Planets can only have passive abilities, but yes.  Efficient is to use the shipyards though, regardless, they can buff each ship as it comes.

You can only get that menu with your colonized planet.  You can't just spawn a constructor in an unowned well and build anyway.  You also can't make normal ships constructors.  If you'll notice, there is no mechanism for turning off phase jumping in the files.  It's handled internally.

http://zombiesrus5.com/wiki/doku.php?id=start

There is a CreatePlanetModule instant action, which behaves like the starbase ability.  It consumes the frigate and thus can't be used directly by the starbase.  So you'd spawn your "constructor" and position it where you wanted your building, then click a deploy ability to turn it into the structure.  Note that you wont get any use if you build civilian structures in unowned wells.

I cannot find anywhere where it makes it invulnerable, capturable, and not able to be scrapped.  It has to be somewhere in the haystack. 

Much is hardcoded, that would be one of them.  There are buff settings to make other things behave that way, however, the wiki has them.

Maybe you can make all ships that can't jump fighter class.

Set the hangar points on your ships that jump away from the ship where particle effect will be. You may have to delay the jump to give the fighters a chance to get to the ships before they jump.

This should give the proper effect you want, and IIRC you can make many different fighter class ships, but each shp can only handle 3 classes of fighters. So just make sure you have a couple of different ships that can open the gates.

EDIT: down side. Fighter class have no abilities and dont replace the same as frigates do.

I'm confused about what you mean.

You can make any ship into the fighter class and launch them from other ships!?  That is amazing.

Thanks for the enlightenment!

down side. Fighter class have no abilities and dont replace the same as frigates do.

I never even thought of that, that is indeed genius!

Ah so there can only be one type of constructor.

Wow, this opens up so many possibilities.  Thank you.  I guess the list of instant actions was faulty on the Buff Builder, I didn't even think to look at Zombie's.  I should have known because in one of his mods the titan can spawn in the superweapon, which is awesome.

Quoting psychoak, reply 2626

I cannot find anywhere where it makes it invulnerable, capturable, and not able to be scrapped.  It has to be somewhere in the haystack. 

Much is hardcoded, that would be one of them.  There are buff settings to make other things behave that way, however, the wiki has them.

Oh I see, I guess everything isn't moddable.

mistake post

4 classes.

Your biggest problem with disabling phase jump is going to be the AI wont be able to play the game.

In which case, you're better off using fighters for smaller ships even though they reproduce for free and can't use abilities.

This idea you have is completely foreign to the AI design.  Having designed a unit that can't jump for SOA2's X Class worlds, I've observed the AI trying to move the Echo Papa Drone constantly.

A homeworld style fleet design is fantastic, much better than what we have with vanilla Sins, but I can't see it actually working in this engine unless you make them all fighters.  You could have "corvettes" and "frigates" listed as fighters on things like dreadnoughts and command carriers, with actual fighters coming from smaller destroyers or something.  There is no clean solution for this though, it's free ships or completely broken behavior in some fashion.

I've probably done more working outside the box than anyone else, odds are I've done more with the system than the designers imagined was possible, but the only other ways I can see around this are even messier than the fighter option.  They'd be terribly limiting, not particularly easy on the AI, and require blowing up and recreating ships with complex buff chains I'm not dumb enough to want to write.

Actually this is not one of them. If I'm remembering this correctly there is no ability for it, but the buff file that applies those bool modifiers does exist and can be modded.

Quoting psychoak, reply 2632

4 classes.

 

Your biggest problem with disabling phase jump is going to be the AI wont be able to play the game.

 

In which case, you're better off using fighters for smaller ships even though they reproduce for free and can't use abilities.

 

This idea you have is completely foreign to the AI design.  Having designed a unit that can't jump for SOA2's X Class worlds, I've observed the AI trying to move the Echo Papa Drone constantly.

 

A homeworld style fleet design is fantastic, much better than what we have with vanilla Sins, but I can't see it actually working in this engine unless you make them all fighters.  You could have "corvettes" and "frigates" listed as fighters on things like dreadnoughts and command carriers, with actual fighters coming from smaller destroyers or something.  There is no clean solution for this though, it's free ships or completely broken behavior in some fashion.

 

I've probably done more working outside the box than anyone else, odds are I've done more with the system than the designers imagined was possible, but the only other ways I can see around this are even messier than the fighter option.  They'd be terribly limiting, not particularly easy on the AI, and require blowing up and recreating ships with complex buff chains I'm not dumb enough to want to write.

