I'm not fully understanding your question, but here's the basics on ability and buff modding.

Abilities are an entity that links special actions or buffs to a unit in game. When a unit casts the ability, it may use 0, 1, or many buffs in order to complete it's task. If many buffs are required, they typically are spawned from a single buff that the ability creates.

There is no real limit on the number of buffs you can have. Abilities may use the same buffs, but if you do this, changing that buff will change all the abilities. Likewise, multiple ships etc. can have the same ability.