One thing I've noticed while using this site is that some mods completely redo hardpoints, and change their names to things like Liberty Heavy Weapon instead of Gun/Missile-Class X, but I've never seen anything about actually how to do it. So I figured it out and I've used the knowledge on this site a ton, so I thought I'd give something back. If this information has already been given I apologize, I guess I was just being blind when searching for it.
This is my first tutorial, so if it's a little odd I ask you to bear with me.

One thing that is important when reading this tutorial is understanding the difference between a hardpoint and a hardpoint type. A hardpoint is the physical hardpoint of the ship, and has no bearing on what is mounted on it, only specifies whether the hardpoint is fixed (e.g. HpMine) or revolute (e.g. HpWeapon01), and the gun's default orientation and its max and min rotation if it is revolute. A hardpoint type is what kind of hardpoint it is; whether it's a mine hardpoint, torpedo hardpoint, class 10 gun hardpoint or class 2 elite shield hardpoint.

Now, enough with the babbling and on to the good stuff.

Utilities needed:

ResHacker

File edited (it would be a good idea to back this up):

EXE\resources.dll

First thing you'll need is what hardpoint you're going to change and what you're going to change the hardpoint name to. For the sake of example, we'll change the Gun/Missile-Class 10 hardpoint name to Uber Gun/Missile (excuse my lack of creativity, I'm not good with that kind of thing).

Use ResHacker.exe to open resources.dll in the exe folder of your Freelancer installation. On the left you should see something like:

Open the String Table folder by clicking the (+) by it and scroll down to folder 96, open it the same way and click on the 1033 node.

Now on the right you should see this:

<pre><font size=1 face=Courier>STRINGTABLE
LANGUAGE LANG_ENGLISH, SUBLANG_ENGLISH_US
{
1520, "Thruster"
1521, "Torpedo/Disruptor"
1522, "Mine"
1523, "Countermeasure"
1524, "Turret"
1525, "Gun/Missile-Class 1"
1526, "Gun/Missile-Class 2"
1527, "Gun/Missile-Class 3"
1528, "Gun/Missile-Class 4"
1529, "Gun/Missile-Class 5"
1530, "Gun/Missile-Class 6"
1531, "Gun/Missile-Class 7"
1532, "Gun/Missile-Class 8"
1533, "Gun/Missile-Class 9"
1534, "Gun/Missile-Class 10"
1535, "Switch To Target"
}</font></pre>

Change "Gun/Missile-Class 10" to "Uber Gun/Missile", click on Compile Script, save and that's all there is to it! The locations for all the hardpoint names I could find are as follows:
Gun/Missile Class 1-10 - folder 96
Turret Class 1-10 - folder 109
Torpedo/Disruptor - folder 109
Cruise Disruptor - folder 109
Mine - folder 96
Countermeasure - folder 96

Do not be fooled by the Torpedo/Disruptor entry in folder 96; that's not the one the game uses, I have no idea why it's in there.

With that information you can have up to 24 completely different hardpoint types, including torpedo, cruise disruptor, mine and countermeasure mounts.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you want to have completely custom hardpoint types, like Kusari Energy Weapon or Stalker Missile Only hardpoints, is in shiparch.ini, if a hardpoint has class 8 capabilities in game then that hardpoint has capabilities for class 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 weapons. So in order to achieve true custom hardpoint names you'll have to change all that fun stuff too, otherwise you'll find you can mount an energy missile launcher to a flak weapon mount or something like that.

I should probably also add the hardpoint types and their corresponding names in-game, for those that don't know:

hp_gun_special_X = Gun/Missile-Class X
hp_turret_special_X = Turret-Class X
hp_torpedo_special_1 = Torpedo/Disruptor (even though the default name for this hardpoint type has both torpedo and disruptor in it, this is just the torpedo hardpoint. The reason it has both in its name is all torpedo hardpoints also have a cruise disruptor hardpoint)
hp_torpedo_special_2 = Cruise Disruptor
hp_mine_dropper = Mine
hp_countermeasure_dropper = Countermeasure

As if most of those weren't obvious.

Unfortunately I do not know of a way to completely remove the (Class X) tags at the end of every weapon, but I can make it so it just says X instead of (Class X). What you do is under file 62 change the last string from " (Class " to " " and under file 63 either change the first string from " )" to "" or delete it altogether. If someone knows how to remove it completely I would appreciate it greatly if you told me how, because this is going to annoy me a ton.

Edited by - 0blivion on 8/27/2007 6:06:48 PM