Ok, since it will screw up the AI by such a large amount I've decided to redesign the philosophy of jumping.  I've decided to only disable frigates jumping from one solar system to another with an ability on all the suns/black holes.  Jumping within the solar system will be allowed.  That way if I want to play vs AI I can enable a 1-star map.  How does the interstellar travel research work?  Does it turn all the stars into phase gates somehow, and allow the "gate's" use only for the faction that researched it so there are lots of phase gate properties stacked on the suns from each faction?  Sounds confusing if so.  If that's the case disabling jump drives should work I guess.  Maybe it is something hardcoded in and in that case probably will still work.  Does anyone know what that research subject does?

The question is, where may it be?  I was going to allow them to be destroyed but realized them being capturable was actually a better design philosophy, so I guess it really isn't that important anymore.

numEntityBoolModifiers 3
entityBoolModifier "CannotBeDamaged"
entityBoolModifier "CannotBeScuttled"
entityBoolModifier "CanBeCaptured"

We know what the modifiers are, we're just trying to figure out what files reference the neutral extractors.

None do that I could find.  BuffNeutralCapturableEntity just exists in a void, unreferenced by anything.

Ah well, thanks for looking!

Quoting JoshuaTedder, reply 2637

We know what the modifiers are, we're just trying to figure out what files reference the neutral extractors.

Why the neutral extractors in particular? With these modifiers you can create a new neutral entity that you can then place in any gravity well via the GSD.

Quoting Lavo_2, reply 2640

Quoting JoshuaTedder,

reply 2637

We know what the modifiers are, we're just trying to figure out what files reference the neutral extractors.

Why the neutral extractors in particular? With these modifiers you can create a new neutral entity that you can then place in any gravity well via the GSD.

True, I didn't think of that.  I was just basing my thinking on the planet entity files, where you can choose the amount and value of neutral extractors.

I have a few more things that I'm having difficulties with.

1. When I assign squadrons to the starbase or the capital colony ship (I'm using the Sins of New Eden mod as my starting ground btw), and build the squadrons, the squadrons are literally created very far away from the planet in the middle of nowhere.  Does this have something to do with squad hangar hard-points being absent or something?

2. How do I create a proper buff chain?  At the moment I am trying to create an ability called "Industrial Core" that increases the extraction rate of all resource extractors in the gravity well while also disabling the engines and phase jump capability of the caster.  This is just one example, what I would really like is to know all the aspects of buff creation (all the possibilities and such, like buff chains).

This has been annoying me to no end, thanks for any help!

1. Yes it does.

2. Buffs start from abilities.  The ship references the ability, the ability references the buff.  Buffs can reference multiple buffs, having room for five instant actions and two periodic actions which can all call another buff.

To do that particular example, you'd do an ApplyBuffToSelf with the ability, then use that buff to disable the ship and apply another buff to the resource extractors using ApplyBuffToTargetsAtOrbitBody, with the proper filters to restrict it to extractors.  There is an example of this in vanilla sins on one of the colonizing buffs.

To tell you all the possibilities, I'd need to get together with a couple of the other guys, compare notes, and offer a university course.  At three hours a week I could probably impart most of it to someone inside a semester.  You can however learn by example.

If you want to stay inside the sane possibilities, I'd just go rooting through other people's mods.  If you want your head to explode, but learn a hell of a lot when it does, hit SOA2 first and start with AbilityX1.entity.  I'm a bit lacking in the rational sensibilities department, so I created a random encounter system for X class worlds using a couple hundred buffs.

No matter what I do, it doesn't want to work.  In this version, the ship is disabled but the resource extraction rate does not change and the name/description reads "string not found," even though I indicated which string to read in the English file.  I did add the ability and the two buffs to the Entities file.  Though when I changed the extraction rate bonus to a periodic action with a pulse interval, it worked!  I don't understand this very much.  Shouldn't this be a valid buff chain?

TXT
entityType "Ability"
buffInstantActionType "ApplyBuffToSelf"
instantActionTriggerType "AlwaysPerform"
buffType "BuffIndustrialCoreSelf"
needsToFaceTarget FALSE
canCollideWithTarget TRUE
moveThruTarget FALSE
isUltimateAbility FALSE
maxNumLevels 4
levelSourceType "FixedLevel0"
minExperienceLevelRequired
Level:0 0.000000
Level:1 0.000000
Level:2 0.000000
Level:3 0.000000
aiUseTime "NotInCombat"
aiUseTargetCondition "Any"
isAutoCastAvailable TRUE
isAutoCastOnByDefault TRUE
pickRandomPlanetToExploreForAutoCastTarget FALSE
ignoreNonCombatShipsForAutoCastTarget TRUE
onlyAutoCastWhenDamageTakenExceedsPerc 0.000000
useCostType "AntiMatter"
antiMatterCost
Level:0 0.000000
Level:1 0.000000
Level:2 0.000000
Level:3 0.000000
cooldownTime
Level:0 300.000000
Level:1 300.000000
Level:2 300.000000
Level:3 300.000000
orderAcknowledgementType "ONGENERALORDERISSUED"
researchPrerequisites
NumResearchPrerequisites 0
RequiredFactionNameID ""
RequiredCompletedResearchSubjects 0
nameStringID "IDS_ABILITY_SIEGEMODE_NAME"
descStringID "IDS_ABILITY_SIEGEMODE_DESCRIPTION"
hudIcon "HUDICON_ABILITY_POWERSURGE"
smallHudIcon "HUDICON_ABILITY_POWERSURGE"
infoCardIcon ""

