Now I have a suspicion telling me that the interval time is not due to the siege weapon animation but actually to the crew animation.
The .modelreferencepoints is the file that controls the siege weapon crew. It sets their position and apparently their animations.
Entries in the .modelreferencepoints are like this:
Code:
19 Engine StationPoint 1.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
0.0 1.0 0.0 0.0
0.0 0.0 1.0 -0.5
0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0
9 Crew_Rear
16 Engine PushPoint
1.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
0.0 1.0 0.0 0.0
0.0 0.0 1.0 -0.5
0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0
9 Crew_Rear
as you can see there is an animation line for each entry
So I checked descr_skeleton.txt and found out this:
Code:
type MTW2_Crew_Culverinparent MTW2_Siegecrew
anim default data/animations/MTW2_Knifeman/MTW2_Knifeman_basepose.cas
anim stand_a_idle data/animations/MTW2_Crew/MTW2_Crew_crew_stand_idle.cas
anim crew_left data/animations/siege_Crew/crew_left_idle.CAS -fr ;-evt:data/animations/carry_and_artillery/ballista_crew_left_crank_loop.evt
anim crew_left_to_crew_stand data/animations/siege_Crew/crew_left_idle.CAS -fr ;-evt:data/animations/carry_and_artillery/ballista_crew_left_fire_idle.evt
anim crew_left_stoke_1 data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Left_Stoke_1.cas -fr ;-evt:data/animations/carry_and_artillery/ballista_crew_left_fire_idle.evt
anim crew_left_stoke_2 data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Left_Stoke_2.cas -fr -evt:data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Left_Stoke_2.evt
anim crew_left_stoke_3cycle data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Left_Stoke_3_cycle.cas -fr -evt:data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Left_Stoke_3_cycle.evt
anim crew_left_stoke_4 data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Left_Stoke_4.cas -fr -evt:data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Left_Stoke_4.evt
anim crew_left_cover data/animations/siege_Crew/crew_left_cover.cas -fr -evt:data/animations/siege_Crew/crew_left_cover.evt
anim crew_right data/animations/siege_Crew/crew_right_idle.CAS -fr ;-evt:data/animations/carry_and_artillery/ballista_crew_right_crank_loop.evt
anim crew_right_to_crew_stand data/animations/siege_Crew/crew_right_idle.CAS -fr ;-evt:data/animations/carry_and_artillery/ballista_crew_right_fire_idle.evt
anim crew_right_load_1 data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Right_Load_1.cas -fr -evt:data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Right_Load_1.evt
anim crew_right_load_2 data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Right_Load_2.cas -fr -evt:data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Right_Load_2.evt
anim crew_right_load_3 data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Right_Load_3.cas -fr -evt:data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Right_Load_3.evt
anim crew_right_load_4cycle data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Right_Load_4_cycle.cas -fr
anim crew_right_load_5 data/animations/siege_Crew/Culverin_Right_Load_5_end.cas -fr
anim crew_right_cover data/animations/siege_Crew/crew_right_cover.cas -fr -evt:data/animations/siege_Crew/crew_right_cover.evt
anim crew_rear data/animations/siege_Crew/crew_rear_idle.CAS -fr ;-evt:data/animations/carry_and_artillery/ballista_crew_right_crank_loop.evt
anim crew_rear_to_crew_stand data/animations/siege_Crew/crew_rear_idle.CAS -fr ;-evt:data/animations/carry_and_artillery/ballista_crew_right_fire_idle.evt
anim crew_rear_fire_idle data/animations/siege_Crew/crew_rear_fire_idle.cas -fr -evt:data/animations/siege_Crew/crew_rear_fire_idle.evt ;-evt:data/animations/carry_and_artillery/ballista_crew_right_fire_idle.evt
anim crew_rear_fire_commence data/animations/siege_Crew/crew_rear_idle.CAS -fr ;-evt:data/animations/carry_and_artillery/ballista_crew_right_fire_commence.evt
anim crew_rear_fire_recover data/animations/siege_Crew/crew_rear_idle.CAS
There is the crew animations, though the path points to a folder that DOES NOT EXIST in medieval 2 total war data extracted files.
I suppose these paths are a left over from ROME, and now the crew animations are set directly in the skeletons of the units in battle_models.modeldb file.
So far this is all I discovered.