It took me a while to discover that chain_shooting_cooldown_modifier controls the Spidertron’s weapon speed, and that the value 0.5 is the reason why loadouts ranging from 2 to 6 rockets all end up with the same total damage multiplier of ×2.

Although the system is not very intuitive, having chain_shooting_cooldown_modifier configurable per loadout in the settings could be useful. For example, setting the modifier to 0.33 for a 6-rocket loadout would result in a 300% chain shooting speed, which makes sense.

Another interesting property in the Prototype is allow_passengers. Setting it to false in the setting by user could potentially make some other parameters in the prototype better. Maybe weight? Or larger grid?

I'm not the person to ask about balancing, so that last suggestion might be out of scope for me

For the chain shooting speed, that was an issue I had noticed but never really looked into, so thanks for bringing that to my attention. Knowing the math helps out a lot, though again I have no idea about balancing, so all I can really do is just expose the values to the user (currently just using 1/setting as the chain_shooting_cooldown_modifier for each of the affected spidertrons, regardless of weapon count)

Implemented in v1.0.3

The value 0.5 means that when a gun switches to the next one, the new gun begins its cycle at 50% progress. If a gun has no bullets, then the first gun with ammunition starts as usual at 0%.

With all Spidertrons set to for example to 0.33, a Spidertron with a single gun fires at 100% speed, but any Spidertron with 2 or more guns jumps to 300% speed, which feels odd.

I’d like to configure this per Spidertron. For example,
if user want a 2-weapon Spidertron to fire at 200% speed and a 6-weapon Spidertron at 600%, the modifiers need to be set to 0.5 and 0.16, respectively.

Or, if user want (2-4)-weapons fire vanilla (200%), and (5-6) fire quicker (250%, 300%), the modifers are 0.5, 0.4, 0.33

The problem with that is the number of settings that would require. I very much dislike adding too many settings and prefer to consolidate as many as possible. Even adding the number into the string setting for the spidertron would introduce a lot more complexity than is really necessary for such a minor change.

I suppose I could make it use 1/weapon count instead?

It will not work for vanilla 4 weapons - 200%.

you could add it in the weapons string setting.
A number in the string (if any) will be parsed as chain_shooting_cooldown_modifier

Even adding the number into the string setting for the spidertron would introduce a lot more complexity than is really necessary for such a minor change.

If you knew the amount of processing it takes just to parse the setting string as it is right now... I can't just check for a number in the string, because the user could very easily be using a number as part of the nickname, it would take more specific string matching to make it work.

It wouldn't be impossible, but it would be more work than it's worth imo. I'll be marking that particular feature as [Won't Implement], but here's an extension mod requiring this one that applies its own modifier (replacing the one being used by this mod) per loadout.

It's infinitely simpler to just make 10 different settings and apply them via (from 1 to 10) loop than to do more string parsing