DPS And Attack Animation Damage Point
A basic breakdown:
Each unit has a base attack cooldown, I guess you could refer to it as BAT (Base Attack Time?). This how long they must wait between attacks.
They also have Attack Animations that need to play first in order for the Attack to happen. This is handled with the Animation Damage Point and Animation Backswing Point values.
These 2 values determine how long it takes for your attack to hit (or launch a missile if they're ranged) and how long afterwards your unit will remain playing their attack animation.
The Animation Backswing Point occurs AFTER the Animation Damage Point, and is interruptible. You've probably heard of "animation cancelling", well, this is directly related to that.
There's no reason you actually need to play the rest of your Attack animation once your attack has hit an enemy or your Attack projectile has launched.
This same concept is used for casting spells and is found under Art - Animation - Cast Backswing / Cast Point.
Footman for example have an attack cooldown of 1.35. This means that they will be able to attack once every 1.35 seconds.
They have a Backswing Point of 0.50 and an Animation Damage Point of 0.50. This means it takes 0.50 seconds for a Footman's attack to hit the enemy (Damage Point), and the Footman will continue to play it's attack animation for another 0.50 seconds (Backswing Point).
Attack speed will influence both the attack cooldown and the animation values, either increasing them or decreasing them.
The lower these values are the faster your unit will attack and vice versa.