Any special requirements to make gauss weapons?

[krautbernd]

If the beam is dispersed enough to make that viable, it's more like a cone of fuck-everyone-who-looks-that-way-in-general. So problematic if there are friendlies running around all over, as it happens in many scenarios.

And if your beam is dispersed enough to blind while looking in the general direction you can focus said beam to deal higher damage to your actual target. You would have to purposely design your laser to deal less damage over a larger area. No laser weapon meant to "kill" or destroy actually does that. You want to impart as much energy as possible over as small an area as possible in as short a timeframe as possible (-> pulsed lasers).

[Juku121]

Well, future tech might bring variable-mode lasers that can be set to 'blind'. But, yeah, it's usually better to just shoot the enemy lethally instead of fucking around trying to blind them.

[zee_ra]

Oof, that was a trip. Sent a crew to a hybrid embassy base, snatched an engineer and ran away. Engineer led me to UFO power, which gives me Mass Drivers... and I presume once that is complete I'll finally be on to Gauss! My goal is to have a crew outfitted with Gauss before the alien invasion proper, which is certainly looking possible right now.

On the subject of esoteric weapons having special effects - Lasers should blind the targets similar to a flashbang. (Yeah, in real life the blindness would be permanent but Aliens I guess.)

You could explore the tech tree by middle-clicking on a tech, and also by pressing 'qq' on the main screen.  Also, by using https://xcf.trigramreactor.net.  With respect to gauss technology, you may find that there's a lot of research to be accomplished, and a lot of aliens to capture.  In general, when you don't have advanced equipment, you are only able to capture in the final stages of the battle, when about 10 enemies are left on the card.  The best sites for early capture are the hybrid embassies and UFOs between small and medium (e.g. harvester) size.