You believe wrong then.  I can make this ability do whatever you want.  This is one of the easy ones.

Take the first ability you gave us (the cap ship shield restore), make the constraint say capital ship, and make the range 30 (or 20 or 15, something meaningful, but not 0 since zero means 0 range, not no range, and it cannot target anything at that point, not even itself), and then use the only in combat use time.  Trust me, it'll work.  When the cap enters battle and loses 400+ shields while at the first ability level, if it has enough antimatter, it'll use the ability automatically every single time.  I've run it dozens of times over in the past day and it hasn't failed to fire off even once.  According to the AI, the constraints in place pretty much say IsSelf without actually saying it.  That's as good as you're going to get with this game right now.

For the frigates to heal caps, leave everything except the range and the levels exactly the same.  As soon as a cap ship loses 400+ shields, then they'll rush on over and use the ability.

For the frigates to heal themselves, leave everything the way it is except change the constraint to frigates, and remove the intrinsic levels and change it to fixed level 0 or based on research upgrades to get more levels out of it, and the frigates with the ability, again, as long as they have the antimatter, they will use it on themselves...  Or themselves and other frigates if the range is large enough to cover more real estate then itself.

I guess the most confusing part of all of this to me is you're giving us a capital ship ability and constraining it to frigates with a self affecting buff and wondering why it's not working with an AI controlled Cap Ship.  Or then using a trigger based on ships around it to get it to work on itself because there is no IsSelf constraint...  You can't do that and expect it to work right.  Honestly, this is a lot simpler then what you're describing it as.

One last thing, I don't know what ships you're working with, but in the stock game, there's only a few frigates that have more then 400 shields.  In the case of a frigate having 200 shields and the ability looking for 400 before it triggers, it will not work because that ship cannot lose more then 200 shields.  Through the entirety of a battle it can lose thousands of shield points, but the game only looks at what its max value is and what is remaining to calculate what has been lost to trigger abilities, not how much its lost overall in the fight.

At a range of 0 the buff can be used on the caster, and only on the caster. OnlyInCombat seems to reduce the severity of the issue a lot, and nearly gets rid of it.

Working with SoGE; the basic and most common shielding level is 1000.

Back in the early days, 0 meant the game couldn't target anything, not no range.  If things have changed, then great, because that means 0 for the range is basically an IsSelf constraint. 

It is, up until a ship goes halfway across a grav well to try and use the buff on a friendly frigate.

Lol--that's actually good to know as I have a 0 range in what I am working on.

Exposing my ignorance...I've never added meshes or particles or sounds to the game before (just swapped existing ones).  Do these have to be listed anywhere aside from actually adding the files?

I'd hate to add all, the stuff and have to start over.

You don't have to answer Lavo but what are you working on?  You sound like you are doing a lot.  What are you doing with it?

meshes - no, simply reference the file name in the *.entity file

particles - no, simply reference the file name in the *.entity file

sounds - yes

Sounds need to be referenced in a *.sounddata file located in GameInfo. The Sound ID given in the sounddata file is what is referenced in the *.entity file.

Thanks corpse man.  Extra gum for you this week.

Does anyone know if there is a difference between the entity modifiers "UnderConstructionRate" (AKA Module build rate, used by worthy cause) and "PlanetModuleBuildTime" (AKA structure build time, used by communal labor, embargo etc.)?

PlanetModuleBuildTime is a percentage, ex. 300%, UnderConstructionRate is probably a fixed amount, i.e. X seconds, but I can't confirm the latter.

They both show up in the infocard as percentages.

I have no idea then. Maybe it has something to do with races and/or how the buff applies the modifier?

I started yesterday working on mods again after about 6 months of real life

I just got my head shoved into XSI and have nailed down pretty much everything I need mesh wise like cleaning them up from importing(I find sketchup easier to model with).  I like modeling and enjoy it plenty but now Im stuck in UV hell.

I understand basically whats going on but manipulating the UVs and getting them to unwrap to something I can live with is another story and tutorials haven't been much help.  Planar everything winds up horrible.  Polymesh spits out incomprehensible things and the roadkill plugin isnt much better.

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/3504/captureyoz.png

I feel like Im going about this all wrong but Ive been working on textures since yesterday.  I know somehow you guys get weird geometry textured perfectly.  Can I somehow select regions to unwrap and the paste them into the texture editor?  Is there another program that doesn't cost tons of money I an use? 

Any advice would be appreciated.

