Any idea how the "Industrial Experts" ability on the capital/titan factories could be set to autocast on a planet more than once? As it is, the aiUseTime and aiUseTargetCondition set to "anytime" and "any", means that having more than one of any of the factories doesn't stack the build time reduction buff. At least, not without manual input...

Honestly I'm not sure if I meant for it to stack...

Random question: What is the difference (if any) between the shield/hull point restore rate, and the shield/hull point restoration buffs in Sins?

I am certain I did not mean for it to stack 10 times lol.

I changed it to stack once but buff it to 20%.

I might have them mixed up, but I think shield restore rate (whatever overlapping shields on the MC80 Liberty gives) is a flat percentage to the passive shield regeneration rate for the ship.

Shield/Hull Restoration is more interesting, if a ship is getting healed, the rate of healing will be affecting by this modifier. So if a ship is being healed for 20HP/Sec from a repair structure and has a 10% Hull Restoration buff, it will actually be healed by 22HP/Sec.

I have heard that Restoration also affects passive hull/shield restoration, in which case it also does exactly what Restore Rate does, but I haven't actually tested this myself.

I'm not really sure why it doesn't just looking at the code, but meh, not an issue anymore. 

Thanks for the explanation, it makes sense now. Of course, if I had thought of it I could have come to that conclusion myself based on one of your descriptions in the E4X mod on the (I think) rebel Advent titan regen upgrade...

What? What code? How can you see the game's code???

Is it...MODDABLE?!!!!!  

Along with adding "DisableAngularEngines" to the "Buff_ING_DerelictShipTemp" (without it, the dreadnaughts 'track' ships near them), you should add the instantAction "InitializeRandomMotion", and set appropriate values to make them float about a bit. As it is, they don't look like derelict ships to me.

The ability system and such is a custom made language, it's specific in it's usage, but still functionally the same as such things as XML, which is used in Stardock's games like Elemental in exactly the same manner.  He doesn't get to look at the source code, but when he's working on the modifiable entity portion of the game, it's still code.

Pretty sure there isn't one...

Just an expression meaning I looked at the mod files lol. I'm a programmer by trade, so I tend to use the same lingo for modding.

See my post psychoak, that was right from Yarlen. 

Just a reminder, Mandalorians will be arriving... one day...

Nice screenshot.

I'm here to annoy you again with general modding help. I've added an ultimate ability to your vasari scientist guy in E4X - a simple AOE offensive ability that only requires the ability and its buff file to work - and my game crashes on startup.

Dev tells me "Entity Ref not found: Ability_E4X_Dissemination" --What specifically is that referring to? I have the new ability and the buff included in the E4X entity manifest, and no errors show up in the eclipse plugin regarding any other reference issues...

Hmm. I just noticed that Traest Kre'fey has another ability that I had completely missed because it never seems to get unlocked. It's the "ExpertRaider" ability - that is supposed to give an immunity to jump interference. I'm guessing this isn't intentional? Reducing his first ability, which has 4 levels, to 3, and assigning the ExpertRaider ability to unlock at like level 7 or 9 seems to work fine.

Also, I was thinking that you should probably adjust the expert damage control capital ship upgrade heal buff, and the spare parts heal buff to only cut off upon taking hull damage. I think it makes sense for these repair operations to continue once the hull itself isn't being battered, whereas at the moment these operations stop even if the ship has shields up to protect the hull from incoming fire. I know you're reluctant to in any way improve the Imperial factions' healing abilities, but I think this is sufficiently minor to not impact on balance too much, while still being a noticeable change in the function of these abilities under specific circumstances, such as when there is hull damage that needs repairs, but also shields present to protect the ship from further direct fire.

For what its worth, Krefey's jump immunity ability does unlock and work in 3.1. I have used it heavily on a defensive turtle map for compstomping vs up to 8 AI (and yes, with 8 after a few hours I almost always eventually cap ram and crash, which makes the new shield models a bit exciting for the lower overhead). Basically essential due to the number of interdictors that I encounter.

