Angles of meshpoints are 90 degrees each side and up/down. I do wish it was a little smarter as it cause soa ships to fire through the hull. I have found that if the odd angle is less than 90, it will still act as the main direction. I am thinking of trying the top saucer points forward but on an up angle of less than 90 so it will still as the forward, fire on a lot at back targets, but not down through the saucer.

For the record, freeze rotations does not work, it changes all the meshpoints to the same rotation. 

Okay, after double checking the scene file it does seem this is the cause of all my problems. Now the bigger question is how do I fix it? Trying to reset the rootpoint back to normal throws my entire scene off. Any ideas or do I have to rehardpoint this thing again?

Unlink all helpers from the rootpoint, rotate, re-link.

I'm just going to hope it was the late hour and frustration that kept me from thinking of that and not my incompetence. Thanks, that worked perfectly, the model is now behaving exactly as intended.

Hey guys, both because I wanted to and because it seemed like a logical place to start modding the game, I'm working on improving the Kol. Anyway, I'm attempting to add a shield mitigation reduction debuff to the Gauss Rail Gun. I have the proper reference files installed correctly, and using the Stikulas' DefeatShields buff as a template, I added a shield mitigation effect to it, however I can never actually test it properly since every time I build the Kol and mouse over GRG to spend my first ability point on it, I get a minidump, and I'm not sure why.

can you attach the files you modded? Did you add any new files? Did you update the entity manifest?

Edit: Okay, I got the Gauss Rail Gun to work properly the way I wanted to, but now I'm getting a runtime error after adding in the changes I wanted to do to Adaptive Force Field, namely making it passive and reducing its stats to make it so it wasn't too powerful given its new passive nature. Apologies if my code is weird, I wasn't too sure how to do Passive Abilities so it's probably a mess , links below.

Edit2: Wow, a blank line was apparently causing the runtime error! Weird, but I got it to work!

Buff Adaptive Shield-

http://pastebin.com/Kv0Vc0kF

Ability Adaptive Shield-

http://pastebin.com/UxSWe1sN

If any one knows much about particles, was wondering if it is possible to change the phase jump effects to be an exhaust like effect connected to exhaust points? (rather than the big flashy lines around the ship)

Phase jump uses a hardcoded hardpoint I think (most likely Center), but I haven't checked. I don't know if it's possible to make each ship use its own jump graphic (I distinctly recall back in diplomacy some of those ship lines weren't having any effect) but if you verify that works, you could make a custom particle for each ship aligning emitters to the engine models.

If you find a hardpoint reference for jump effects you can set it to Exhaust, and bingo.

You cannot. For some reason you can make each ship have a custom jump sound, but the jump particle is actually assigned in the player.entity files. There is now 3 different sets of particles, 1 for frigates, 1 for capitalships, and 1 for titans, but you can't make custom jump effects for each ship.

I can always replace the phase jump effect with a blank particle I guess...

is there any way to make engine exhaust at least show when jumping? or some way to fake it?

Is phase jumping tied to an ability? Maybe you could make a buff or something that triggers effects on exhaust hardpoints...

No, but you might be able to get an ability to trigger on phase jumping.

Passive using EnterHyperspace?

ok, sounds good... I'll try it out.

I had this idea to make the advent culture centers also function as trade ports (supposed to be instead of them).

I've looked at a few files: the planet module entities for the tradeport and culture center, plus the tradeport research subject.

At first, none of this looks like it does anything (bare with me, I have no idea what I'm doing) but properly name everything, attach costs, and make sure you have the right research. No 'BUFF_generateCrazyIncome' or something. I did find some stuff at the end about the trade ship spawns which I copied over to the culture center entity.

There are 2 other things I noticed: something called a planetModuleRoleType, and a statCountType. I get crashes if I try to have all of these different values on the culture center, and culture does not get generated if I switch the culture center to the tradeport values or leave it with just the trade ship spawns code.

I guess my question is what gets trade ports trading and is it possible to do what I'm trying to do?
I haven't yet looked at the starbase trading stuff...  

I never tried this, but it's probably possible to put a culture spreading ability on to the trade port.

Starbases do this as well, but a few have tried multiple types of SBs and the AI doesn't seem to like to build the other types.

It's pretty simple. I do this with my Nephilim faction. Any structure can have culture output by modding: cultureSpreadRate.

BTW- this field is midway down the entity file after resourceExtractionType.

https://code.google.com/p/soaseplugin/wiki/RebellionPlanetModuleTradePort

I have just tried it using TEC broadcast center: the change is only in PLANETMODULE_TECHORBITALTRADEPORT.entity.

At the top, I changed entityType from PlanetModuleStandard to:

entityType "PlanetModuleTradePort"

And I added the following to the bottom:

cargoShipType "FrigateTechTradeShip"
maxCargoShipCount 5
cargoShipRespawnTime 30.000000
baseTradeIncomeRate 1.000000

Then the broadcast center generates trade income and links trade route.

Further, changing planetModuleRoleType from CULTURE to:

planetModuleRoleType "TRADEPORT"

makes the AI build it like normal trade ports (quickly build one per planet, but no more than one per planet), but the structure will no longer spread culture (!).

This also means that adding cultureSpreadRate to normal trade ports will not make it spread culture.

I checked my nephilim file. Apparently I set these lines in the trade port as well.

planetModuleRoleType "CULTURE"
statCountType "ModuleCultureCenter"

It works fine- generates culture and trade.

I have little holy ships that perform pilgrimages between their culture shrines. It's works since Entrenchment and still works in Rebellion.

Thanks Everyone.

Hi sins moding community!I hope this question was not answered before some where , yet I tried hard searching.

My question is: is there a way to make a weapon or/and ability that deals
certain damage to hull but fully ignore armor?

Example: weapon/ability deals 200 points of shield damage ( affected by shield mitigation , but let it be 0% for now) and then when it hits armor , it deals 200 hull damage (again affected by shield mitigation of 0%) but fully ignores armor (that ship had by the way , this value may be even huge, up to 99% damage reduction).
What i want , is to create ships that have weapons designed to tear heavily armored ships apart.

Nope. There is currently no mechanic in the game that ignore's armor.

And what about ignoring shield mitigation but still dealing damage to shield?

Or some how make weapon or ability damage shield and hull different way?