The way I see it, you only have to write the non-configurable stuff once, ShaDoOoW. Many spells are structured similarly but have different data inserted into them. Nevertheless you've got nearly identical mains in each of them. If you wanted to change the way the main behaved you'd have to change it in every similar spell script. The way Higher Ground does it, you just tweak the one main in that include and every spell in that area of effect suite is updated at the same time.
The way I am doing things now I either tediously edit each main, or I pull all the scripts out of temp0, and run find|sed on them for a batched find/replace. Usually I just edit each one one at a time.
Exactly. It's the same reason you have a certralized spells include. When we make, for example, edits to the handling of Herald of Storm spells, we do it once, not a half dozen times. It has numerous advantages, many of which are subtle, but it boils down to this: it's simply better normalization, in terms of storage of relational storage. Likewise, for our spells include, if we want to change the handling of SR, we do it once, in ac_spells, and that impacts ALL spells once they're recompiled. It takes a lot of work to set up, but it saves a TON of work in the long run.
Funky