It is appropriately a very high level unlock since it impacts the entire local fleet, like Garm Iblis' fleet auto capture ability. I've been taking a bit of a break waiting for a new version, but I want to say jump immunity unlocks around level 8 or so. I do not recall it being the last level Kre'fey receives before being maxed out, as I can put one or two more points into his earlier skills. I suppose it would be a lot more difficult to get to unlocking it outside of my preferred game setup.

Well, unless I have horribly misunderstood how the heroes work...isn't Kre'fey supposed to function like the other heroes in E4X and Interregnum? As in, he should have a fixed upgrade path with all available abilities maxed out at level 10?

As it stands that's not possible, because he has 11 upgrades (4,3,3,1), and when you set his upgrade points to auto-assign as the AI does (and probably the player too in the case of other E4X/INT Heroes), he will never get a point assigned to the expert raider ability.

I only assign my skillpoints manually. That is the only difference I can suggest, unless you are using 3.11 where I am on 3.1. I'll load it up when I have some time and see exactly what level it unlocks for me.

Edit: It unlocked when he reached level 6. Manually selected it like normal and it worked the way it should. Perhaps is a combination of having 4 upgrades for skill slot 1, and the jump immunity skill being in slot 4, and autobuy just goes left to right sequentially so it never reaches it?

Really important issue here - crucial, in fact. Mod might die if you don't change it.

The rayshield surge ability on the providence is set to autocast "OnlyInCombat" rather than "OnlyWhenTakingDamage", so essentially the shield will activate - often needlessly - upon the ship opening fire, when it should really only activate when taking hits.

More noticeable on this ship, because it tends to run out of antimatter through use of the broadside ability fairly quickly, so it could do without the superfluous antimatter usage.

If you'd like a preview of Alpha 3.12, here's a little PVP game I did with some modders from Star Trek Armada 3, outerexodus and KillaBC. Video is from outerexodus' perspective.

Sarcasm I hope. 

Fixed.

Some Interregnum heroes have had their abilities haphazardly adjusted from the original plan, I wouldn't be surprised if there were more heroes that weren't quite set up right.

Most of the time heroes should be identical at the same level, I.e. no ability choice as in E4X.

I just realised that in both Interregnum and E4X, if you capture a ship that was marked as a temporary ship for the other faction, the ship will still 'leave' your service even under its new ownership. That doesn't really make sense imo.

Similar to how you designed the derelict katana fleet dreadnaughts to apply their buffs, I think you should add an extra layer to the "Ability_E4X_TemporarayShip" buff, in which the new buff applies the "Buff_E4X_TemporaryShipDeath" as an instant action, and cuts itself and the death buff off through the "OwnerChanged" finish condition. I haven't actually tried this method out myself, but I'm sure that you know what I'm talking about and how to achieve it.

On a similar note, I think that any temporary ship should be a bit more subtle about 'leaving' your service - as in - doesn't Allahu Akbar on you and litter the gravity well with its debris. 

There are other issues with letting temporary ships not disappear after the timer, so that won't change.

Sadly I can't do that without not giving it an explosion for being destroyed either.

Something I just noticed is that a lot of abilities fire even when they will not have any effect, such as when the target is invulnerable. 

Examples of the more obvious abilities to me that should have the "NotInvulnerable" constraint added are the Venator Beam, the ISD I Tractor Beam, Thrawn's Prediction ability, and Vader's Force Choke. I'm sure there's a few more, but I'm guessing you'll go through them all at some stage and make whatever adjustments you want; I just thought I'd draw your attention to it.

Also, the bug where capturing an interdictor cruiser doesn't remove it's +700% phase jump debuff to your ships is still present I'm afraid.

Oh I know they exist lol. I've fixed those, if you see more let me know and I'll fix them. Really there's not an easy test for what to look for; any abilities that do damage should probably have that check, but Force Choke for example doesn't directly deal damage. Yet it makes sense here.