Auricom

Auricom, variously known over the years as Auricom Research and Auricom Research Industries, are a North American-based anti-gravity racing team, and one of the only two teams to be featured in every game in the series.

Founded by Delia Flaubert in the USA, following a fallout among AG Systems executives, the team has had a long-standing intense rivalry with Qirex since its inception, but maintains a more friendly rivalry with AG Systems in preserving the ideals of AG technology's inventor Pierre Belmondo. As an anchor of the world-beloved sport for many decades, they were the first team to withdraw from the F9000 once it was certain that corruption had fully consumed the racing league, and the business fully-focused their attention on North American public transportation projects. Only after the scandals were exposed, the armed conflicts of the fallout concluded, and the resulting economic depression reverted would Auricom return to the sport, to support the thriving amateur racing scenes and reasserting itself as a core element of the revived professional racing league.

In their first appearance with the PS1 trilogy of games, Auricom had the distinction of benchmark reliable flight performance, fielding heavy ships with strong defensive shielding and engine power that nearly matched their rivals Qirex, yet offering superior maneovrability on demanding circuits. This evolved towards becoming purely balanced in all things. Since Fusion, however, the design philosophy almost exchanged places with Qirex, shifting to purely speed and defense at the cost of all else, and with Pure bringing Auricom closer to Icaras and Piranha in terms of race engineering. This change in ship archetype carried itself retroactively into 2048, with an early Auricom matching the speed and beating the defensive strength of Qirex, but lacking their original maneovrability.

• High Top Speed, competitive with Triakis
• Below-average Thrust Acceleration, with minimized launch and slower speed recovery
• Stable if poor Handling, with slow Turning Rate but tight Ground Grip for lateral stability
• High Shield Capacity, offering strong durability in combat scenarios

Provided you can handle its unique cornering style, this ship offers strong competitive performance on high-speed open tracks and all Speed Classes.

• Slight improvement to Thrust Acceleration
• Increased Turning Rate
• Top Speed and Shield Capacity remain the same

Eliminating the cornering weaknesses, this ship handily competes alongside some of the faster teams.