Sub-abilities and meta-abilities

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

The following is an idea I had, as to how certain abilities should have been implemented in FFT - as parts of skillsets instead of skillsets in themselves - but weren't.  I thought it up while daydreaming about tethical, so it's worded at kivutar.

When implementing Charge (or Aim, or whatever) as an ability in the Archer skillset, make it like this:
*Charge (base ability, learn it to unlock sub-abilities)
**Charge+1
**Charge+2
**Charge+4
**Charge+8
Also, create a special Charge only dialog, so when the player selects the Charge ability from the Archer skillset, they can click up and down (and press left and right to check the AT) to select whichever Charge+(n) they want.

When implementing the Jump ability in the Lancer skillet, do the following:
*Jump (base ability, learn it to unlock sub-abilities)
**Vertical Jump +1
**Vertical Jump +2
**Vertical Jump +4
**Vertical Jump +8
**Horizontal Jump +1
**Horizontal Jump +2
**Horizontal Jump +4
**Horizontal Jump +8
Also, make these into sub-abilities.  The player first learns the basic Jump ability, which gives them a Jump range of 1, and then they can click on that Jump ability in the Learn Abilities menu, which will bring up the Jump sub-ability menu, where they can buy upgrades to Jump.  Sub-abilities are passive modifications and extensions to action abilities.

Same with the Calculate (or Arithmetics, or whatever) ability in the Calculator skill set, though this should be slightly different.
*Calculate (brings you to the Calculate meta-ability menu)
**3
**4
**5
**Prime Number
**CT
**Level
**Experience
**Height
When you attempt to learn Calculate, it brings you directly to a sub-ability menu, but since Calculate is nothing but sub-abilities, this should instead be called the meta-ability menu, since it functions differently than the sub-ability menu.  I will call it such.  Anyways, when you attempt to learn Calculate, it brings you the meta-ability menu, where you can spend your JP on Calculate meta-abilities.  You cannot access Calculate in battle, nor will it appear as "learned" in any menu, until you have at least one target (CT, Level, Experience, or Height) meta-ability AND at least one method of targeting (3, 4, 5, Prime Number) meta-ability.

Same with Throw.
*Throw (brings you to the Throw meta-ability menu)
**Shuriken
**Bomb
**Knife
**Ninja Sword
**Katana
**Sword
**(other weapons, I don't feel like putting them all here, too lazy)
The Throw ability remains unusable in battle, and appears unlearned (since it isn't a base ability) until one of it's meta-abilities is learned.  Once one of the meta-abilities is learned, the Trow ability will appear as partially learned in all skillset menus.

Same with Item.
*Item (brings you to the Item meta-ability menu)
**Potion
**High Potion
**X Potion
**Ether
**(other items, too lazy to finish them all)
See Throw for details on how it should appear in menus.

For all of these, it might be best if you created classes between unlearned abilities (which are gray) and completely learned abilities (which are black).

Perhaps you could flag sub-abilities as gray when nothing is learned, blue when the base ability is learned but there remain sub-abilities that aren't learned, and black when all sub-abilities as well as the base ability are learned - though circumstances where sub-abilities can be learned without first learning the base ability should be impossible, except for crystal absorbs, now that I think about it.  Regardless of how many sub-abilities are learned, the ability should remain unusable until the actual base ability is learned.

Do the same for meta-abilities, but flag them as green or red when partially learned.  I'd go with green, since red means lack of MP to cast the ability in battle.

This is how Square should have implemented these skillsets, in my ignorant opinion.  Though this seems much more complicated than Square's approach, at least we could have more than one type of ability in these skillsets.  And this is probably much more complicated to implement in FFT when you can just use Xifanies ARH, unless you're optimizing all of battle.bin, but still, I doubt this can easily be implemented in MIPS.

A question at FDC: where is the "consumption" portion of Item and Throw coding?  Is it in the items or the abilities?  Or is it kind of in both, where the items reference an ability or formula which destroys one of those items when the ability is used?