Hey everyone! I'm new to modding, but I spent about 8 hours yesterday reading and teaching myself how to extract and install mods into the right directory and how to even get started on messing with strings to mod in-game stats (I suck with computers but I learn quickly).
There's a lot I've got to learn yet, and you experienced, brilliant minds can save me tons of hours of trial and error by letting me know if these sweet ideas are even a possibility. This is for now, the closest thing I can get to creating my "own" fun as hell game( WITHOUT CHANGING GRAPHICS OR TEXTURES!), so please help make my dream come true!
Without further ado, I bring you just some of my great ideas. Possible? or just a dream:
(most values I just pulled out of my ass to use as an example)
- Give a 10% damage/armor buff to all units in the gravity well of an owned planet, or an increased % buff in your home capital gravity well
- Passive regen aura (shield or hull) to all units, or an owned planet's gravity well, as an ability and/or as a researchable % increase to healing rate
- Allow every single unit to level up (even planets, if I can somehow treat them as a capital ship to share battle exp?) OR gain experience. If all units can't level up, is there a way to add or increase stats, or add passive effects to a unit PER unit kill or at a predetermined amount of experience points?
- Is there a way to show in a unit's info-card its total survival time? last hit on enemy ships (kill count) and move-speed?
- A way to obtain resources for enemy unit kills, or create a passive effect for certain units to generate resources per second?
- A way to add tons and tons of research (I couldn't find a hardcoded limit?) to increase ship or planet statistics so I could literally play a match for days or weeks on end during a LAN party or against the AI?
- Add a permanent 1 capacity to a cargo ship's load PER successful roundtrip UNTIL unit death (so the longer a trade ship stays alive the more it can hold, that way I could create research to increase the survivability of trade ships so players feel more inclined to complete that research branch AND to target enemy cargo ships)
- A way to allow auric ability effects stacks an infinite number of times on enemy or allied units
- A way to make a ship's auto-attack a constant, unendingbeam of damage ( similar to how a flame-thrower or laser type weapon would work on most other games, constant damage but with low attack power to balance it out)
- Create INSANELY strong, but expensive, mobile starbases (that could hopefully gain experience too) that would very effectively defend a planet BUT it wouldn't have the ability to heal or REGEN in ANY way. so if it had 50k hull and 50k shield, that'd be sweet. but any damage done to it would not be heal-able, the unit would eventually just die after several attempts to kill it. It'd be kinda like a boss battle when taking over planets.
- A way to add a passive damage over time effect to an entire race's ships' auto-attacks. That way I could make one race or just some ships have a poison-like effect to their normal attacks.
- Have ships or structures also cost population from a planet to build. OR allow, say a capital ship, to extract a # of an enemy planet's population. That ship could then return to a friendly planet to add the "slaves" to an owned planet's population (to increase tax income). I would probably also need to have a way to make a certain planet's population cap infinite, but that planet would just have 0 population growth rate of it's own. that way you could get like... 5k people on a planet, but if an enemy comes and wipes out some of that population the only way you could replace it would be to go and steal more enemy civilians.
PHEW!!
Okay, so I know that was a lot to take in. but if I could implement even just some of these things into the game it would add HUNDREDS of hours of play time for me and my buddies. Sorry for the goofy layout, lol. probably my 3rd time ever posting on a website 
I've got quite a few more sick ideas for abilities, but I'll save those and see what you guys say is actually possible from the list above. I've read many posts and there is a really nice community of helpful modders here. Hope you brainy fellas can help me out! 