TXT
entityType "Buff"
onReapplyDuplicateType "PrioritizeNewBuffs"
buffStackingLimitType "ForAllPlayers"
stackingLimit 1
allowFirstSpawnerToStack FALSE
buffExclusivityForAIType "ExclusiveForAllPlayers"
isInterruptable FALSE
isChannelling FALSE
numInstantActions 1
instantAction
buffInstantActionType "ApplyBuffToTargetsAtOrbitBody"
instantActionTriggerType "AlwaysPerform"
buffType "BuffIndustrialCoreTarget"
targetFilter
numOwnerships 2
ownership "Player"
ownership "Friendly"
numObjects 1
object "PlanetModule"
numSpaces 1
space "Normal"
numConstraints 1
constraint "IsResourceExtractor"
maxTargetCount
Level:0 -1.000000
Level:1 -1.000000
Level:2 -1.000000
Level:3 -1.000000
numPeriodicActions 0
numOverTimeActions 0
numEntityModifiers 0
numEntityBoolModifiers 2
entityBoolModifier "DisablePhaseJump"
entityBoolModifier "DisableLinearEngines"
numFinishConditions 2
finishCondition
finishConditionType "TimeElapsed"
time
Level:0 300.000000
Level:1 300.000000
Level:2 300.000000
Level:3 300.000000
finishCondition
finishConditionType "OwnerChanged"

TXT
entityType "Buff"
onReapplyDuplicateType "PrioritizeNewBuffs"
buffStackingLimitType "ForAllPlayers"
stackingLimit 1
allowFirstSpawnerToStack FALSE
buffExclusivityForAIType "ExclusiveForAllPlayers"
isInterruptable FALSE
isChannelling FALSE
numInstantActions 0
numPeriodicActions 0
numOverTimeActions 0
numEntityModifiers 1
entityModifier
buffEntityModifierType "ResourceExtractionRate"
value
Level:0 4.000000
Level:1 4.000000
Level:2 4.000000
Level:3 4.000000
numEntityBoolModifiers 0
numFinishConditions 2
finishCondition
finishConditionType "TimeElapsed"
time
Level:0 300.000000
Level:1 300.000000
Level:2 300.000000
Level:3 300.000000
finishCondition
finishConditionType "OwnerChanged"

instantActionTriggerType "AlwaysPerform"

This is for ability files and periodics.  Instant actions are conditionally triggered.  When you put an AlwaysPerform on one, it continually replaces itself, thousands of times over your 300 second time span.

It actually will add the effect as designed, but it will do the 300 second duration after the buff is finished running and it replaces itself for the last time.

So for the above reference, I would use IfFirstSpawnerHasBuff, and reference the ship disabler?  I think I begin to understand more now, if that's correct.

No, you would use:

instantActionTriggerType "OnDelay"

delayTime 0.000000

IfFirstSpawnerHasBuff is for the OnCondition trigger.  You'd use this if you wanted a variable impact based on the status of the caster.  This is used in vanilla for the overcharge ability on one of the titans.  IfOwnerHasBuff is used in a similar function, to do variable impacts based on the state of the target.

You might want to use LastSpawnerNoLongerHasBuff as a finish condition on the target, and reference the spawning buff however.  This way, if your ship gets blown up early, the buff ends with it.

I see.  These mechanics are what I really don't know much about.  I still can't get instant action to work for the resource extraction rate, only the over-time action.

How did Distant Stars allow the player to jump to any visible planet?

I'm sorry for all these questions, I'm trying to make a mod very different from the base game.

Edit: It wasn't Distant Stars, it was just Stars: http://stars.zz.mu/

I think, I don't even remember anymore.

I have had trouble with XSI, does anyone mind if I interject?

Quoting JoshuaTedder, reply 2649

How did Distant Stars allow the player to jump to any visible planet and how did Sins of the Fallen add in moons?  I know that they were classed as starbases but somehow they were automatically built in random gravity wells and were neutral capturable entities.

I'm sorry for all these questions, I'm trying to make a mod very different from the base game.