I Was recently watching the Cinematic trailer for capital ships and I noticed that the weapons loaded on at least one of the sidewinders shown is equipped with "auto-cannons" which seem to fire at a slower rate then multi-cannons do yet significantly faster then cannons. Granted it is obvious when watching the video that much of the cockpit and user interface are different than what actually appears in game. Yet I still wonder if anyone has any info or insight into whether or not auto-cannons, or any new weapon classes at all, might be on the drawing board for elite dangerous sometime in the future. Currently there are many weapons that could use a little tweaking to be considered a serious option for anything other then a small and specific niche. There are also some gaps when you start to get to the larger weapons; namely the reduced selection for large hard-points and the rather pathetic selection for huge.
Ship Builds & Load Outs Autocannons? maybe more?
- Thread starter CMDR Alege Kelso
- Start date
Check out the "Enforcer Cannon" which is pretty much what you describe. Its a powerplay bonus weapon yet has sparked some backlash because it only comes in small sizes.
The enforcer Cannon is indeed closer to what I had in mind. Unfortunately it is little more then a slightly modified and highly limited multi-cannon 
The enforcer Cannon is indeed closer to what I had in mind. Unfortunately it is little more then a slightly modified and highly limited multi-cannon
Aha, found it. I knew I'd read it somewhere.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=118797
Check out the Dev posts (Click on the FDev symbol top left under "reply to thread" to start and then at the top right of each Dev post it will take you to the next one).
Thank you for the link. It is nice to see that there is some official word on new weapon variants. hopefully they will be included in the next big expansion release. plus rep to you sir!