Oh dear...

Loki/Development Team/Paradoxnt:

Per my promises, I'm working on the following abilities:

1. tweaks to the Nebula's Gemeni ability to make 1/2/3 holograms (looks like this was already done in the mod patch - didn't realize it)
   
2. ability that allows regular cruisers/frigates to pop out a mine during combat (harder than I first thought - have to make it combat only to prevent mine spamming when not in combat).

Paradoxnt had some good ideas a few pages ago (see here).  I can program most of those without too much trouble - the question is whether the development team actually would use them.  Let me know and I can do some coding.

P.S. - got a new idea: boarding party.  Target enemy ships w/ no shields left and allows for random sabotage effects/damage.  Presumably Klingon ability, since they don't mind going out in a blaze of glory, but hey, maybe some star fleet red-shirt ensigns can do the same thing - just don't expect them to do anything but get killed (that's all they're good for).

So is anyone already working on it?

currently its a low priority item right now until the core of the mod is completed.

Actually, I'm having a huge problem doing the basic programming stuff I used to do all the time pre-entrenchment.  When I create an exact copy of a ship or ability, I get a mini-dump if I try to substitute the new ability or ship in the mod.  It's like there's a new set of references in the Entrenchment version of Sins that I never saw in the previous version.

Does anybody know what's going on here?  Is there a new "master list" of files that I'm unaware of?

(I mean, I've figured out HOW do make some of these abilities, I just don't know how to make the damn game/mod accept new ones/ones with new names)

Update: I've got an ability set up to make Klingon ships (right now, the D-10) pop out mines every now and then during combat.  Easily customizable.  The only problem is that usually the mines hit ships as soon as they pop out, making it hard to tell the mine was ever there.  I'm trying to work on this to see if I can make it more noticeable so that it's not just a mysterious explosion on the screen.  I haven't figured out how to insert abilities with new names, so right now I've just written over existing SoA2 file names to make the damn thing work.  Any advice on how to make the mod accept new names w/o a mini-dump would be appreciated.

Actually, that won't be too hard I don't think.  There's an existing parameter in the game for HP below a given percent, I assume there must be one for shields too.

this sounds like you are not adding the files to the manifests.

I have written a small utility to MAKE fresh manifests for any mod and it can be downloaded from this thread.

harpo

Not hard to do with a ability or  a buff  

Yeah sorry Prawn, I suggested the Boarding Parties idea for the Suq'Jagh the other day.

Regarding the shields down thing however- while not exactly canon (though kinda) the Suq'Jagh launched boarding craft *through* enemy shields to penetrate the hull (ie they didn't use transporters) in Armada 1. Since the Federation ships tend to have higher shielding than their counterparts, it seems unfair to force the Suq-Jagh to knock shields down first. Ofcourse, any borg ships (when added) would be immune to this power).

(I'm pretty much duplicating this post in the enhancement one too).

@ Mystic i was thinking more of a random chance to disable a system rather than it being a certainty every time a ship was low on health, i agree it would be a bit crippling to have subsystem damage on every ship every time it was damaged to a certain point. 

i was wondering more about something more like a 1-5% chance to cause subsystem damage during a weapons discharge. 

just wondering really  

if you guys can make that random disability work, i would definately use it in the mod. I agree to adding to the realism.

on a side note, once the romulans are ready they will be released, without the extra enchancements we had planned. Stress and i had a meeting last night and there will be ships changes to the feds, romulans, and klingons. ships like the lakota are being mothballed permanently. all other enchancements and add ons that were in the works are now on hold.

Hmmm, using the mothballed ships as pirates/neutrals is a great idea.

We have had problems with the pirates before as in dump issues during raids. It has to do with the size of the pirate fleet sizes and what ships are in the raids. Sins seems to be more finiky about altering this than anything else. It has to be perfect for it to work without dumps. Pir8s are the lowest of prioritys right now.