I'm sorry but I found some more issues (and I had a couple ideas).
-1. Would it be possible to define how many effects "+Trail effect:" creates, something like "+Time:" in $PSpew: at the weapons.tbl? So far, it just keeps making as many as it can until my FPS drops to 30 or below, what is far more than what I would need.
-2. I had the idea that it could be possible to evade the current lack of a "Effects per second:"-feature by creating the same effects several times in a row (with "+Delay:" being the only difference - for example 1, 2, 3 etc). However, when I use +Delay: without specifying +Duration: (see table below) I receive following error although the Wiki does not indicate a dependency as both are optional fields:
Error: ExploNew-part.tbm(line 47):
Error: Missing required token: [#End]. Found [(2)] instead.
File: parselo.cpp
Line: 303
I managed to work around this issue though by setting Duration to 0.1 though.
-3. If you quit/reload the mission while the particle effect is active, the next mission you load (or the reloaded mission) will have a lower standard FPS rate. For example, my test mission had 60 FPS as standard (which is also pretty much the default on my PC). After reloading, the exact same mission had a FPS standard of 30-40 FPS using the 29th December Nightly. For some reason this only seems to occur when my FPS drops below 30 during the active effect.
-4. While I have no clue about coding, I just had an idea regarding the "constant particle generation at dynamic FPS" needed to define "+Particles per Second:": I remember that for quite a long time there was a bug with beam damage variating at different FPS or time compression, but I was told it has been fixed in the mean time. Could it be helpful to look at that code, or maybe the one used for $PSpew:?
Test table (the rest is still the same):
$Effect: Hecate
$Type: Composite
+Child effect: $New Effect;Inner Part
$Type: Cone
+Filename: CapFlash
+Size: (15)
+Lifetime: (4)
+Deviation: 180
+Velocity: (500)
+Number: (10)
+Direction: Reflected
; +Duration: (0.1)
+Delay: (2)
+Trail effect: $New Effect
$Type: Single
+Filename: exp20
+Size: (200)
+Lifetime: (6)
+Duration: Always
+Child effect: $New Effect
$Type: Cone
+Filename: CapFlash
+Size: (15)
+Lifetime: (4)
+Deviation: 180
+Velocity: (500)
+Number: (10)
+Direction: Reflected
; +Duration: (0.1)
+Delay: (3)
+Trail effect: $New Effect
$Type: Single
+Filename: exp20
+Size: (200)
+Lifetime: (6)
+Duration: Always
+Child effect: $New Effect;Outer Part
$Type: Cone
+Filename: CapFlash
+Size: (15)
+Lifetime: (4)
+Deviation: 180
+Velocity: (1250)
+Number: (22)
+Direction: Reflected
; +Duration: (0.1)
+Delay: (2)
+Trail effect: $New Effect
$Type: Single
+Filename: exp20
+Size: (200)
+Lifetime: (4)
+Duration: Always
+Child effect: $New Effect
$Type: Cone
+Filename: CapFlash
+Size: (15)
+Lifetime: (4)
+Deviation: 180
+Velocity: (1250)
+Number: (22)
+Direction: Reflected
; +Duration: (0.1)
+Delay: (3)
+Trail effect: $New Effect
$Type: Single
+Filename: exp20
+Size: (200)
+Lifetime: (4)
+Duration: Always