[BlasterNT]

Hi, I don't know how realistic this is code-wise, but I figured it was worth a shot to ask. 

The current reload time is capped at 5 seconds, and if you try to go over, it resets to 1 second.  I have in mind a few rather heavy weapons such as fighter-mounted railguns or artillery cannons that would best work if they had reload times of over 5 seconds, so I was wondering if the limit could either be increased or eliminated?

[headdie]

I have no idea what the coding is like on this so cant comment on the viability

but...

5 seconds is a long time for a primary cannon, especially when you consider most cannons in FS operate in the 1-5 shots per second range. (I find the Prometheus a frustratingly slow firing cannon so take that comment as you like)

have you considered using the fighters energy reserve as a balancing option for example one of these massive cannons will drain half the energy reserve in one shot or using the "ballistic" flag in the weapon and setting a relatively small ammo amount for the weapon.  either/both of these will force the player to use the weapon sparingly preventing the weapon from being overpowered while still giving the feel that these are uber weapons.

[Spoon]

It's a stupid limit that I would love to see removed.

[Qent]

I would like that limit gone too. It's actually worse: for ships that can link three banks, the maximum delay is 2.5 seconds. For fighter-mounted beams, warm-up/down and lifetime all cut into that, too.

Using energy or ammo as limiters has its own problems. Both(?) depend on the number of gun banks, energy regeneration is by default scaled according to difficulty, and ballistic weapons can (or must be, depending on which you consider the drawback) be reloaded.

I think the best place to put it might be in AI profiles. Then modders could easily enable it on a per-mod basis, or disable it for debugging (which, as far as I can tell, is the only reason for the limit).

[CommanderDJ]

This is a known bug.
http://scp.indiegames.us/mantis/view.php?id=2443.