What controls how fast a weapon fires. I'm messing around in FO3Edit and I see both "Fire Rate" and "Attack Shots/Sec". Sometimes they are equal, but sometimes I see where they are not. I was seeking to increase the rate of fire of a specific weapon, changed both of them, but I did not see any increase in the ROF. Does another variable play a role? Am I missing something? Thanks.

For Automatic weapons, the rate of fire is determined by the Fire Rate attribute. For non-automatic weapons, it's determined by the "Multiplier" and Attack Multiplier attributes, as well as, I think, the attack animation the weapon uses. Multiplier and Attack Multiplier both affect the speed of the attack animation. The Attack Shots/Sec attribute is automatically calculated by the GECK when you change any of the attributes that affect it. I don't know if manually editing Attack Shots/Sec in FO3Edit (you cannot do that in the GECK) has any effect in-game. Two other relevant attributes are Semi-Automatic Fire Delay Min and Max, which add a random delay after attacking during which one cannot make another attack. Those two aren't factored into Attack Shots/Sec if I remember correctly, but they do impact the practical attack rate.

See the http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/Weapons article from the GECK wiki for more information on any of these attributes.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question and providing a link to other resources!

I've been playing around with this a bit. For the laser rifle at least, when its set to non-automatic, fire delay min and max are the only thing that effect rate of fire. For automatic, its the product of rate of fire, weapon attack anim mult, and weapon anim mult. You can set weapon attack anim mult and weapon anim mult via FOSE functions (though it will effect every instance of that weapon in the game, and the changes will reset upon starting a new gaming session). Changing weapon anim mult will also effect things like the speed that the weapon is drawn and reloaded, so you may want to limit your changes to the weapon attack anim mult. The attack animation that you choose also seems to have an effect - changing the laser rifle's attack anim from attack4 to attackloop will give you a ridiculously high rate of fire.