I am dabbling at modding, and right now I am trying to do one thing: 

transform the Ankylon group shield ability into a passive aura.

In GREEN what I THINK I have done right.

in RED what I don't know how to do.

Currently want it to have the following traits:

Increase shield regen

Increase max shields

Increase max mitigation

Increase shield mitigation when not in combat - I have put a mitigation modifier on the tables, but I don't really know if it actually does what I want.

Right now I have done the following:

AbilityPassiveGroupShield.entity

BuffPassiveGroupShield.entity

BuffPassiveGroupShieldTarget.entity

Any help is pretty much appreciated, thanks

Did you want HasWeapons? This leaves out most structures and carrier frigates.

The instantAction->ApplyBuffToTarget here isn't needed.

You need two different finish coniditions: OwnerChanged and OutOfRange

Looks right, might be a bit high on the shield restore value when coupled with the next line.

I don't see a max shield increase. This is an overall damage reduction regardless of shield strength.

In my experience it's a modifier to whatever the current mitigation is, so it increases (negative decreases) both the base and max mitigation.

Yeah, I haven't found an EntityModifier for that. 

I see only MaxHullPoints there.

I have found a researchModifier though:

ShieldPointsMaxAdjustment

But that is for research, it's not what i am looking for I believe.

It's a float modifier. Look for MaxShieldPoints here:

http://code.google.com/p/soaseplugin/wiki/RebellionbuffEntityModifierType

This should contain every possible float modifier that can be used in a Buff.

Updated files:

AbilityPassiveGroupShield.entity

BuffPassiveGroupShield.entity

BuffPassiveGroupShieldTarget.entity

Added a damageSharing, mostly thinking about how the Ragnarov Snipe's ability eats capital ships for breakfast. if it does what I think it does, friendly ships will absorb some of the damage taken by the snipe's target, adding survivability for all of them.

What about the numbers, do they make sense? I am not really sure about which ones work as a percentage, and which ones are absolute values.

One more question:

Can I make ships which die under group shield effect give experience to the owner instead of the enemy?

You still have the instantAction in here for BuffGroupShield. This whole segment should be removed with numInstantActions set to 0.

This probably doesn't do what you think. DamageSharing is what the Advent Mothership does when it shares 30% of the damage across all affected ships.

This is a balance call. I feel you numbers are too high for an always on passive ability. I'd probably increase you radius in the first buff then reduce your values... in some cases a lot, but it's your call.

Probably the DamageAsDamageTarget is somewhat ok as it sorta the inverse of the Advent Coronata ability.

The restore shields seems to high with the damage reduction. Adding 40 shield restore to a titan capable of 15 restore/sec at level 10 all upgrades seems over the top.

The shield points is a flat # not a percent. So use whole values here like 250.00000. While somewhat redundant to the durability upgrade a small value here shouldn't be that big of a deal.

The mitigation is too high, you'll create an unkillable Ankylon at higher levels. At level 10 the Ankylon would have 94.9% mitigation (i.e. unkillable). I'd suggest starting at numbers like .01/.02/.03/0.4

Ok how do I spread a portion of the incoming damage across all ships under group shield then?

I don't want anything OP, I just want a passive skill, I feel that having an always-on, even when AM is at 0, is a better fit for the Ankylon/Tec Loyalist dug-in theme.

What about flipping over the experience to the ship owner? Is it possible?

Your assistance is much welcome!

Updated BuffPassiveGroupShieldTarget.entity.

Still don't know what to put in place of DamageSharing.

OK, I have a design idea now.

Thinking about the iconus guardian. It takes up some of the damage from someone else in its own shields right?

Now, if I can make the targets of the ability trigger a buff modelled like the shield projection, but with the radius centered on the Titan instead of themselves, we'd have a winner.

I could just copy the shield projection skill for this, but then each ship in the fleet would have a radius centered on themselves. How can I make the radius centered on the original 'caster', the Titan?

Nevermind, that's what I get for speaking off the top of my head. Yes, this is what shield projection does. It would have the Ankylon soak the damage though which may or may not be what you want.

Not to my knowledge.

They added a way to get experience on converted ships, but I don't believe anything was added to grant experience in general.

