to 1600 flux dissipation.  2 HB's firing continuously produce 1440 flux per second.  Aurora has excess flux dissipation for such a setup and can thus sustain an infinite number of volleys before adding additional vents or guns, so your initial estimate is a bit off.

[Megas]

The only phase ship that I would use heavy blasters on is Doom, and only because it can brawl with enemies distracted by mines.

Heavy blaster lacks burst on Harbinger.  Mining blaster is better but still not that great.  Antimatter blasters is probably the best alpha Harbinger can do, closely followed by phase lances.

All of the medium energy weapons stink at anti-shield, even pulse laser (1.1 efficiency, and less DPS means enemy has more time to fire and add more hard flux to your shields, offsetting blasters' worse efficiency)  Worse, pulse laser is not good for hit-and-run due to windup and low-powered individual shots.  At least blasters are good anti-armor.  Pulse lasers are mediocre against everything.

Two blaster Aurora, or one with two pulse lasers and one heavy blaster, either needs to load up on missiles (probably Sabots), or leave too many mounts empty and focus hard on maximum flux stats and shield efficiency.  (Missile loadout will probably get the job done faster.)  Otherwise, it will stalemate (and lose PPT stall war first) against other cruisers, which is bad when Aurora costs more than most of them.

An Aurora with SO and no vents comes out to 1600 flux dissipation.  2 HB's firing continuously produce 1440 flux per second.  Aurora has excess flux dissipation for such a setup and can thus sustain an infinite number of volleys before adding additional vents or guns, so your initial estimate is a bit off.

Even non-SO Aurora can comfortably use two heavy blasters provided that every other mount (aside from minor PD) is empty so that it has enough OP to afford all of the caps, vents, and necessary hullmods.  The result is an Aurora with two blasters and mostly empty mounts.  Unconventional and looks dumb, but it can duel and win against other cruisers.

Odyssey with two plasma cannons and little else is the capital version of the above.

[TaLaR]

Imo, the real problem of Aurora is that it is obsoleted in both possible niches it can try to fill.

SO Aurora tries to compete against Afflictor as short PPT assassin and fails miserably. Anything other than pirate trash/frigate spam Afflictor kills faster (in battle time, not player subjective time) and much cheaper in supplies. And since individual Afflictors are so affordable, you can swap multiple of them as needed in longer battles.

While non-SO Aurora gets obsoleted as player ship by Odyssey, which has better firepower and is faster in pursuit for only 1.5x DP. And same 8 burn.

[Megas]

While non-SO Aurora gets obsoleted as player ship by Odyssey, which has better firepower and is faster in pursuit for only 1.5x DP. And same 8 burn.

Odyssey is not the only one.  Doom is a little more expensive than Aurora, but it hurts almost like a pseudo-capital.  It does not disappoint at 35 DP, plus the AI can use Doom competently.  40 DP capitals like Conquest or Onslaught?  Why use finesse why I can just steamroll small stuff that get too close or slug-it out in a capital duel?

As for Afflictor, it is good - too good, but it is unforgiving to use.  (Plus, Afflictors are too valuable as cheap Reaper capital or battlestation killers, which Harbinger cannot do anymore.)  Harbinger is more expensive than Afflictor, but easier to use and still significantly cheaper than Aurora.  Aurora is too overpriced for what it does.

[TaLaR]

As for Afflictor, it is good - too good, but it is unforgiving to use.

Do you still play at double speed? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to properly pilot it at 2x time rate as well.

[Megas]

As for Afflictor, it is good - too good, but it is unforgiving to use.

Do you still play at double speed? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to properly pilot it at 2x time rate as well.

Yes.  It can be a bit too twitchy with ultra-twitch ships like Hyperion or Afflictor, but nothing I cannot handle, but it is still too slow on the vast majority of ships.  2.5f or 3f would be ideal for me, but fidelity seems lost on speeds higher than 2f, so I stick with 2f.

Normal speed of Transcendence or Endless Sky is faster than normal speed of Starsector.  Transcendence is probably the equivalent of Starsector's 1.5f or 2f.  Endless Sky with x3 speed/fast-forward is fun after I build up a strong fleet to defend against ganking from Heavy Rockets and like.  (Eventually, the x3 speed is needed to offset slowdown from hundreds of Deep Rivers or other big freighters used for late blooming income from space trucking.)

Never mind classic arcade games that demand twitch reflexes (or exploits of bugs or hardware limitations) after difficulty (and speed) gets cranked up.

[TaLaR]

I just toggle via SpeedUp mod to skip boring approach on combat start.

[Linnis]

I just toggle via SpeedUp mod to skip boring approach on combat start.

Late few playthroughs I just put everything on 3x, put on some dark-synth music, auto-pilot. Then just rock out.