I figured it out once before, but somewhere along the line, I forgot how I fixed the problem.
After watching BABYLON 5, I've decided to make the big ships in FS2 use all laser cannons. I modified the weapons.tbl to make the big ship turrets fire faster and faster reload rates. I save the modified tbl into the TABLES folder. I load the 1st mission in the fs2 campaign (this mission I've always used to test out my weapons modifications), I activate the weapons change cheat, fire at the Satis ships till they return fire (I make them invincible then do this so I can more quickly get an idea if it worked). My changes didnt work....the TERRAN TURRET which comes standard on the Satis, my altered fire and rearm rate, didnt take effect....I even removed the "Big Ship" flag.
The only thing that seemed to work was when I initially changed the ship.tbl, I gave the Vasudan destroyer all lasers, which worked...just the weapons.tbl changes didnt work......and a later test to see if anything worked....I gave the Satis the Morning Star...and it didnt work.