This is not possible, you have to keep the same structure. Entities have up to their 4 "abilities". The ability files always define requirements, targetting data, strings, etc, and call the buff file for the actual ability effect. There's no way to bypass the ability file entirely and apply the buff directly, since it's the ability itself that calls the buff.

You can make passive abilities, but they would have to occupy the ability slots.

Well, true, you could have several buffs attached to an ability, within limits. the point I was trying to make is that you can't bypass the need to have an "ability" attached to a ship. So, for example, there wouldn't be any way to add what you want to a capital ship without either removing one of its existing abilities, or in a few cases added to their existing ones.



This gets complicated. The best way to think of it is that the Buff says "what" it does, and the Ability says "how" it does it. So a buff applies damage, but the ability defines what can be targeted at what range, how much AM it costs, etc.

The ability file can only call one buff, so to add more you need to call buffs from other buffs, so on so forth.

(I know this isn't what you meant when you said to edit the present abilities, I'm just expanding)

Oh that's a tricky one. I haven't tried doing that, but it might be doable.

How exactly do you need it to work? For example, when the map starts the planet would apply that buff to the militia ships around it, but nothing else?

Thinking out loud - whether it's an InstantAction or a PeriodicAction, it will always remain "active" as long as there's no finish condition. If it's an InstantAction, it *should* always be applied, so even if you limit the number of targets, as you destroy the ships it was supposed to affect it will likely be applied to yours. If it's a PeriodicAction, it should be re-applied on intervals, instead.

I guess the first thing I'd try is to see if:

numPeriodicActions 1
periodicAction
actionCountType "Infinite"

can be changed to a different actionCountType. I haven't seen any, but maybe you could try "Single" or "Once" or something?

Which buff file had the Finite reference? Because logically, making something Finite has to have a definition of how many iterations it needs to do.

Sounds like that would have to be a buff within a buff call.. something like periodicAction with the Finite count of 1, applying a buff to ships within grav well (don't remember the reference that the planet abilities use for this). This would call a second buff which just has entityBoolModifiers to disable regeneration/engines/weapons to make the ships dead in space.

Thanks for the input guys!

Uzii, I think I would simply make new ships with the abilities coded in. It's a bit of a hack, but I think that's what I'm going to do as well.

Ship capturing is way fun. I've noticed a few other mods that have it (like the phaser race which captures all its ships). You have the graveyard, and I'm giving the ability to the tec light carrier to send a marine transport to disable and possibly capture an enemy ship. You wonder why capturing didn't make it into the game proper...

I was also thinking about using planets to add passive abilities to all my ships, but I think I'm going to go the ability route... because in that case I would have had to add the same critical chance ability to each ship, which is not as flexible as I'd like. I want capitals to have a longer damage threshold for critical hits than frigates, for example... (and my capital ships are actually frigate class so I can't sort the ability)

I'm thinking of using my passive buff as an infocard as well, so it displays information about the armor type/attack type of the ship you have selected.

Of course, now I'm limited to three abilities per ship, but that's not *too* bad, since none of my ships have more than three anyway...

What my system aims to do is: each ship weapon when fired will have a small chance to cause a critical hit on an enemy ship's hull (lucky shots). This will depend on the weapon class. Also, when ships take a certain amount of damage (using finishcondition damage taken), they'll fire an 'onbuff finished' action which will use the 'onchance' trigger to trigger various bad, but temporary effects.

If anyone is thinking of random effects that aren't "passiveweaponchance", remember you can use OnChance as an InstantActionTriggerType. You can find the syntax in BuffFighterBlinkTrigger.

It took an hour of looking through each of the 300 buff files to discover onchance, finish condition damage taken, and 'onbuff finished'. I wish we had a reference of all of the possible instantactions, finishconditions, entitymodifiers, etc. I was thinking of compiling such a list myself so I know all the tools I have to make new abilities...

That sort of list would be great on a sins editing wiki.. and I think one is out there too.

Heh, poor guy. He's right though, I've been thinking of ideas for help content on the new site (which the host should be up momentarily btw)... A beginner's guide to modding would be helpful. I just don't think I want to list every function and define them. ^-^