Are primary weapons restricted to 2 types in loadouts? I always see only 2 places to put primary weapons.
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Added 3rd bank to the model. It shows in loadout, but cannot load anything into it. The bank is almost black, with the corners illuminated to show that its there.
That most FS-ship have 2 primary slots seem to be owed to a design philsophy that you would take a) "Sidearm"-type weapon, like Subach HL-7, and a "Specialist" weapon, like the Disruptor, and swap to the specialist for objectives: b) two specialists weapons, like Circe and Maxim, and cycle between them for their respective jobs; or c) take two "Sidearms" and double up with weapon linking.
In newer Mods it is not unusualy to see 3 primary slots, allowing for more specialist loadouts - think of the long range cannons and beams in WiH or WoD. However as mentioned, you might have to add a step if go for 3 primaries on a player ship - HUD may not acccomidate.
The same goes for the Loadout Screen - the retail style does not accomidate more than 2 banks because, as I understand it, it uses a UI mask on a per ship basis to define what can be interacted with. If you set the "Use 3D Models for ship selection"-flag in the Launcher, it should skip you to the newer style which generates the UI without a per-ship-mask.
Another thing might be that you didn't set a default primary for the 3rd slot as the table you have provided only defines two. (see: "$Default PBanks:").
Which entries determine a weapon max range?
A weapon's range is defined by $Velocity: and $Lifetime in weapons.tbl or -wep.tbm.
It a simple
r = v * t With "r" being the max range in in-engine meters, "v" being the value of $Velocity (which is in m/s) and "t" being the value $Lifetime (which is in seconds)
The "+Weapon Range" and "+Weapon Min Range:" parameters are for AI behavior only.