Does anyone have a clean way to give a specific amount of credits/metal/crystal to a player with an ability? There is a give credits instant action that works for that but all I can find for metal and crystal is the overtime action on drain planet, and that gives you an equal amount of both metal and crystal, which is not what I want to do.

Do you want to transfer credits/metal/crystal from one player to another or simply increase theirs without taking it from somewhere else?

I think the transfer is possible, while the simply increasing of metal/crystal is as you've described above.

GameInfo/GalaxyScenarioDef.galaxyScenarioDef

Already txt format

Also templates can be map specific. Open a map with your text editor and look at the bottom for players and templates. Maps can use their own templates or ones from the GSD file included with the m0d.

@myfist0 Thanks!

@GoaFan77 I don't remember if you did. What other issue was there?

The one that causes stability issues. The galaxy folder is in the mod for a reason.

Simply increase. I decided to simply convert the metal/crystal amounts into the amount of credits you'd need on the black market.

The ability itself should work.  I can't find anything wrong with it structure wise.  How is the buff set up?

Right I get that, just saying that by all accounts it should work as you want it to if it works manually and the ability itself isn't structurally broken, so if it's not working, then there's possibly something else going on, and the next step is to verify if the buff is not overly complex like the present ability.  Another reason for it is so I have a complete picture of the ability and buff together and could try it out in game myself, or maybe even recommend that you use something different, like using a format that follows more along the lines of disintegration being that the self affecting portion of the buff involved in that chain includes a time elapsed shield restore, which may have better results with the AI.

But that aside, I'll pick apart what I believe are mistakes in the present form of the ability without testing it...

From what I'm seeing, the ability is looking to fire on a frigate because the target filter is making it look for a frigate to use the buff on instead of a capital ship (I presume cap ship because you have intrinsic levels, I also presume the buff is set up as self targeting and not other ship targeting), and there's zero range which means it can't target anything at all, even if it wanted to.  Yes, it works manually because you're not following the rules you've established, but the AI can't figure out what the heck it's supposed to do because the conditions given to it make it impossible to work with, so it does nothing.  Change the target filter to CapitalShip, and give it a useful value for the range, but small enough that it realistically can only target itself.  Something like 15 or 20.  Also keep in mind that if that's not the only auto use ability you have on that ship, your antimatter usage is really high and you may be falling below before it can be used, especially considering how low the upgrade levels really are, so for testing purposes use very small numbers there as well.

Okay, so after seeing it in game, I can say that if you change the target filter to CapitalShip, give it a paltry range of something other then 0, I used 30, and switched the aiUseTime to OnlyInCombat, your setup works great.  The ship goes into combat and after the required shields are lost, the ability fires.  When the ship jumps out of the gravity well and the damaged shields are still below the number, the ability does not fire saving the antimatter for whatever, and as soon as the enemy jumped in and engaged, the ability fired off again boosting the shields back to full right away as if a backup system had been turned on.  So that part works out extremely well under AI control.  My only interference was sending the ship into battle and then pulling it out.  Other then that, I just watched and let the AI handle everything.

If you want it to work out so that it affects this ship and others nearby, then you need to set it all up just a little differently.  You'd have to change the instant action type to ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadius and expand the radius so other ships can fit into it, you'll have to set the numObjects to 2 or 3 and list CapitalShip, Frigate, and optionally Starbase if you go with 3 instead of 2, and add in a target count section so the game knows how many to affect, but that will give some ships the buff whether they need it or not, but it'll also fire as soon as the first ship in range drops below the set amount of shield loss, so in the end, it's really not that big of a deal.  Maybe if you're going this route, you change the aiUseTime to OnlyWhenManyTargetsHaveShieldDamage and see if that prevents it from firing if only one ship is being attacked at a time.  Probably not what you want to do anyway, but I figured I'd at least provide the info just in case it is what you were looking at doing.

Maybe if you set up the pirate raid to always include exactly one of a specific targetable object, say a capitalship.

ApplyBuffToIncomingHyperspacers (http://code.google.com/p/soaseplugin/wiki/buffInstantActionType)

If you play the game in debug mode set all entities to visible ('e', 'c'), then you'll see the pirates jump into the pirate base like the dark fleet ability.