Problem with abilities

[Igor]

Hi. I have a problem with abilities of space ships. I know that this question was asked before but can anyone told me - is it possible to have a space unit with more than two abilities ? I have managed to add "power to shields" ability to Acclamators and Victory cruisers recently - it worked ok. But I don't know what to do with Piett's Accuser - it already has two abilities and there is no more place above unit's icon in com.bar for third or forth SA button... I thought that I could activate new ability through shortcut keys but it didn't work out. If anyone knows how to add one or to more abilities to Imperator-class star destroyers please give me some walkthrough about it because I spent a couple of days on it and still have absolutly no idea how to make it work...

 

P.S. Sorry for my bad english.

[Droid803]

Short answer: No

 

Long answer: Yes and No, you can have more than four abilities, but the player character will only ever be able to use the first two.

 

Common Myths:

- Using the shortcut hotkeys will work : no

- Right clicking will show the ability to use: no

- It will autofire: depends - power to shields has never autofired on my unit that had it as its 3rd ability

[Sidious_Invader]

I was able to make a ground unit(copy of plapatine) have his force lightning autofire against certain units, and then filled that ability with another new one.

[ovi_da_tiger]

try using lua scripts....power to shields has a lua script that activates when the shields take certain amount of damage....

 

make defend 3rd ability and give the unit the power to shields script and try it out.

 

imma try it tomorrow on my mod....

[Igor]

Well, I guessed that AI will not be able to use new added abilities because it actually not programmed to do that. But never the less I still want to know is it possible to add new abilities (for myself for example or human players)... theoretically ? And if it's possible - how to activate them ? Maybe someone knows how to add two more sa buttons (maybe right under old ones on the unit's icon so it will look nice)  I looked in commandbarcomponents.xml but it's very complicated for me.

[Igor]

I tried to add two more abilities (power to shields & power to weapons) to generic star destroyer and realised that game just "see" first 2 abilities and ignores all others. I added new abilities on 1st and 2nd places and moved tractor beam ability on 3rd place - the ship lost old tractor beam ability... So I think - maybe there is some game constant that tells the game to use the first and the second ability only ? And one more thing: explain me please why power to shields and power to weapons abilities used in frigates described in Unit_Abilities_Data section only and tractor beam requires Unit_Abilities section. Maybe I can't add abilities because of this ?

[Droid803]

Its a GUI limitation.

The AI uses the thrid ability fine, but unless you want to rewrite the GUI, leave it at two activated abilities and as many triggered (ie. damage reflection) or state-based abilities (ie. combat bonus) as you want.

[Sidious_Invader]

As I said above, you can add more abilities without adding a button.

 

Special_Attack

Yes

0.0

250.0

1.0

0.0

0.01

0.2

Structure

Earthquake_Dust_Particles

 

Now look at the I changed Palpys force lightning from "user input" to "special attack" now he uses lightning when prompted to attack the , just like the above attack structures code above. What I did is allow for another user activated(button) attack. Hope this helps you a bit!

[Igor]

Well, I did what you said and emperor started to attack enemies whith lightning automatically. So you mean that unit can have as many Special_Attack abilities as I want and only two User_Input, right ? Pardon me but what the point of this - one of SA buttons is still used by lightning ability (after all I still can manually order emperor to attack smb. with lightning)...

[Sidious_Invader]

Well, I did what you said and emperor started to attack enemies whith lightning automatically. So you mean that unit can have as many Special_Attack abilities as I want and only two User_Input, right ? Pardon me but what the point of this - one of SA buttons is still used by lightning ability (after all I still can manually order emperor to attack smb. with lightning)...

 

Exactly, but now you replace the ordered attack with one you want. Or try to reprogram the GUI. Good luck.

[jedi_consulor]

ooh. Thats a brilliant tip there. I'll put that to use with some new idea's in my mod. - Cheers.

[Igor]

Reprogram GUI... that's interesting. You mean reprogram GUI to add more SA buttons or something other ? Can you tell me please, which files contain data about GUI and what progs I'm gonna need to work with it. I suspect there is something about buttons in GUIDIALOGS.RC file but it generated by C++...

[Droid803]

Probably the EXE...and across several ALO files containing data for the button points, some LUA, the GUIDIALOGS.rc, etc...I dunno, I'm never gonna mess with that.

 

so yes, having it be triggered works for targetng abilities, but for stuff like power to shields, etc hat don't use the section, rewrite the GUI...noones done it before so, good luck