Okay, I think I have gone as far as I want to without giving someone the chance to see if this mod makes sense the way it is going.
I am attaching the "vanilla" version of the updated mod (B5 Ver 2 vanilla.zip) as a beta test of sorts. It is vanilla because every race has the same weapons and facilities, they all use the same AI files (only modified as necessary to account for the different race names), and so they will all look and behave very much the same. There are no improved or advanced weapons inserted yet, and every race has the full 10 levels of each weapons tech (later races will get enhanced weapons and lose access to some of the weapons they can access in the beta version).
What I need is to have people help me ensure that the tradeoffs between weapons techs make sense - i.e. that it is not clearly superior to have molecular weapons vice laser ones, for instance. Research costs should figure into this (matter weapons, for instance, cost little to research but are inferior in performance to later versions of the more costly weapons.
I also could use some help in calculating min, org, and rad costs for the weapons. I have not rationalized them all because I really do not have a system yet. If anyone has a rational-sounding system let me know.
Pictures are the other incomplete element. I did a cursory search of component pack 25 and changed a few weapons images, but in a lot of cases large and medium weapons share an image. Somebody with some familiarity with the components image pack might have better luck settling on appropriate images where they do not exist.
Note that, since all 20 races have the exact same weapons at this point, comments need only refer to the weapon and not the race.
To use this mod, you will need to download it, unzip it into its own folder, and then move the files to the appropriate folders, replacing those with the same name. Obviously, this will incapacitate the mod as it stands, so if you want to use the existing version of the B5 mod, create a new version for this beta test version. You need to have
B5 mod version 2 installed first and overwrite the applicable files with these files.
Report any findings of note here (even if it to say you think things look okay so far). The sooner I can get feedback, the sooner I can add the finishing touches and specialize the weapons and facilities.