You might consider going a very different route and using a super missile. Make it some ridiculous size, keep it short range, and dump a ton of MSP into engine and warhead. Give it a custom name.

The issue with this is how to make it actually effective gameplay wise, i do like the idea though and it means i could have actual ammunition rounds for the MAC and use them for bombardment etc

Here's a rather extensive collection of Greek mythological gods, heroes, creatures, and figures that I put together for my Babylon 5 related campaigns.

So starting up my Halo AAR I have come to a bit of a conundrum that surrounds the Magnetic Accelerator Cannons from Halo (MACs), these weapons feature predominantly in the franchise and modelling them in Aurora is difficult in a few key areas, first I will describe what MACs are in Halo lore and the current substitutes that I am considering, the purpose of this post is to take suggestions on how best to model these weapons in my AAR.

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Magnetic Accelerator Cannons in Halo Lore

MACs are weapons featured on almost all UNSC vessels in Halo, they come in multiple sizes and are all capable of firing extremely fast kinetic projectiles towards enemy ships with speeds up to 12,000 kilometers per second or 4% the speed of light. A single MAC shot can destroy an unshielded ship while it may take multiple to destroy a shielded one, these weapons fire in a straight line and accurately punch holes straight through their targets. This level of firepower has drawbacks as they require a significant amount of power and it can take a noticeable time between shots, and the space required to mount such a weapon often will take the entire length of a ship, in a spinal mount.

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Options for Magnetic Accelerator Cannons in Aurora

There are no weapons that are explicitly MACs in aurora, however there are weapons which can substitute for them with renaming based on the characteristics of the weapons, there are two primary options Particle Lances and Spinal Lasers. the advantages and cons of both approaches are as follows.

Particle lances:

Pros

Particle lances have the same damage profile as a MAC with a single straight line of damage cutting straight through armour at a single point, they also are weak against shields which is lore accurate to halo, they have a long recharge rate and their range to act as "sniper" style weapons is also accurate to the employment of MACs.

Cons

Particle lances are not spinal and cannot be made as such, due to this you can have multiple of them and their size is relatively little to the size of a ship, ideally you would want a single massive particle lance but this is not possible and so having only one can feel rather pathetic when it comes to actual combat duty.

Spinal Lasers:

Pros

Spinal Lasers match the MACs nature of usually only having one per ship and running along the spine of a ship, the spinal aspect also increases the size and power requirements and this matches halo lore, a single shot that can do a lot of damage, its range is also good enough for the sniping roll.

Cons

Spinal lasers are not particle lances and do not have the damage profile. Further only a single one can be taken which complicates the situation when it comes to larger vessels which were able to mount multiple MACs, their size and real world damage output is also low if only a single one is taken for such a large ship.

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Ideas:

Generally speaking i would lean to particle lances however thebiggest issue that comes to my mind is how to make the weapon as lethal as it is in lore and to take up a serious amount of the ships actual size while also taking a good amount of time to recharge, my initial thought was multiple particle lances that have a single reactor attached and as such take a long time to charge up (assuming this works) as the reactor has to go down the line of each "cell" and charge the MAC up before firing, this would allow a massive strike from the weapon but would take a long time to recharge and it would take up a real amount of the ships size, however I am unsure how true to life this would be. My only other idea would be potentially editing the database to see if i could adjust weapons to fit things better (probably not possible).

Looking for feedback and ideas from the brilliance of aurora players, appreciate it.

I have thought on this subject somewhat frequently.  I like the current ability to make a "Spinal" laser in Aurora, but unless its mounted on a relatively small ship its not really a spinal weapon, which should take up a significant percentage of the ship's tonnage.  Unfortunately, I don't think there is any true analog to the MAC cannons from HALO.  As you noted you could use particle lances, as they are definitely the closest that you could get to a MAC cannon.  To get around the drawbacks you noted you could, for story purposes, refer to the ship's entire complement of particle lances as one or more MAC cannons.  Unfortunately that would not result in a damage profile similar to one large weapon, though.

What about spinal plasma carronades? Big blast, big damage, slow recharge.

So starting up my Halo AAR I have come to a bit of a conundrum that surrounds the Magnetic Accelerator Cannons from Halo (MACs), these weapons feature predominantly in the franchise and modelling them in Aurora is difficult in a few key areas, first I will describe what MACs are in Halo lore and the current substitutes that I am considering, the purpose of this post is to take suggestions on how best to model these weapons in my AAR.

---

Magnetic Accelerator Cannons in Halo Lore

MACs are weapons featured on almost all UNSC vessels in Halo, they come in multiple sizes and are all capable of firing extremely fast kinetic projectiles towards enemy ships with speeds up to 12,000 kilometers per second or 4% the speed of light. A single MAC shot can destroy an unshielded ship while it may take multiple to destroy a shielded one, these weapons fire in a straight line and accurately punch holes straight through their targets. This level of firepower has drawbacks as they require a significant amount of power and it can take a noticeable time between shots, and the space required to mount such a weapon often will take the entire length of a ship, in a spinal mount.

---

Options for Magnetic Accelerator Cannons in Aurora

There are no weapons that are explicitly MACs in aurora, however there are weapons which can substitute for them with renaming based on the characteristics of the weapons, there are two primary options Particle Lances and Spinal Lasers. the advantages and cons of both approaches are as follows.

Particle lances:

Pros

Particle lances have the same damage profile as a MAC with a single straight line of damage cutting straight through armour at a single point, they also are weak against shields which is lore accurate to halo, they have a long recharge rate and their range to act as "sniper" style weapons is also accurate to the employment of MACs.

Cons

Particle lances are not spinal and cannot be made as such, due to this you can have multiple of them and their size is relatively little to the size of a ship, ideally you would want a single massive particle lance but this is not possible and so having only one can feel rather pathetic when it comes to actual combat duty.

Spinal Lasers:

Pros

Spinal Lasers match the MACs nature of usually only having one per ship and running along the spine of a ship, the spinal aspect also increases the size and power requirements and this matches halo lore, a single shot that can do a lot of damage, its range is also good enough for the sniping roll.

Cons

Spinal lasers are not particle lances and do not have the damage profile. Further only a single one can be taken which complicates the situation when it comes to larger vessels which were able to mount multiple MACs, their size and real world damage output is also low if only a single one is taken for such a large ship.

---

Ideas:

Generally speaking i would lean to particle lances however thebiggest issue that comes to my mind is how to make the weapon as lethal as it is in lore and to take up a serious amount of the ships actual size while also taking a good amount of time to recharge, my initial thought was multiple particle lances that have a single reactor attached and as such take a long time to charge up (assuming this works) as the reactor has to go down the line of each "cell" and charge the MAC up before firing, this would allow a massive strike from the weapon but would take a long time to recharge and it would take up a real amount of the ships size, however I am unsure how true to life this would be. My only other idea would be potentially editing the database to see if i could adjust weapons to fit things better (probably not possible).

Looking for feedback and ideas from the brilliance of aurora players, appreciate it.