[NicolayKhan]

Sup folks, just a quick question that's been bothering me. I tried googling it in all possible permutations, but to no avail, apparently there in no frequently-linked-to answer.
Basically what i want to know is how much does the refire rate of the fighters primary weapons slow down after you switch to firing them both at once.
I have found the tables here
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Weapon_Comparison_(FS1)
and here
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Weapon_Comparison_(FS2)
but the values seem to refer only to firing in a single fire mode.
As you know, once you switch to dual fire, the weapon speed, or rather, refire rate slows down. From what I could divine with a stopwatch in hand is that the shots per second aren't actually halved, and do not remain the same, but are decreased by some ratio between those two values. Does any of you people with the knowledge of the source code know the exact ratio?

The more specific reason why I ask is as follows: Imagine you have fighter like Myrmidon with 2 gun and 4 gun mount. If you fire first bank, you get (in case of Subach HL-7) 10 projectiles flying out per second. If you fire second bank, you get 20 projectiles flying out per second. If you fire both at once, you get SOME amount of projectiles out per second. It's somewhere between 30 projectiles (speed remains the same) and 15 projectiles (speed halves).

I guess what it boils down to is, when dogfighting in a fighter like Hercules MK1, Myrmidon, Tauret or Ares, do I get more raw firepower when shooting my 4 gun rack or when shooting all 6 guns at once, considering they all mount the same weapon.

I guess the ironic, and likely, answer is that the ratio is 0,66 and you thus get exactly 20 projectiles per second out in both cases, and the difference is purely in frequency.

Thank you in advance for all the answers/speculations.

[AdmiralRalwood]

I guess the ironic, and likely, answer is that the ratio is 0,66 and you thus get exactly 20 projectiles per second out in both cases, and the difference is purely in frequency.

To the best of my knowledge, this is exactly the case; the choice of linked-versus-unlinked on 4/2 fighters is solely one of fire-rate versus alpha-strike. The ratio is the same for fighters with equal banks, however, so fire-linking will boost DPS (and energy consumption).

[niffiwan]

Yep - that's correct.  Here's the setting that lets modders disable the slowdown (as seen in Wings Of Dawn) - the link also has the formula used by the code to calculate the slowdown.

[NicolayKhan]

Cheers, thank you for the comprehensive answers. I hope the next newbie to come along will just find this post. 

[fightermedic]

there's also a weapon flag since recent times that you can use to except certain weapons from linking penalties

[FrikgFeek]

You shouldn't fly the Myrmidon anyway unless you don't have any other options or you can use the Helios torpedo with it. If you do fly it though it's probably best to load the 4-gun bank with a high DPS weapon and the 2-gun bank with a Maxim or Akheton-SDG.
Though not all 4-2 fighters work the same, the Herc is different because it's 4 gunk bank is really hard to use properly unless you learn how to roll your fighter(rolling while also trying to get someone in your sights is a bit trickier than it seems) to position the guns properly.

[Damage]

Re: primary linking
do you happen to know what this flag is?  A quick search through some weapons tables and on the wiki revealed nothing except the "no primary linking" flag.

[fightermedic]

"no primary linked penalty"

[niffiwan]

It seems that a couple of weapon flags hadn't been added to the wiki including "no primary linked penalty"; I've just added them.

[Damage]

Thanks.  Seems like this (in combination with a couple other flags) could make for some fun (read: more dakka) weapons combinations.