First go to:

Main Screen (if in game use F1 and the main screen appears)
Options
Keyboard (not at my game pc so I think keyboard is right)

There are 3 tabs:

Tab 1:
Scroll down tab 1 to find "fire weapon group" list
Select "fire weapon group 1" and click which ever key you want to use in game when firing this group.

Tab 2:
Scroll down to find the "assign weapon group" list
Secect "assign weapon group 1" and click which ever key you want to use in-game for assigning weapons groups.


Note 1: Some players have reported issues with weapon group one. I only assign from group 2 up.
Note 2: It is easy if you use the same key to assign and fire by using shift. e.g. key 1 to fire and shift 1 to assign or e to fire and shift e to assign.

IN GAME:

Turn off all of your Primary weps by opening the square on the bottom right of your hud (you must be in flight) and clicking on the wep. They will go from green to blue.
Now in click on the weps you want as your weapon group so that they appear green. e.g. Cannonball and Hornet so that Missile and Cruise Disrupt fire together.
When you have all of the wepons for your group selected press "shift 1"
Turn your primary weps back on again.(reverse the above -- click on them to make green)

Now when you press 1 the Cannonball and Hornet (our example group 1) should fire.

Grouped weps and primary can double over, so you could drop mines with your primary and when you fire your missiles for example. Or you may use Cannonball on group 1 and Cannonball plus Paralizer on group 2.

Hope that makes sense. Did it in a hurry so feel free to correct me.

Thanks Druid for the prompt reply, I'm sure I can get it sorted out now with the directions you've provided.

You are very welcome.

The "keyboard" instruciton is actually "controls" and the 3 tabs are "ship controls", "user interface" and "multiplayer".

I use my settings where wep grp 2 fires missiles, counter measure and cruise disruptor while grp 3 will fire cruise disrupt and counter measure. The reason for group 3 is that on the multiplayer server I use torpedo and missiles can be shot using cruise disruptors before they hit you so my group 3 is a defensive "anti-torp" setting.

Be careful when setting your weps as you must be in flight but that means you are open to attack as you tinker with the weps so find a safe corner of the map.

Also the grouped weps only fire once per push of the button. In other words putting energy weps with an 8.33 refire in group is useless as they will only fire once.

It worked fine Druid - thanks again for the help.

I found that the settings didn't work unless you set at least two different weapons groups
not sure why that is

@Checker: Cool, glad to be of help.

@Merlin: In my first post above I made the following observation:

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Note 1: Some players have reported issues with weapon group one. I only assign from group 2 up.

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Your problem with having to use 2 groups could stem from the issues I have heared relating to group 1. I never tried to find out why this may be an issue as grouping from 2 up and ignoring 1 solved the problem.

yea, I was using group one but, it seems to work fine as long as another group is used as well
good to know what the trouble is though
most of the time I don't really even need wepon groups, only on vanilla servers

on 88Flak alot more often these days