Wow.
Admittedly I am overwhelmed even after spending hours combing through the various tutorials, how to's, modding for idiots thread etc.
I'm just trying to learn the very basics of how to do even the simplest of things in SoaSE: Rebellion.
I'll let you know how far I've come at least (probably not very far, lol)
1) I've been able to open all the reference files that I downloaded and I understand that these files contain all the specific abilities/buffs for the things I'm looking for.
2) I've found a few abilities/buffs that I'm interested in modifying but I'm not sure how they even apply themselves in the game.
3) I found BuffPhaseOutHull, AbilityHyperspaceDisruption and PlanetModule_PhaseOrbitalJumpBlocker. I understand that PhaseOrbitalJumpBlocker is the Vasari version but since each JumpBlocker/PhaseInhibitor uses the same ability, I think I'm in good shape
4) I'll worry about actually installing/testing the small changes/mod I've created once I understand more about how to actually produce results, ha!
So basically I'm looking at modifying the phase inhibitors effects on the ships that are within their radius. Some general things I'm looking at doing.
1) Playing with the radius of the phase inhibitors effects
2) Changing the tactical slots taken up by phase inhibitors
3) Changing the severity of the inhibitors effects
4) Changing the amount of tactical slots planets have by default
5) Disabling Superweapons
6) Changing the tiers/upgrades for Fleet Supply - (I find that early game its not enough and late game its so much that it makes my friends computers lag an incredible amount)
Anyway, I was hoping to open a dialog with some folks - mostly just for them to point me in the right direction as far as where to find the information I'm looking for. I'm really impressed with the community in general through the countless threads I've read. My hat is off to the absolute giants of community contributors adding various help threads and putting obviously countless hours into tools etc for everyone to you. As Neil deGrasse Tyson would say, I can only accomplish what I have by standing on the shoulders of giants.... or something like that.
In any case, let me see if I can phrase my questions correctly to get some answers.
1) Can someone explain to me the relationship between an actual object/planet/ship/building in the game and how they relate to their abilities and buffs? Lets use my phase inhibitor example. My understanding is that the phase inhibitor entity (PlanetModule_PhaseOrbitalJumpBlocker) uses various abilities like (AbilityHyperspaceDisruption and AbilityBiDirectionalJamming). Then the entity AbilityHyperspaceDistruption uses these buff entities to actually apply the effects in game (buffInstantActionType which "applyBufftoSelf") which triggers bufftype "BuffHyperspaceDisruptionSpawner"
Phew that was a lot - is that all correct? So in essence, BuffHyperspaceDisruptionSpawner is where the actual effects can be modified correct?
2) Now assuming I'm on the right track here as far as modifying what I originally outlined, what are all these things in the Spawner? Specifically:
- actionIntervalTime which has 4 levels but only level 1 has a value of 2.4 the rest are 0.
- targetFilter - I assume this is what it CAN effect since I see that ownership "Enemy" is set and it doesn't affect your own ships
- I see there are 5 objects, listed in numObjects - its interesting to me that I dont see Cruisers listed anywhere, and Corvette's are listed on their own. Are Cruisers considered Frigates in this instance?
- I see something called constraints with numConstraints and constraint "CanBeJumpBlocked" - can someone explain the intricacies of these I didn't see these explained anywhere nor do they appear to be entity types in GameInfo folder like the others that can be modified.
- range - is this the range of the inhibitor that I see in game? I didn't see a range for the entity of the planetmodule so... help?
- maxTargetCount - all the levels are set to -1 which I can only assume there is no target limit. Correct?
- stackinglimit - I assume if this has a value of 1 that it cannot be stacked but if I changed it to 2, I could put two phase inhibitors and the the effects of the buff could stack? That would be appealing if so
3) A more general question perhaps is if there is an explanation anywhere of these types of things that can be found in entity's whether they be abilities or buffs or otherwise?
4) For the actual entity of the JumpBlocker:
- It has 2 abilities, if I wanted to add a 3rd ability would I just add it to ability:2 or is more involved in added abilities to entities than just that? Does the ability entity itself need to be modified in order to be used by a phase inhibitor? Lets say for example (and purely just for example) I wanted to add the ability of phase tunneling/phase gates? How would I go about that? Maybe you can think of a better example to explain.
- planetUpgradeSlotCount 2.000000 - As I mentioned I would like to decrease the amount of tactical slots these use, or possibly just upgrade the amount of tactical slots on each planet. Firstly, do these numbers like 2.000000 always need to have 6 decimal places? Can I put a number in there like .5 instead of a whole number?
- angularSpeed - what in the heck is this? I'm just more curious than anything. Would changing this actually make the object in the game move?
- formationRank 3 - what does this mean simply?
- baseBuildTime 150 - is this measured in seconds?
Phew... okay that is pretty intense. Again, thank you all for the community you've put together here. Any help would be appreciated - it seems to me that a lot of my questions could be answered if I could find a good explanation for what a lot of these things do in the entities... I did find https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/306405 but it wasn't particularly helpful.
Thanks!
Keller