I couldn’t find one posted anywhere, so here’s a request for a module tutorial. Specifically, what each of the different lines in the text file does. Most are pretty obvious, but some are either a bit confusing, or need more of a description. Especially:
shield/armor penetration vs damage: if higher than the target’s rating does the damage go straight through and directly damage the hull? Or does it also damage the shield and armor? If my weapon’s armor penetration is low, will it even damage an armored cruiser? Also, say I have a fighter missile that has a shield penetration rating of 100, armor penetration rating of 8, and a damage of 8: would each shot pass through the target’s shields and do 8 damage to the armor (8 damage to hull if unarmored)?
flareuvid: is there a list somewhere of what the various values change?
sound: is there a list of the ingame sounds somewhere?
tracking speed vs turning speed…is tracking speed how fast the turret turns? I assume turning speed changes the turning rate of guided missiles.
I’m a bit confused on radiation. For example, what would this do in terms of total damage, how long would it be damaging the target, and how much damage would it do per effect?:
radiation_damage = 4 I assume this is per time unit
radiation_decay = 1.0 What does this even do?
total_damage = 30 But why is this needed if we have a damage duration?
damage_duration = 5600 Time target is taking radiation damage? This doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense if you have total damage?
The total damage, as i recall is for visual purposes only, for the module description data. It’s manually calculated from the other numbers.
i can give ya some help there
penertration:
If the shield resistance is greater than the penertration then the damage is done to the sheild into the shield points
eg: if your fighter get shot at buy a weapon that has 8 units of shield penertration then the damage is taken out of the shield points
so with your question:
Projectile - 100 shield Penertration - 8 Armor Penertration - 8 Damage
Hits a crusier with a “Shield Generator II” then the “shieldpoints” goes down 8 (255-8=247)
and i thinkk Armor acts as a divider to the damage, somehow, not sure how the penertration works here,
Tracking and Turning:
Tracking speed is how fast the turret tracks the object (a fighter for instance) so I htink if the tracking speed is greater or equal to the speed then it has a chance to hit (theres also projectile speed involved etc…) but if not then it has somhing like a 2% chance to hit (or so i read a while back)
turing speed is simply how fast the Missile turns
Sound:
if you look in the folder
data/sounds
then theres all the sounds used in the game
Radiation:
I dont have the order but i think its like this
radiation_damage = 4 The damage per time Unit
radiation_decay = 1.0 how much the damage decays by each time unit
total_damage = 30 the Total damage on the First hit?
damage_duration = 5600 how long until the damage is done
About your specific questions…
Shield/armour penetration: It only determines if your shots will inflict damage to the enemies shield/armour, if a shot with higher armour penetration than your enemy’s armour hits, it will damage the armour, but if it’s lower it will have no effect. The same for shields. Shots only go through shields and armour when they have lost half of their strength. Armour also gradually loses its resistance valour when it has recieved damage.
Flareuvid: The colour of the flares is picked from a file inside …\gsb\data\bitmaps\fx called missile_flare.dds. Like all graphic series in gsb the first object is determined with the number 0, increases going right and, when the row ends, restarts at the 1st column of the next row.
Sounds: All the sounds in gsb are inside …\gsb\data\sounds and also the dlcs add a couple of sounds (they are inside …\dlcname\data\sounds).
Tracking speed determines the weapons accuaracy AND the turn rate of the TURRETS. The turn speed line determines the speed at which projectiles (missiles) will turn.
Radiation damage is the starting damage that radiation does to the enemy.
Radiation decay determines the reduction of the initial radiation damage.
Damage_duration is how long the radiation damage will last.
Cliff already answered about what the total_damage does.
I think this should help you in creating new modules 
EDIT: Ag! Damn 20min in writing english posts, Jake answered more or less most part of it.