Nova Ray

"The Nova Ray is a powerful energy weapon that explodes into a star formation, hitting enemies adjacent to the target."

General
The Nova Ray is a powerful Energy weapon with the ability to split on impact into a cross-like formation: 4 secondary shots that are 90 degrees apart, which travel for 1,150 m at a speed of 4,000 m/s.

It fires two bright yellow bolts that have the same appearance as the Aurora Ray, each creating 4 similar shots after the initial hit as described above.

Advantages
Nova Rays have incredible firepower for its tier, only surpassed by Infernal weapons such as the Infernal Gatling Ray. Their split ability enables them to further increase their damage against compact groups.

Nova Rays can easily take out groups of squadrons similar to the Aurora Ray; the secondary shots can additionally take out squadrons that are on adjacent ships.

Disadvantages
Nova Rays are prohibitively massive, especially when boosted by Focused Optics, limiting the amount of firepower your ships can actually handle without sacrificing other aspects.

Nova Rays lack range as an Energy weapon and are kited by ships equipped with Vector Torpedoes rather easily.

Trivia

 * The Nova Ray's primary and secondary projectiles deal a total of 100% and 200% DPS respectively.
 * The Nova Ray first appeared in event fleets before its name was revealed. Many players thought that the splash effect was the result of a special and not an actual characteristic of the weapon.
 * The Nova Ray was to appear in the first Alien Decimation but didn't because of a problem with the pre-requisites.
 * The Nova Cannon is the successor of the Nova Ray.
 * However, during the downtime which revealed the Nova Cannon, it caused a bug where the Nova Ray stopped homing into its target.
 * It still has not been fixed as of 14 July 2019.