Here's the solution. It strikes me that there's two statistics related to rate of fire: cycling speed (time between each individual shot) and reloading speed (how much time it takes to load another "magazine" into the weapon. In the case of overheating weapons there's also two more statistics related to rate of fire: cooldown speed and time on full overheat (when you fully overheat the weapon and can't shoot at all.

It strikes me that you could code linked fire by having the cycling speed be miniature (like 0 seconds or 0.1 seconds or 1 frame), so that the magazine is emptied instantly; but the reload speed be both instantaneous and reflective of how much time you want to have between each linked shot. You could also use the cycle weapons system in BF2142 to use different "weapons" for a different linked system (might also effect how torpedoes are fired, single or paired). Or, in the case of the universally twin-linked laser cannons on the TIE fighter, you could just have one weapon with paired shots.

Then, to create tactical difference in the different firing modes, you would have overheat in the fast firing single fire mode, but not in dual linked or quad linked. However, dps is slightly higher on single fire, making a single target sustain more damage in the same amount of time than if you were using fire-linked lasers. Thus, it would sort out like this: if you can keep your guns consistently trained on a single target that's easy to hit, such as a big or slow=moving target, use single-fire. If you've got good accuracy and sense of leading targets in a dogfight, a couple linked shots would be well suited for taking the foe down. Especially if they're flying a cardboard box like the TIE fighter.

There's my idea.

GC Veteran (0.14-R6) "General Jafar"