Question for anyone familiar with Ability Modding. I am trying to create an ability that casts a buff (a debuff) on a target and at the same time casts a buff (actual buff) on the caster.

Are their any existing sins ability files I can look at that would point me in the right direction?

Might be a long shot given the age of the game and I imagine many of the technical players have moved on. I did try searching but I cannot find the answer I need.

I created a map for some friends, heavily customized and working on balancing using Galaxy Forge and Notepad for additional edits. 
The map is playable, I added resource asteroids manually to ensure balance and custom extractor rates, but I am missing something, on the uncolonizable planets, the asteroids spawn where i want them, but they do not have the neutral extractor so are unable to be captured, I cannot seem to find a way to add them. 

Looking in the game files I can see a Def Name for neutral extractors but that doesn't seem to work when adding the asteroid or as a planet/template item, i tried changing various conditions and owner tags, but while the game, the extractors are still missing. Searching I did we references to the entity buff, but I am not sure I am using it correctly as there was no example provided.

I feel like I did this years ago and got it working, but I no longer have access to that map.

Hey there. You might already be aware but have you tried editing the Neutral Asteroid line found in the Planetary Entity file?

For example in the Planetary Volcanic entity file I am sure their will be a line which reads something like neutral asteroids 0. You just need to edit it to say a number and populate some more information from a planetary entity that already has neutral asteroids such as the Asteroid field planetary entity. Then they should spawn in.

Hope I helped 🤔

Is there a way to edit an ability to were the AI will not use it, without removing the ability form the game?

A solution might be that you could edit the cost of the ability to be so high that a ship or station (entity) would never have enough antimatter to be able to cast the ability.

The AI will generally not use abilities that do not have autocast on by default. Some exceptions are ultimate abilities and superweapons.

Plenty of abilities do this, maybe the Vulkoras Disintegration off the top of my head. You can either do "ApplyTargettedBuffToSelf", then in the buff apply the buff to the target, or ApplyBuffToTarget then do an ApplyBuffToFirstSpawner to get a buff on the caster.

Hi, I'm trying to get the TEC Rebels' superweapon to "inspire an uprising"—in other words, for a small fleet of frigates to spawn at the targeted planet when the cannonshell hits it. The problem is, I cannot get this to work. No buffs I attach to the TEC's existing superweapon buff chain has ever successfully spawned any frigates at all. I would very much like you're guys' help with this.

thanks for sharing information.

I've done this for the Rebel Alliance superweapon, the Insurrection Center, in Star Wars Interregnum. I don't recall anything out of the ordinary to get it to work, can you share what you've tried?

The current buff file that is supposed to summon an uprising reads like this:

I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. This should work, right? But the ships never appear at all.

The ResearchNotMet finishCondition is so the regular effects of the TEC superweapon get applied normally, but without the Liberated Resistance research this specific buff will expire before the ships get summoned. With the proper research, the TEC Rebels get a cool bonus of a little fleet appearing at the targeted planet in addition to the regular superweapon effects. And the rest of the buff chain I've built for the TEC Rebel's superweapon works fine! There's no issues at all with it, except for the damned militia never appearing.