Ok... There are several posts in the editing forum for this sort of thing... Look there, but just to speed you along you should download these programs from the editing utilities forum...

bini lite
fled_ids

The first (bini lite.exe) will let you change your weapon_equip.ini (or any other of the .ini files in the game) into a readable text file which you can edit. Always without fail backup your original file before you rename the created text file to an .ini file. That is, when you ask bini lite to decrypt the file it will not change the original... it will make a new text file that you will later re-name to an .ini file when you are finished modding it and wish to use it in the game.

You will begin I suppose, by examining the files. You will see that every weapon file has two parts... the munition it fires and the gun itself. For the weapon you choose, the munition part reads like this...

[Munition
nickname=li_gun01_mark01_ammo
hp_type=hp_gun
requires_ammo=false
hit_pts=2
hull_damage=16.3
energy_damage=0
weapon_type=W_Laser01
one_shot_sound=fire_laser1
munition_hit_effect=li_laser_01_impact
const_effect=li_laser_01_proj
lifetime=0.8
force_gun_ori=false
mass=1
volume=0.0001

As you see you can make sense out of most of it but there are a few things to know that are not obvious.

1. The shield (energy) damage is half the hull damage if you do not put anything in the energy_damage slot. Here we see the hull damage is 16.3 (will be 16 in the game) and the shield damage listed as energy damage will be 8 in the game. However if you put an entry in the shield (energy) damage section, then it will also take on half of the hull damage figure as well... Thus if you put in say, 20 for energy damage, it will also take 8 more (or half of the hull damage) and show up as 28 in the game, whereas hull damage would still be 16... strange huh...!

2. Also note the lifetime figure. Here it is 0.8 or 8 10ths of a second. That is how long the "blast" lives after being fired. Now if in the gun section below the munition section the muzzle_velocity is listed as 800 you will get a "range" figure of 640 in the game (.8*800=640) So if you wanted to increase the range of your weapon to say 800m then you would modify either the lifetime to 1.0 or the velocity to 1000. If you changed them both to those figures (lifetime of 1.0 and velocity of 1000) then you gun would have a range of 1000m at a velocity of 1000m/s... see? Look at the section below to see what I mean. There you also see the ids_name and ids_info numbers I refered to earlier. The hit points in this section only refer to how much damage your weapon can take before being disabled, not how much it can dish out, but it would be prudent to pump this figure up some (say triple it or more!) if you cruise around in radiation fields or get shot at a lot.

3. hp_gun_type= refers to the type of hard point the gun is mounted on and gives the level of the gun. This says hp_gun_special_1 This is the lowest level for a gun. If you changed it to 10 your gun would be a level 10 gun but you couldn't buy it until your character had got to level 26 or so. Therefore leave that part alone if you want to be able to use the gun from the beginning of the game. You will also note that there are turret and torpedo hard points in the game as well. You may want to modify a turret gun like li_turret01_mark01 to have a "set" of guns you will use in the game.

There are two more important stats that your gun has that you may want to modify.

4. Power useage... this determines how much power the gun uses every time it spits out a pulse. If this number is high, you will always be running out of power in a prolonged fight. I would lower it to a modest amount with heavier weapons, say 3 or 4. 5 is probably ok for this weapon but some level 8 and above guns can run you out of power quickly and those are the ones I would be most concerned with. You could, of course, also modify the ships power output but that is beyond the scope of this reply, but easily done.

5. Modify the refire rate. Seen here as refire_delay=0.1012. This shows how many times per second this gun will fire. 1 / .1012 will yeild about 9.88 times per second. This is pretty brisk! You may find yourself blinded by muzzle flash and unable to hit the target if this figure is set too high. .125 will yeild 8 shots per second, .25 = 4 shots, and .5 = 2 shots etc. The idea is to get your weapon to output a certain amount of power per second, and then cut it up into managable slices or shots per second. For instance a level 10 gun puts out a total power output of about 2200 units per second. Most of the level 10 guns fire only 2 times per second, so that would mean a hull damage of about 1100 and shield damage (energy damage) of 550 per shot. You have to be very accurate to hit with a 2 per second pulse rate, so I would pump that up to 4 or 8 but cut back the damage per pulse proportionately. Thus at 8 per/sec it would be 2200 * .125 or 275 per pulse @ 8 per/sec for hull damage and 137 for shield damage. I would set the energy damage figure to 138 to start with(remember... the shield damage will always add half the hull damage to itself), so when the gun fires in the game it would have 275 hull and 275 shield damage for a nifty 10+ level output gun. See? Of course a good starting weapon would be about 1/4 that output and you could probablly get throught the whole game with one set to 8 pulses per/sec with 100 hull and 100 shield damage per pulse a range of 1000m at a velocity of 1000m/s. That would be a formidable gun. Matched with an equally formidable turret you would be one tough cookie! You could experiment with the power level of the turret(s) pumping up the shield damage, for instance, to really pull their pants down so to speak.

