Intermediate background question

Hello, I just recently started playing this great game (stop sniggering, I know it's old, my old computer was only 233 Mhz and I was too broke to upgrade!) and almost immediately got into modmaking. (I haven't even finished the single player game yet...)

Anyhow, I know how to extract a dat file, I know how to make custom backgrounds, and have even made a few fun ones myself. But something is bugging me - that 5 of a type limit rule. How do I know what type something falls in?

For example, obviously all the primary stats are one type. But looking at the files, there are built in effects that have more than 5 of other types so I think there must be more than just "stats" and "nonstats". For example, Body of Air has four resistance mods, a damage mod, and a speed mod. I think maybe skills are one type, resistances, another, stats a third... but beyond that I'm not sure (and I'm not totally sure of those, either). Are speed and AC the same type? What about crithitchance and badreactionadj? Is there any place I can find this info?

Also, I know how to include an item with a background... but how do I do more than one? And is it possible to change the starting garment from "Nice Suit" to something more suitable for that background, or is this hardcoded into the game?

 

Just put a space between item numbers to add more than one item to the background. The "Nice Suit" is not hardcoded. If you add some other item such as leather armor in the proper size, then your character will appear wearing that and will not get the "Nice Suit". If you add boots and some other items, your character will not automatically put them on, but they will appear in the inventory.

As for the types of things, that is something I have never found any source of clearcut definitions for, but I can tell you what I have learned. Stats and Skills definitely make up two types. There are a few things that fall into each of those two types that are unexpected and a few things that seem to fall outside of either type, so there is evidently a third type, that is perhaps Resistances and there may even be a fourth type that is something else. I suggest you simply play around with those things that are not either a definite Stat or Skill to see which type they fall into. If you can come up with a better set of definittions, please let me know.