no ability can go beyond level three

at least not in this game... maybe when sins 2 come out

I thought that might be the case, but oh well. Maybe you could rework the abilities to have lvl 3 stats to start, alter them a bit to keep them from going "god mode" all over the place but make them increase in different ways each lvl. Some of the strong lvl 6s and the decent dmg abilities you could just improve the range,antimatter, or cool-down.

The planet eater lvl 6s seem ok, increasing the dmg per second could make it a little too much of a quick killer, maybe just an antimatter reduction or something, even a cool-down reduction would be sufficient. things like Replicate forces and spawn bomber squadron you could maybe just double the number of units they spawn(or leave as is with as crazy as those bombers get lol). Radiance I think would be tricky, unless you could set the max targets to two or something, 'cause increasing that might make it a little too, point and click instant kill, then again testing is testing and that may be just the thing it needs . Power surge could get ridiculous so maybe just a antimatter reduction for that one. The multi target ones like the missiles off the vasari destroyer, you could increase the targets, since you're hitting more than that number with your regular missiles in front of you anyway lol. Anyway that's all I got for ideas like 'em or don't half of them I'm only half sure are possible anyway lol ENJOY

            BadTune~ This is my BOOMSTICK~!

Omg Double post after 5 days

Anyway, majorly face-palmed myself a moment ago. Tried to run the auto-dock squadrons opti-add-on with the flagships mod(figured why not, seems like it'd make it all the more bad-ass) right? Entity files miss match, setting them up opti-on-top,negates the flagship spawner in the mods list, setting them up with flagship on top, well mini-dump. then it dawned on me, Can't autodock something if it doesn't know it exists!! *sigh* entity file and game info file incompatability *sulk* but at least I'm learning*sigh* maybe I'll be modding when I get a better comp/programs for it(Nvidia GeForce 5100) pretty damn good for a 8 year old system damnit

                               BadTune~ No,Not there!!~

In honor of having over 200 downloads on wincustomize and my project site for this mod I give you version 0.04.

Version 0.04

1. Adds new level 9 ability to Capital Ships
   • Flagship Promotion: Your seasoned crew is ready for a Flagship. This Capitalship will be scuttled to construct the new Flagship.
   • The ability scuttles the capital ship and then takes 75 seconds to construct the new ship and phase jump to the planet where the capital ship was scuttled.
2. Increases to following Flagship starting stats
   1. MaxHullPoints/RestoreRate
   2. MaxShieldPoints/RestoreRate
   3. ArmorPoints
   4. MaxAntiMatter

Note: the newly created flagship will start at level 1, however at this point you should be able to purchase it up to level 4 which will essentially have the same stats as the capital ship that was scuttled.

I'll let this one burn in a little before I post it on wincustomize and then I'll see if their is still interest in it moving forward.

Enjoy - ZombiesRus5

This is the kind of thing I did for my OS 1.191 epic capital ships mod.  They start with level 5 combat stats, and abilities start at the former level 3, then go up from there.  For some, they get qualitative new improvements.  For instance, I put cleansing brilliance on a turret, and increased the range or area of effect of many of the abilities at the higher levels.  Given the increased antimatter pools and regeneration rates of these ubercapitals, reducing antimatter cost in most cases seemed pointless.

I'm almost done playtesting and finishing it.

Ever thought of trying to make the Flagship like the home planet: you can choose it but you only get one at a time and that ONE has up stats across the board.

Just another thought: make each CAP turned flag have a unique aura based on class that it gives to it fleet. Battle=damage  Siege=range  stuff like that.

I enjoy this mod even if it is not one of those fancy total conversions  But yesterday I encounterd a problem: I pressed 'Flagship Promotion' but nothing happend. Well my Carrier (TEC) exploded but that was everything. No Flagship at all .

Edit - Double post.

Yikes! I'll have a look at that. I think the promote time is way to long too and will pull that in a lot.

Thank you for the feedback and I'm glad your enjoying it. 

i'll hopefully have a fix posted later today.

I found this flagship idea interesting and last night I looked at a few things to see whats what. I want a transfer admiralty button for each cap ship in the Fleet Logistics. A cap ship with the admiral onboard will have finest hour renamed and no anti-matter cost. 

The issues I need to figure out are how to remove the ability if the admiral moves ships. How to make the research buttons always pressable without having 100 stages and maybe an abandon ship button in the fleet organizer. Just some ideas, I might fail miserably.

Oh ya, I have a second mesh listed in the entity for each cap that will have the flag on it but can I get it to go back or more stages again.

MeshNameInfoCount 2
MeshNameInfo
    meshName "CapitalShip_PsiBattlePsionic"
    criteriaType "None"
MeshNameInfo
    meshName "CapitalShip_PsiBattlePsionic_FlagShip"
    criteriaType "Research"
    prerequisites
        NumResearchPrerequisites 1
        ResearchPrerequisite
        Subject "RESEARCHSUBJECT_Flagship"
        Level 1
meshNameIncreasedEffectName ""  <-- whats this do
meshNameDecreasedEffectName "" <-- whats this do

EDIT: FAILED. Why have an open ability slot 4 if you can use it. Guess I might try my fleet command structure to cast ability finest hour but I suck at ability editing.

Can you make an ability on cast once or if I cast again the original ship stops using the ability? Probably in the buffs. Heeellllpppp!

"FirstSpawnerNoLongerHasBuff" ?

"LastSpawnerNoLongerHasBuff" ?

This is a good simple idea and possibly worth investigating.

My goal now is keep this particular mod simple. As Weatherlights said, it doesn't have to be fancy to fun. Others have the very nice total conversion mods and Xalderon_ looks like he will have a nice capital ship ability mod coming out so I will resist the urge to add "too much" here.

