[Taqwus]

On weapon mounts --

There should be a mount option on the ship design screen. Select it, choose a large mount (as long as your ship/base/WP is large enough -- the smaller ships can only use Normal -- and you don't mind the extra size cost. But the damage/space improvement ratio is always greater than 1, IIRC.), and *then* choose the weapons you want to enlarge.

AI difficulty refers to the difficulty from your perspective; Hard, for instance, means that it'll use many of the intel ops and behave somewhat more cluefully than normal, so if you want to make it easier, choose Easy.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night