I wouldn't get your hopes up on this one. The only abilities that effect targets outside the casters gravity well are the Revelation's Clairvoyance and the superweapons, all of which need a target. What exactly are you trying to achieve? If you want a galaxy wide effect putting it in an artifact would be a better way to approach it.

Yes--you can specify that an artifact is found on a planet in the galaxy file.

Oh the evil.   Well--it was worth a shot.

what is the highlighted used for? anyone know? because its somewhat new. (it least i never seen it when entrenchment first came out)

targetFilter
    numOwnerships 2
    ownership "Enemy"
    ownership "NoOwner"
    numObjects 1
    object "Frigate"
    numSpaces 1
    space "Normal"
    numConstraints 1
    constraint "CanBeCaptured"

on my passive ability it causes my game to crash when set to the current. (when it is set to 0 it seems to work but not the way i want it to)

Yeah--and I don't have the background from all the way back to know what can and could be done.  Have to guess and randomly learn bits and pieces.  At least more info is out now.

Succeed and be labled a genius...fail and vanish intro obscurity.  There is no try.

no effect really. just like to know what things are generally used for if they will cause minidumps when used wrong.  Imperium wanted an ability that mirrored another ability of mine on his planet (an "oracle" planet" that would eventually discover the entire galixy for who ever controlled it at the time.   problems i ran into are getting the planet to actualy do said affect. planets can not have active abilities and abilities like clairvoyance need an active trigger (ie, active ability). i have not found a way to either

1: have the planet to this passively do this

or

2: have a frigate, etc in the grav well that will change with the owner of the planet and that can only be captured/owner changed when someone colonizes the planet.

although i have not tried having the planet so a passive spawn frigate ability i highly doubt it would work given what ive tried so far. if someone else wanted to try it, feel free.

I've got an idea: What if you gave the specified ability to the faction specific construction ships? Those are always there and when you conquer a planet, one immiedietly shows up. If you want, as soon as the reference files for 1.2 are released, I'll look into it. Let me know.

Really great and intersting ideas.

The core is:  you want an ability that ONLY works at the planet.  Whether it is carried by the ship or not is not so important.  It could be an orbital base or constructor.

Also, there is an ability that covers multiple systems--the culture broadcast and the Advent has the ability to see any area where its culture reaches.

Additionally, there is another ability that lets you see TWO phase lanes away when ships approach--as well as the one where you can see a single phase lane.

I'm really interested to see what anyone can come up with.

Actually those are research, not abilities. Sadly the effects of the two are not interchangeable.

While I know it is possible to make captureable ships (Sins plus had them), the hard part is making them captureable when any player controls them. I think it is possible based on the neutral research extractors, I've just never looked into them.

Oracle Outpost  this is the finished mod. its only small. anyhow, for now the outpost spawns at asteroid planets. you can change the included galixy file to fit your specific planet if you like. it also contains a string file for the outpost and abilities included... for the most part, let me know if i missed any. cant 100% recall if i did every ability or just the outpost itself.

Edit: you can also change the mesh of the oracle building/frigate yourself to what you see fit. as of current its the PSI culture center with vasari voices (dont ask lol).  also the galaxyscanariodef reference for the oricle building is as follows:

planetItemType
    designName "NEUT:ORICLE:OUTPOST"
    entityDefName "PLANETMODULE_ORICLE_OUTPOST"

to add it to a planet you would need to modify said planets milita template (or make a new one) and add in the highlighted. keeping in mind to increase the numbers ass you add it in:

planetItemsTemplate
    templateName "Template:LocalMilitiaVeryWeak"
    subTemplates 0
    groups 2
        group
            condition
                type "PlanetOwnerIsMilitia"
                param ""
            owner "PlanetOwner"
            colonizeChance 0
            items 6
                item "Tech:Frigate:Light"
                item "Tech:Frigate:Light"
                item "Tech:Frigate:Light"
                item "Tech:Module:CrystalExtractor"
                item "Tech:Module:MetalExtractor"
                item "Tech:Module:GaussDefense"
        group
            condition
                type "NoPlanetOwner"
                param ""
            owner "RandomMilitia"
            colonizeChance 0
            items 3                                                       <------ originally this line was 2
                item "Tech:Frigate:Light"
                item "Tech:Frigate:Siege"
                item "NEUT:ORICLE:OUTPOST"

mind you this is giving you a few building blocks, you still need to do all the really anoying galixyscanariodef work for your actual planet. remember what i said about making sure you got the right number of templates in each section. i wish you the best of luck on doing the rest of your mod. just PM me should you have any questions (except for the really new lines added in, i have a fairly good understanding of how to mod sins from back when it was first released and through entrenchment. even now im starting to mod diplomacy once again (although that will probably stop aside from small side projects here and there once i get my gaming rig back)