[Gun
nickname=li_gun01_mark01
ids_name=263357
ids_info=264357
DA_archetype=equipment\models\weapons\li_heavy_ion_blaster.cmp
material_library=equipment\models\li_equip.mat
HP_child=HPConnect
hit_pts=400
explosion_resistance=1
debris_type=debris_normal
parent_impulse=20
child_impulse=80
volume=0
mass=10
hp_gun_type=hp_gun_special_1
damage_per_fire=0
power_usage=5.09
refire_delay=0.1012
muzzle_velocity=800
use_animation=Sc_fire
toughness=1.3
flash_particle_name=li_laser_01_flash
flash_radius=15
light_anim=l_gun01_flash
projectile_archetype=li_gun01_mark01_ammo
separation_explosion=sever_debris
auto_turret=false
turn_rate=90
lootable=true
LODranges=0, 20, 40, 80, 100

The second program, fled_ids, lets you look at the ids_name and ids_info numbers you will find in you weapon_eqip.ini file and allow you to either change the information displayed on the screen for the weapon you are modding, thus changing the name from Justice mark 1 to Diamondback as you indicated in you post... the Justice mark 1 will appear as 263357 or li_gun01_mark01 in the weapon_equip.ini. You would simply enter that ids_name... 263357 into the appropriate box in the Fled_ids program and press the button "get ids_name" and it will show you "Justice Mark I" on the screen. You could simply rename it to Diamondback by overwritting it with "Diamondback" on the Fled_ids screen and clicking on the "save ids_name" button and it would forever after be seen as a Diamondback on the right side of you equipment dealer's screen when you go to buy weapons. However to change the information that shows up when you click on the weapon in the dealer's screen, you would have to also modify the ids_info (which happens to be 264357... or 1000 more than the ids_name number) also using the fled_ids program and the second box where you would input that number which is listed in your decrypted weapon_equip.ini file. It will show a bunch of information which looks like this...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?><RDL><PUSH/><TRA data="1" mask="1" def="-2"/><JUST loc="center"/><TEXT>R6-A "Justice" Liberty Laser Cannon Mk I</TEXT><PARA/><TEXT> </TEXT><PARA/><TRA data="0" mask="1" def="-1"/><JUST loc="left"/><TEXT>This is a laser-based weapon that provides a high refire rate at a reduced damage output. This weapon is most effective against positron shields, and weakest against graviton shields. </TEXT><PARA/><TEXT> </TEXT><PARA/><POP/></RDL>

Do not under any circumstances whatsoever modify anything other than the actual text of this infocard. That is, do not change anything other than the actual description of the weapon which comes after JUST loc="center"/><TEXT> and before </TEXT><PARA/><TEXT> or your onscreen infocard will be jumbled up. Then again a little farther on where it says <TEXT> again you can change the blurb about the weapon as well. So you might change it to look like this...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?><RDL><PUSH/><TRA data="1" mask="1" def="-2"/><JUST loc="center"/><TEXT>Diamondback Laser Cannon </TEXT><PARA/><TEXT> </TEXT><PARA/><TRA data="0" mask="1" def="-1"/><JUST loc="left"/><TEXT>This is a laser-based weapon that provides a high refire rate and high damage output. This weapon is most effective against positron shields, and weakest against graviton shields. </TEXT><PARA/><TEXT> </TEXT><PARA/><POP/></RDL>

You see... only change the stuff between the <TEXT> markers and you will be ok.

I hope this rather longwinded explaination helped, but others helped me, so now I help you... and so it goes. Maybe I should have posted this as a tutorial, but there are others out there as I said.

JustSomeGuy

That was good!

Fiddling with refire rates.

On the topic of class 10 weapons, i 'stepped' the refire by one for each weapon.
10 = 0.1 (fast)
9 = 0.111111
8 = 0.125
7 = 0.142857
6 = 0.166667
5 = 0.2
4 = 0.25
3 = 0.333333
2 = 0.5
1 = 1 (slow)

The effect of having ten weapons all firing at different rates (step 1) is similar to that of a gatling gun. Almost always never miss as the different refire rates ensures a near solid barrage of fire as opposed to 'gaps' when all the weapons fire at the same rate. Yeah tend to blind yourself, but hey all the more fun and sharks do that too!

Happy modding!

Well, if you just want to switch a weapon for another go into weapon_goods.ini, find the nickname of the gun you want to replace (Justice Mk 1 = li_gun01_mark01) and change the equipment = entry to the appropriate weapon, I can't remember which on is the diamond back, but all of the codename weapons are special_gun01 - special_gun15.