Explanations of .entity variables?

Look up at the Stickies area...you'll fnd most if not all of what you are asking for.

I've looked through them all, unless I've missed it, I didn't find what I'm after.

The post in the modifier list by Sovereign797 came the closest, but it only covers the buff variables.

This is the delay between the emitters on the ship firing. For example the Kol's beams. It's one weapon that has 4 firing points on the front of the ship. This variable controls the amount of time between each emitter firing. 0 should mean all 4 fire instantly, increasing the number staggers them a bit.

How many "bursts" the weapon fires in a single shot. This depends on the weapon's particle effect. The Vasari LRM frigate's burst is 1 missile. If you set the burst count to 2, it will fire 2 missiles. This is independent of the damage dealt, it's purely a visual effect. It controls how many particles the weapon fires. You can use this in combination with burstDelay to create constant autocannon fire, for example, without changing the damage output.

The time delay between the bursts firing. In the example above, if you set the Assailant's burstCount to 2 but burstDelay 0, the 2 missiles will fire at the exact same time. Increasing the burstDelay will delay the second missile firing so it will look appropriate.

These are the weapon names as you see on the info cards. Autocannon, Projectile, Missile, Beam, Wave, etc. Those are the only ones you can use.

This is the type of attack it deals for purposes of damage percentages. It applies to the DamageData chart in the gameplay.constants file. So "ANTIHEAVY" attack type will do 150% damage to heavy armor targets, 50% to very heavy armor, etc as defined by the table.

This allows you to control what the weapon can damage. The default for all is shields and hull, but you can do affects only shields and only hull. I know you can do hull only for a fact, pretty sure you can do shields only.

This is how the weapon applies its damage. Instant, over-time, etc. The Kol's beams are over-time, they keep damaging the target at intervals while firing. Missiles do one time damage, on the other hand.

One of the less relevant settings, it's either physical or energy, I don't think there are any other settings. You won't get much use out of it, other than there's an ability trigger to make ENERGY weapons fire faster. The same does not exist for PHYSICAL.

This is used internally and generally tied to research affecting the various weapon classes. For example, weapon class BEAM can be linked to beam-specific research:

researchModifier
    modifierType "WeaponDamageAdjustment"
    baseValue 0.000000
    perLevelValue 0.050000
    linkedWeaponClass "BEAM"

Wow...thanks Annatar!

Very helpful! Much appreciated.

Some further questions.

WeaponType - what are these 'infocards'?  I think (Projectile, Missile, Beam) are the only 3 options here?

DamageAffectType - So would "AFFECTS_SHIELDS" and "AFFECTS_HULL" would accordingly? (I can probably test this). Also would HULL only damage be ignored if the unit still had shields? I'm guessing so. Might have to look into the specifics for the PhaseMissiles to find out how to bypass shields completely.

DamageApplyType - I'm assuming "OVERTIME" and "BACKLOADED" are the only two options here?

Also you have any idea regarding modifying the size of a unit? Say I wanted to double the size of a particular unit, how would I go about doing that?

I intend to collaborate all this information together eventually. I plan to do alot of testing myself in order to get information I need for myself, and share it with others. However you've certainly helped me alot already, and that is what I was hoping. I figured many people already have all this information somewhere (maybe just in their heads?) just be good for it to be written down somewhere

Thanks again dude, much appreciated.

Actually you're right, I got a little mixed up. It looks like Projectile, Missile, and Beam are the 3 types. It's the weaponClassType that goes by the in-game infocards (when you hover over the ship it shows you which weapons it uses).

I think it's AFFECTS_ONLY_SHIELDS and AFFECTS_ONLY_HULL. To be honest, it's been ages since I played around with them so I don't remember how ONLY_HULL functions. Your best bet is to play around with it, sorry!

Yep, just those two.

That's in the .mesh itself, it's not in the entity file. Someone made a mesh resize tool not too long ago, you should find it in here in the mod forum somewhere

And yeah, for me it's in my head

Think I found the mesh resizer.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/326876

I'll try it out to see if its still current and working.

I'll keep this thread alive with questions and updates, until I get a proper list going that might be worthy of a sticky.