Sounds very cool.....been working on something similar myself but you've now saved me a lot of time...cheers!

As far as I know, the Vasari can only jump between thier own planets which have Phase Gates built. This mod allows jumps to unowned, enemy, or even uncolonizable locations, as long as the scout ship has been there after the research for Direct Jumps is done.

I used the AbilityPhaseGateCapital as a template. I created a new abilty from it and then created new buffs for my new abilty which I called AbiltyPhaseGateScout. I then turned off finish conditions so that once the scout ship placed its node, it remains in place indefinetly. I then created new reseach for the abilty, replacing the the UnstoppablePhaseGate abilty that all scouts ships got.

Its not a passive ability. You have to actually use the ability by hand or set it to auto, in which case it will execute on its own. It dosent cost any antimatter and its cooldown is only 10 seconds, so that it is ready to be placed all the time.

I'm not much of a modder,this is in fact my first mod, but it works the way I intended it to. I just liked the concept of Direct Jumps to change up the strategy of the game a little bit. Now I can send a massive fleet directly to an enemies homeworld to reak havo, but while my fleet is away, my homeworld is also vulnerable. That is unless I do my best to stop any scout ships from reaching my homeworld. Also once detect phase jumps is researched, if a enemy launches an attack from across the system, I will have some warning and time to mount up a suitable defense.

Hopefully somewhere in there I answered your question.

you could try editing all planets themselves to have the phase ability but meh, this works too.

This is a very good idea, any chance we will see one for Rebellion? 

Perhaps I should restart work on a similar project I was working on before Rebellion came out, from what I see with buffs; there's a chance I'll be able to get it to work now...

This mod is essential to my gameplay experience.  I've not played any mods since this one that incorporates this concept (not saying they're not there, just never found them).  Not being a modding expert, I have never figured out how to make planet modules that use this ability, but have managed to update this one so I have direct jumps in both Diplomacy and Rebellion.  It's a very crude, stripped down version (no research-available at beginning of game; assigned to colony ship) and has a few quirks, but it works for me.  If someone wants to take it and make it better or just use it, I'm happy to share it.  Just let me know and I'll upload it.

 

What is neat about this though is that there is another idea using similar philosophies that could work in conjunction. Spawn an item at the beginning of the game on every planet, one item at every planet for each player. This item lasts 5 seconds or 10 seconds and then detonates. This will reveal the map plus it's map names (like 'fog of war').

 

This could be used in conjunction with the 'jump to any gravity well' mod or the 'explore it first and then be able to jump to any gravity well' mod. Just throwing ideas out there.

I could just switch the ship from a trade ship to a random frigate, and in it's invulnerability ability, put in a timer which causes the ship to die in 5 seconds. Or, alternatively if that doesn't work well (ship has to be alive for the stuff to work, etc), I can easily put a new ship in the GSD template, or add an ability to the ship which spawns said item.

Not possible; militia forces would destroy them at the beginning of the game.

not sure why planet couldn't have ability (passive and any owner) that makes it have a node stabilizer.  this way, no home planet has one and maps can be made so "home" systems are defensible.  I'm not sure how Ai would handle this.

The first comment is incorrect; ANY faction can have a phase gate-like structure, assuming they have the proper techs for the ability and the ability is placed on one of their structures or ships.

Stars can work just fine as phase gate points; one just can't do interstellar jumps using them.

I believe it's time to restart this project.

I could be wrong, but I seem to vaguely remember someone having difficulty with this type of mod because only one player can have a phase node at a given planet at a time. Perhaps that's been fixed in some patch though.

 

Time to reinvent the concept of 'Home Fleet' with smaller skirmish fleets vying for resources. Now, for ships in one star system to get to the planets in another star system, they still have to go through the star or can they just jump from planet to planet between the systems?

 

Depending, I would still like to keep the 'Long Distance Jump' star to star research relevant if possible.