Filling Space

OK, so it's been a long time after I've posted here, yet, I'm still interested in making a mod.  Funny little world eh?  So heres the rundown...

I was fiddling with the firing rate and volume of bullets, lasers, and missles that would come out of capital ships, (as well as if I feel like it, frigates) I was HOPEING to figure out the mechanics of each different weapon as I went, and how the damage is applied vs. how many you see shot.  I got a helping hand from some of the awesome dudes around here before, and pointed to Metal Storm, and it's relatives.  I got the TEC caps...almost...right.   The Vasari and the Advent LOOKED fine, except that the Vasari damage was overpowering (Missles shot = Missles hit, damage goes up the more that fly) and well...the Advent just stopped doing damage. (Lasers have weird mechanics)  Bottom line is, as soon as my Mod started belling up, I got frustrated and threw my keyboard.

I'm back now, and I would LOVE to get some things clarified.

For the weapons:

Autocannons and similar weapons = Good and dandy, easy to change, easy to make it what I want (Watch me eat those words later.)

-TEC ~SHOULD~ in my opinion, be filling up every inch of space with a mass round.  They do it nicely from say a battleships view, with those turrets shooting EVERYTHING, hell, when I changed the carriers rounds from laser to autocannon, it looked NICE.  I want to lose those dinky lasers in favor of the spray machine gun fire, and give it a good boost in fireing speed and volume.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it dosn't.

-Advent should LOSE most of that mass/plasma round business, as they seem like a good laser race.

-Vasari should also LOSE most of their single shot rounds, in favor of the missle barrage they seem built up for.

Lasers (Prolonged damage over time ones, and short point defence ones) I need to go over and see what the hell is happening to the damage.  I would LOVE to make lasers Advent specialties, by changing all the "cannon" lasers to those point defence ones (Fast little laser beams, looks like a laser light show) and leaving the big ones to really make it seem like the Advent are the pew pew race.

-TEC laser, is slower then I would like it to be, but fine, since I see the TEC being a more autocannon race, so I would like to leave that alone.

-Vasari lasers seem ~almost~ good enough, except for I would LOVE to replace them with more missles.

-Advent lasers are something of a mystery.  I kept adding more lasers, and switching colors, as well as messing with the damage they do, but suddenly, out of the blue, they just STOPPED doing damage.  I'm going through the changes, but everything SEEMS to be in order.  I'm going to have to start from scratch again with them.  Again, as I said with the laser summary, I would love to see their ships become a disney laser light show, only things die. (Well, die faster then they would at a Disney Light Show)

Missles, espicially for the TEC siege and ALL vasari ships, are OP if you increase the number of them.  I would love to see more of them, and the same amount of damage that they do without the "more" part.

-I'm thinking of just decreaseing the damage to a point where they do the same amount of damage over the same amount of time, however upping the output.  I don't see a problem with this, except for the math part...and the application.

- The TEC Siege is going to be a pain in the neck, because like I've said before, I do love those autocannons.  I'm guessing a Larger wave of missles, and still keep it at volley, would achieve the likely affect for my purposes, but I don't want to cripple the TEC's only missle boat.

-Vasari...I want those phase missles to be balanced, yet never ending.  The lasers I want to tone down, and the missles boost, but again, that dam shield negation is a bit puzzling.  Sometimes it works fine, sometimes the missles destroy the ship even before the shield is gone.  I'm a bit puzzled, but again, my solution is to decrease the damage, and increase the number.

Many mods SAY that they add anti fighter support to all caps, and I'd like to see that happen.  I see the option to turn that on and off, however the ships still behave like they DONT see the fighters, this is the only change I would like to see different from Vanilla, however, it's a minor note, as their is already a frigate that does just that.

This mod is PURELY superficial in detail, or, at least, I would like it to be.  It's looking like it's going to be more then that, as changing the weapon sets of the races might lead to entirely different damage totals, and new weaknesses and strengths might come about.  I'm okay with it as long as it's balanced.

This is where I'm going to ask very politely, Please Modding Sins, help me out by suggesting theories for weapon customization, post suggested changes, and heck, even the mechanics behind the weapons themselves, and what the damage types mean would be helpful. 

I'm still new at modding, and while Stardock made it simple enough, something isn't going right.