maxDiffuseMipLevel 0 is what is causing the dump. You need to remove that line.

Too many nulls will only give you an "No weapon assigned to X null. Is this intentional" debug error. Like on the starbases before their upgrades. Nulls with nothing assigned to them shouldn't cause problems They shouldnt a dump. Just an error message in your debug log (if running Dev.exe).

If the nulls are giving you problems In a text editor you can rename the nulls. Change Weapon-3, and -4 to weapons -0, -1, or -2. IIRC The maximum limit to weapon nulls per weapon type was upped in Diplomacy. to 20. 10 was the old limit, and i would try to keep it there if possible, because all weapon damage is divided per null. Count the nulls per weapon type before you rename them, and divide the nulls you rename equally between the other types. You may want to test in game to make sure they dont fire from a stupid position.

You can delete the extra nulls (weapons -3, and -4) in the mesh file with a text editor. However you MUST recount all of the weapon nulls after this and put the correct count on the number of weapon nulls line. If you dont this will cause a dump.

The only other way to change it is to convert the mesh using the 3dsmax converter then import it back into XSI to reposition, and/or remove the extra nulls. Then re-import it back into Mesh format. The bad thing is you will have to redo the materials, and Tangents if you do that.

Incorrect. Damage Per bank means "per null" if you have 10 nulls then the DamagePerBank:FRONT 12.000000 would equal 120 total damage. If you include 10 nulls for the Back, Left, and Right arcs that would equal 480 total damage for all of the weapons divided equally between all of the nulls for that particular weapon type. When we did the weapon damage for SoA 2 we had to figure this out the hard way. Then the dev's pretty much confirmed that the way we did it was right, and that is the way we have done it since. The only variable is the beam weapons. You have to figure out how many seconds the beam fires and then do the DPS accordingly. However that is done on the beam weapons lines in the ships entity. Not the damage per bank. Damage per bank is always a fixed number divided by however many nulls are present.

2 targets AFAIK fires at 2 targets at the same time with the same damage. I could be wrong about this. Look at the torpedoes of the defiant, and galaxy in SoA 2 you will see this.

I always thought that target count per bank only added the number of targets that could be hit. In all of my tests I have never been lead to believe that hardpoints were anything but clientside graphics. I removed shields and massively reduced armor values, ignoring all that silly "DPS" display and focused on actual increments of damage. To hear that target count actually divides damage would be news to me.

I remember starbases in vanilla sins doing insane amounts of damage. It's just that the damage reduction is so ludicrously over the top in that game that it isn't so obvious.

My tests have found this as well. Hardpoints only add to visual effects.

TargetsPerBank means how many targets it can hit in that direction. Having the following:

DamagePerBank:FRONT 12.000000
TargetCountPerBank:FRONT 2

Means two targets are hit with each receiving 12 damage.

I was not to sure about this point, have you confirmed this?
If so, I may add this to the meshpoints tutorial. 

Now i wish one of the developers would jump into this thread, and explain it all yet again. We were told BY THE DEV"S that the damage was PER NULL. The burst counts control the number of effects. So if the burst count was 3 you would get 3 laser, or missile effects, but the damage remained constant whether it was 1 effect, or, 3, or 6 effects.

Experiment by using only one null. Then compare it using the same damage, but with 10 nulls, and divide the damage by 10 for the same arc. I bet you will notice a huge difference. It does the same damage as with one null undivided, but it is spread out between the 10 nulls.

There were discussions about this in other topics dating back to original sins. I'll be a monkeys uncle if i am proven wrong on this.  ALL of the weapon damage in SoA 2 is done divided PER NULL.

So for example a Sovereign had 18 phaser nulls, and the total damage for ALL phaser's was 1000. The 18 nulls were divided to 6 Front, 5 Left, 5 Right, and 2 Back. 18/1000 = 55.5. So each null would do 55.5 damage. 55.5x6 = 333.3 damage for the Front arc. 55.5x5 = 277.5 damage for the Left, and Right arcs. 55.5x2 = 111 damage for the Back arc. 333.3+277.5+277.5+111 = 1000 total damage for that weapon type. It doesn't matter how many bursts. It can fire 1, or 6 bursts, and do the same damage. Burst counts are for the particle effects only. Now you guys are coming in here, and saying that we have been doing it wrong for the last 5 years. When this way worked for us from day one once we figured out for ourselves, and then the developers confirmed that the damage was PER NULL.

Why would the developers of Sins tell us this if it was not true?

EDIT: Glad you got your problem fixed

AFAIK nothing has changed since original sins on how the weapons do damage.

When i first modded weapons i thought the same way, and i didn't notice much difference. It was when i did 1v1 tests, and noticed that wow this ship is slaughtering another ship that it should be an even match for. they had the same damage output, but the difference was that one ship had few weapon nulls while the other ship had many. It was the ship that had few that was killing the other ship.

Noticed the same odd behavior, but there wasnt much we could do about it. For example we had ships with 4 torpedo nulls, but it would only fire from 3 of them

Check your shield mitigation. AFAIK it was done in a way where it was expected for fleets to focus fire on a single ship. Mitigation gives ships ridiculous staying power. In SoA 2 we toned it down to a fraction of sins. Same with armor. All i can say is experiment until it seems right for you.

BTW: Apologies for hijacking the OP

The ship with less nulls is probably fireing at a faster rate because it takes less time for the animation. As for the torpedo thing, perhaps the cool down was shorter than the compound of burst delay? That can reset the animations in my experience.

I made a new topic to discuss all of this, because i am now second guessing how i did things

Oh god...

At least Wiskey seems to be gone now.