Sorry what? Has there been a significant update that I missed?
Not yet, but Steve has been posting over the past two weeks about various improvements that are being added to the next version 5.70 of aurora, including several parts from the work he has done on newtonian aurora.
Primary things are;
A revamp of the Sol system to correct a number of errors in body data that expanded to include the addition of the dwarf planets, trojan asteroids, which were also added into the standard system generation, and replacing the previously generated asteroid belts with asteroids taken from real data. Coupled with the default max gravity rage being increased to 90% this also leaves Luna, the Gallilean moons and Titan as colonisable by standard humans, though obviously requiring infrastructure/terraforming.
A new production overview screen, that shows all types of production with indicators for items that will finish in the next 6 months / 1 year. In SM mode it also allows you to see production of all player races in one place making multi faction games much easier to run.
New orders that allow the setting up of mineral/fuel/supply dumps and keeping them at desired levels by your freighters/ships.
New engine design system. There are no longer seperate fighter/gunboat/regular engines, instead you set the percentage difference up to 300% increase/decrease from the base power level when designing the engine. Engines are also now no longer of a fixed size but can be designed from 1-50 HS, larger engines have a fuel efficiency bonus. Commercial engines are now any enine of at least 25 HS and 50% or lower power.
Fuel usage has increased substantially, as previously only a trivial percentage of a ships tonnage needed to be given over to fuel tanks.
Crew requirements for fuel tanks have been removed and requirements for engines substantially reduced, other components may have their crew requirements looked at.
There will be new rules for crew fatigue from long tours/crowded living space and ship operation when crew levels are reduced by combat/boarding, though steve is still working on the specifics.
Also I used fighters a lot for harassment purposes and laser deployment. A reduced size laser mounted on a fighter can get some pretty large laser focus up to point blank range, pretty cheaply. You can punch holes straight through enemy armor columns with minimal effort. I usually mounted a few with microwaves as well, they make great hunter-killers. Launch 2x laser fighters and 1x microwave fighters at an enemy ship, they can knock out the sensors and prevent retaliation while also bringing those lasers in close and getting maximum penetration.
The main thing that a lot of people don't realize about fighters, is that you can get to 0 range with acceptable losses. 0 range on a laser is a lot of power, and even gauss can do damage if mounted in large numbers. Literally sandpaper off the enemy armor.
But laser fighters backed up by marines, easy captures.
Indeed. At low tech levels missiles/gauss and possibly reduced size lasers are the only weapons you can mount while maintaining an acceptable speed, as you need higher tech to be able to reduce the size of your firecontrols/powerplants/armour to make space to fit other weapons.
Interestingly the new engine rules will make other weapons viable as you will now be able to mount more than one engine or an equivelent single larger engine on a fighter design.
edit: ninja'ed while I was typing all that