Yeah its all in the texture editor. I've only had to do UVs from scratch once but if you've got something like a ship where no projection will even get close, I do polymesh to start. You can then use the rectangle select (space), scale, rotate and translate tools to get individual pieces where they need to go. Most of the time work in island select mode and tearing mode and its manageable. I'm sure a real pro can give many other cool tips.

If you are a student you can gain access to Autodesk's host of programs, such as Maya and 3DS Max, assuming you do not use them for commercial purposes.

On a related note, I was wondering if it is possible in Softimage's UV editor to select and delete/remove portions of a UV mesh?

Sorry for the double post, but I was wondering if getting "FAILED VERTEX CHECKSUM" with ConvertXSI means anything? I've gotten it before with some models, though they look fine ingame.

According to IskatuMesk:

"The source of my ire these days is less XSI itself and more their converter, which seems to be dealing with vertexes in a shady and confusing manner. Ignoring the fact that the converter sees exponentially large amounts of vertexes in comparison to what your model actually possesses, it deals with them in a sloppy and rigid fashion. Everything from tripping over its own 50k vertex limit because it magically conjures 80k more vertexes than what your model actually has, to punching holes in your model, to FAILED VERTEX CHECKSUM LOL

Normally when you get the FAILED VERTEX CHECKSUM LOL error it means you've fucked up somewhere. Overlapping vertexes, forgot to re-apply the tangent to itself in XSI even though it's already pointing to itself for fuck's sake (yes, you need to tell it to do what it's already doing to prevent it from breaking), to faces being bent in a manner the converter does not quite agree with. Other times, it seems just like the converter doesn't want to have anything to do with your vomit. When some entry-level programmer can haphazardly slap together a mostly reliable plugin for Starcraft 2 that supports most versions of a modern 3d package, in this case 3ds max, and you can't even manage a functional, verbose tool for your own game on a mundane piece of software like XSI across 3 major versions and years of work, when do you realize you're doing it wrong?"

Source: http://www.campaigncreations.org/blog/blog.php?u=1687&b=196

Ok--here's a question to see if anyone will bite.

Want to to randomize a planet ability so it isn't always on--or always off.  Any ideas?  This will help me get started on a couple of specific things I am trying to figure out.

Thanks in advance.

AddOrRemoveBuff with an on chance periodic action should work quite nicely.

I think that will do it sir--thank you.  I haven't actually done many planet abilities from scratch yet.

Ok, Ive searched and searched but I cant find the answer so I figured Id just ask.  What does the tangent map actually do for models in game?  I imported a model without one and no texture appeared but I haven't messed with it since so I have no idea.  Been focusing on making actually good models, not weird cube things to see if they'll work in the first place.

Lighting. I'm not an expert but I've noticed things if you don't have your tangent map set up correctly you'll get a whole bunch of minor graphical issues like a random polygon on what should be the "dark side" of the model will be lit up, etc. I suspect it will be even more important with Rebellion due to the new lighting system.

This isn't the picture I was looking for but I think it was caused by a tangent map (and other complicated modeling stuff).

That model has a few issues causing that.

1st the object was not welded which made it like 2 separate models joined there and 2nd it uses 2 different texture sheets. I welded the model to 1 object and did the tangent map after again but the texture from 2 sheets is definitely still visible at that seem.

EDIT: This is what a typical bad tangent area would look like though.

Tangents are the angle of reflection of a light source. Once you create a second copy of the UV you need to turn or flip sections of the UV to get a nice transition of the basic colours when viewed in "Constant" mode.

Before and after welding the points

Tangent map in Constant view Before and after

Update: Added direct link to Zombie's Eclipse Wiki, definitions section.

Quick question...I was trying to modify the Pirate's "Steal Resources" (Plunder) ability to only loot a resource and not credits (currently it loots credits).

Hee's the portion I attempted to change:

instantAction
    buffInstantActionType "StealResources"
    instantActionTriggerType "OnBuffFinish"
    resourceToSteal "Credits"
    resourceAmount
        Level:0 100.000000
        Level:1 0.000000
        Level:2 0.000000
        Level:3 0.000000

I changed "Credits" to "Crystal" and then "Metal"--but I still just get credits.  "RefineryResources" doesn't work either. What am I missing here?

Thanks.

Well, should only be credits metal or crystal, also you have four levels there and you should only have three...  Maybe the game is reverting back to the original because your version isn't formatted properly?