Oh, the complete lack of what you mention and a lot more makes it very hard to mod this thing at all. There are certain variable that you can use in certain circumstance, and some that you cannot. The developers have been hording this information while we, the modders, have to try and figure it all out on our own. There is a thread called the "modifier list", it should be at the top of the first page and has the names of most of the various setting. It does not contain examples nor does it have the full list of possible settings that each of them could have.

I tried using the Instant Action ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadius, but after banging my head against the keyboard for about 6 hours I found that ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadiusWithTravel worked for no apparent reason. They both logically do the same thing since I was only targeting ships (and I have plenty of experience doing that in this game) so Travel is superfluous. This can only mean that parts of it are indeed hard coded into the game and non-modifiable.

For now you have to copy some pre-existing, working ability/buff/whatever and then tweak it. If they ever decide to grace us with the variable rule sets and the full set of conditions for each then we can truly begin to mod. Since this was a necessary document to generate the game, it is curious that they will not give us a copy while professing that they are fully supporting the modders.

Two last things you NEED to know. Save games store information, so if you mod something you need to start a new game to make sure that the system uses the new version. You have no idea how frustrating that discovery was (lost about 2 weeks worth of time). The second is that the entire game is loaded into memory at launch, so you must restart the whole thing to see changes (textures for sure).

If you figure out anything then post it. If it applies to the modifier list then post it in that thread.

Good Luck!