This might be a perception issue due to the excessively long time it took to spawn the new capital ship. I have decreased this to 10 seconds which plays out good. I also add the sound used when capital ships level up to help give feedback the ability is doing something besides blowing up the capital ship.

Version 0.05 (Some of you have found it already )

1. Reduces promote flagship time from 75 seconds to 10 seconds
2. Adds capitalship level up sound to Flagship promotion

ok, this is awesome, but at the same time, possibly game killing lol. ALL ships besides caps/flags/cargo ships STAY when destroyed, admittedly cool when they fly off into open space n fire leaving a trail(yay graphics mod) but I'm wondering if this will cause quite a bit more drag on the memory and cause the heavy 2 gig wall to fall again. Anyway I'm still havin fun but if ya manage to isolate this problem, give them like a 5-10 min timer, 'cause it's seriously fun to watch them, every battle becomes a graveyard =D

 I have no idea what any of this means! Did you intend all that for this thread? If so, it sounds like you are running with a different mod of which I will not be testing with. I can safely say I have not seen anything written above in my testing...

Well B's Graphic mod + flagships 5.0 cause derelict graveyards lol, I have flags over balknights graphics mod on the list, but id didn't do the same thing with 3.0, does it with 4.0 too lol think somewhere between 3.0 and 4.0 you changed something(I think the timer /scuttle,new flagship thing) I re downloaded both mods, yours and the graphics mod and re-stacked them the same and it still happens lol

Edit: Think I figured it out, volumetrics explosions is mixed in with balknights graphics mod. With volume a ship usually floats a bit post death then explodes, I think where your flag ship upgrade skill came in, something got muddled along the way and the post flaot then explode thing lost it's shiny explode and so they just keep goin lol, atm I have a sun circled by 500 mines, 4 starbases, and about 40+ enemy ships just floating off into nowhere

interesting idea and looks like a fantastic tool by GruntMaster, 

regarding creating ships from the Flagship, i believe that can be done with the deployXXShip ability or the Fleetbeacon ability. As for creating a Flagship from some other ship, lets say another capital?  I am aware of the 'launchship' that builds or explodes and builds the Starbases, so that seems one route, as for making them full fledged Capitals and then changing out the mesh for the Flagship, that i am not familiar with, though it seems intriguing and interesting. 

Keep up the good work, will be interesting to see it when you have it ready to go.

-Teal

There is another possibility here I hadn't considered at the time. It may be you had ZERO fleet supply remaining and based on the order of buffs the new flagship is spawned and then the current capital ship is destroyed.

To test this I created a situation where I had zero remaining fleet supply and hit the promote button. And similar to what you reported there was a really nice explosion and then nothing

I believe I have a way to fix this by reordering the buffs slightly to ensure the fleet supply is free'd from the scuttled capital ship prior to spawning the flagship. I'll update after I do some testing...

Edit - So I haven't been able to find a way to spawn the flagship when there is no fleet supply. It doesn't seem to matter when I destroy the capital ship the game still won't spawn the flagship (and I tried quite a few different ways).

As it stands you will need to ensure you have atleast 1 (one) free fleet supply point before using the promote flagship ability. If you have 0 (zero) fleet supply (capital supply CAN be zero) you will destroy your capital ship and get nothing. Simply wait until you have free supply or scuttle a less useful frigate prior to promoting.

Update on the happy accident between volumetric explosions mod and Flagship 5: kay, so a little more testing and I found out, Tec isn't effected, their stuff explodes into dust ^^. Advent and Vasari seem to be the only ones with the post death lost in space drift. The dead vasari and advent ships remain viewable as icons in the gravity well but arent on the display on the left anymore. again, admitibly cool, but it still causes some memory drag. Gonna switch back to useing this with tsop and the tsop add-ons. If ya pm me your email I can send you some screens of a "dead fleet adrift" from a sun lol Taken on my mod test map, Sandbox =3

How do you have Bailkights and the flagship mod stacked. I believe the flagship mod would need to be on top as it is the primary mod and Bailknights would need to be on bottom. That said I did a quick test and everything looked good if they were stacked this way. However, if the flagship mod was on bottom I noted the flagship spawning structure did not go away and exhibited the same side affect noted above. Either way the Explosions.explosionData and CAPITALSHIP_XXX.entity overlap and need to be accounted for to properly use Bailknights mod with the flagship mod.

Assuming this right...

I would also recommend merging the two mods together to make a flagship mod with Bailknights extensions. This would be incredibly simple to do based on the compare between the two mods (very few overlapping changes). First the Capital ships in bailnights mod would need to be given the 5th promote flagship ability. Second the Explosions.explosiondata (probably the root of your issue) from Bailknights mod needs to be updated to add the Silent explosion type.

Alternatively, I believe you could merge only the conflicting files from Bailknights into the flagship mod making a bailnight compatible version if you don't want to mess with so many files.

Hope this helps.

oh I already figured that much out, I was just enjoying the side effects of the mod mash but that's done with and I have made the changes(option B: the less work one above) with notepad++ and it's beautiful side by side compare feature =D

Any news on a update Rus5? kinda excited over any new abilities you've come up with for the flagships =3

Rus has been busy working on the Sins of Fallen mod, I would know because I'm working with him in testing it out, so far I believe it's the main project he's working on atm but I can't read his mind so it's likely he's working on other projects... and of course there is to take into consideration that RL is ever present

Sorry, I've been very busy with real life and trying to get things accomplished with Sins of the Fallen. I do have some abilities that Xalderon_ let me look at but haven't attempted to make them flagship compatible yet.

I also want to complete the pact mod at some point too. Just not enough time right now...