The above post is more or less right about what you'd want to change for adjusting firing rates and shots fired, though it's missing one other line that should be bolded for that too. Honestly, with the above example, the burstDelay is pretty much pointless. With burstCount at 1, there's no actual burst, it's a single shot. (Think like the "three round burst" on machine guns. burstCount is the number of shots fired, while burstDelay is the delay between the shots.) If you look up higher, though, you'll see the line: "PreBuffCooldownTime 6.500000". THIS is the line you'll want to alter to have a ship fire once every 15 or 30 seconds, or whatever you like. Of course, not the ever important PreBuff part. Buffs will either increase or decrease that value by %s.
As for everything else within any given ship's entity file.. well, the mass majority of it is fairly straight forward, the lines pretty much all do what your intuition is likely to guess they do. So I guess it'd probably be easier if any specific line comes up that you're unsure of, to ask about it. Easier then someone posting line for line what each line means in the files, and they'd have to do seperate ones for capital ships, frigates, orbital modules, research, etc.. But don't worry! We will answer if something specific is is eluding you!
