One problem that I discovered with gauss cannons...because the minimum range is so short, it can be tricky to engage if both you and the target are travelling at a high rate of speed, because if you set your ships to "Follow", they'll often do so at less-than-optimal range. And using "Move to" doesn't work because they'll move to point-blank range, then stop. And if you have anything less than 100% TF training, the delay in getting moving again will allow the target back out of your range. *grrrr*
There's also the fact that they do dick-all for damage. I had a flight of gauss-armed fighters chasing down a Precursor missile boat that was out of ammo. They could outrun it, but I couldn't specify for them to close to like 10,000km and open up. Instead, they rode on its tail at about 40,000km and they only time they got closer was as they'd hit an engine and the enemy would drop in speed a bit, causing them to gain on it until the next 5 second increment, when it readjusted the fighter speed to match. And it took over 10 minutes of continuous gauss fire to kill it. xD
Eh, that shouldn't be much of a problem, except for the whole lack of damage point. I'm at Gauss Velocity 4 tech, going on 5, so my max range is 40,000km anyways, which should be good enough. Besides, if I wanted to destroy the enemy quickly I would have gone with meson tech.
Not much else to talk about. I still haven't found any enemies. No precursors, NPRs, nothing.
Colonization has been proceeding slowly. I've terraformed a planet in another system to colonization cost 0, but my civilians seem to prefer to ship colonists to Venus instead. Meh. I've got 6 terraforming ships hovering above Venus, slowly converting the atmosphere so that it doesn't horribly crush my colonists when they leave their bunkers. Eventually I'll get bored and have them terraform some of the other cool planets that I've found.