What if I make BuffPassiveGroupShieldTarget cast a new buff mimicking shield projection, say BuffPassiveGroupShieldDamageSharing.

That way each ship which is inside the group shield would absorb a bit of the damage from the ships around right?

How exactly are the shield projection mechanics?

Let me pick an hypothetical scenario: 

One capital ship is accompained by two iconus, both have shield projection active and the capital is in range.

The capital then takes 1000 points of damage.

What happens? Does each Iconus take 166 points of shield damage, or does one of them take 333 points of damage and the other takes nothing?

I am contemplating making each ship absorb 1-4% of damage of everyone around, and let it stack up to 10 times if feasible.

So many questions...

You know how malice uses that propogate weapon damage stuff? What happens if you make that negative?

My understanding is that shield projection does only move damage points around. I haven't digged Malice code, but I always assumed that it creates damage, which is not what I want.

I *THINK* that Malice calculates a percentage of damage and inflicts the same value on targets. I don't even know if it actually reduces incoming damage.

If it instead removes incoming damage and merely spreads it over to several targets, then it's a different story. 

Can you elaborate on Malice?

You'd have to play with is all I can say. Right now a ship can only be covered by a single Shield projection. If a second projection is active it will only cover ships not already under a shield projection. I'm not sure how the engine will share the damage if two or more ships have that buff stacked on a target.

I did some more testing and completely agree. This basically rules out having larger meshes for certain ships as the spacing as they attack, rotate, form up, etc is hard coded. Just to be clear for anyone reading this has nothing to do with the form fleet mechanic and is just the natural spacing ships attempt to form as the move or attack.

I'm basically resigned to reducing the mesh sizes of several of the models to get them within an agreeable size so as to not annoy me. 

If two ships have the ability, and the buff will stack, each ship will absorb X percentage of damage. For example, if you have a modified Shield Projection, say on two Titans and the damage sharing buff does not effect Titans, and the ability casts a 40% damage sharing buff, then 80% of the damage dealt to frigate X will be inflicted on Titans A and B, respectfully.

If the buff is increased to 50%, i.e. frigate X does not receive any damage, ships will not fire on frigate X when you target it manually. With auto-attack on, the ships will target Titan A or B. I have not tested beyond 50%, i.e. total damage sharing is over 100%, so I cannot speak for that area.

So is there no way to just have a completely transparent polygon (if we can do that) extend the "size" of the mesh, giving illusion of space?

When a ship is hit by malice, the game basically "counts" the damage that ship receives (as well as all other ships affected by that instance of malice) for the duration of the buff...at the end of the buff, it applies a fixed percent to all the "counted" damage, and then applies that damage to all affected ships...

I was just curious if negative values did anything interesting...

On a more serious note though...I do believe you could count the damage done to a single ship, then spread that damage around to multiple ships using the modifiers utilized by malice...you'd have to get creative on how you'd reduce the damage done to the single ship though...that's why I asked if negative values for propogating weapon damage did anything interesting that may be of use...

I would imagine then you are just asking for blocking issues (ships running into shit and not going where you want them to) unless you allow the entity to move through others (like SC)....

OK I am trying to do the following:

PassiveGroupShield casts

PassiveGroupShieldTarget on everyone in range; which casts

PassiveGroupShieldShareDamage from every ship under the effect.

The idea is to do a shield projection-like damage sharing with 1-4% damage absorption by each ship, stackable up to 10 times.

I want to restrict it to effect only ships which have the buff PassiveGroupShieldTarget.

I think it would be a constraint in targetFilter, but I haven't found a way to query for a buff on targeting, like:

constraint "hasBuff"

buffTypeToQuery "PassiveGroupShieldTarget"

but I don't think such a thing exists. Anyone?

There is something similiar to "hasBuff" with Rebellion...look at the abilities Boarding Party and Dem Teams (especially Dem Teams)...you essentially can chek to see if a ship has a buff or not, and discriminate further buff applications accordingly..

Quick question. Where can you alter the number and type of frigates at neutral wells at the start of a game?

It's defined in the GalaxyScenarioDef file.

Sweet thanks man. I now have Stars randomly emitting CMEs that cause damage to nearby planets.

What is the difference between the TITAN and COSMETIC files for the titans?

Cosmetics are totally useless save they appear randomly in the main menu.