Question 1: How do effects in Skyrim apply scripts to their recipients? Is it similar to Oblivion? I did some research and some people claim that multiple instances of a script can be applied from one effect. For example:

In Oblivion: create a Power with a script effect. Use it twice in a row. The 2nd instance ends the script for the first instance - only one instance of the script ever exists at one time.

In Skyrim: what happens if you do this?

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Question 2: What's the best way to support "complex combat" with Skyrim's modding capability?

Complex combat: using 2 different base combat types. For example, a character that wields an axe in one hand and chain lightning in the other, combining them into an area damage swipe that does melee damage plus chain lightning damage. If Skyrim supports one-handed thrown weapons, you could also have a ninja character who wields a katana in one hand and throwing stars in the other.

Other examples would be "overloaded" combat with a 2-handed weapon and something else in the off hand with decreased effect - for instance, a character that can wield a crossbow together with Frost Storm where clicking both mouse buttons together would launch 2 crossbow bolts and then an area cryo blast. Another example would be a perk that lets your character strap a shield to the left arm while wielding a 2-handed melee weapon (but you lose the ability to bash with it, and an armor penalty is applied to the shield)

Another example would be dual cast perks on abilities of different type: suppose you could wield Flames in one hand and Firebolt in the other, hold down both mouse buttons, and generate a continuous stream of firebolts. Or put Reanimate in one hand and Healing Hands in the other, hold down both mouse buttons, and gain the ability to heal undead (in Skyrim, undead are immune to most healing effects).

I know this may sound goofy to most people.... but comments and help are greatly appreciated, if you think that this is a stupid/inviable idea, please let me know before I start implementing it.

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Question 3:How to make abilities that don't scale their cost off skill

This is perhaps my most important question in this post. I actually tested this in the Skyrim Creation Kit and found some bugs in the game engine. Here's the problem:

Most people that I see posting questions on overhaul mods seem to agree that cost scaling (with 100% cost decrease effects on armor) is just plain broken. 100% fortify destruction = infinite dual thunderbolt = enemies are perpetually staggered. 100% fortify alteration = entire enemy team is paralyzed for the rest of the game.

So I have been researching how to make a mod with abilities where effect scales with level and armor skill buffs/perks instead of scaling down with cost. There are several overhaul mods that do similar stuff, but it appears that they use global modifiers to nullify the default cost scaling. I don't want to use global settings to implement this - just in case I ever want to release the resulting mod to the public, I don't want it to interfere with existing overhauls.

First I tested building abilities that are not linked to any skill (not linked to restoration/alteration/conjuration/etc...). This just made them not show up in any powers and abilities tab.

Next thing I tested is implementing them as non-aligned Powers with no cooldown. This appears to work somewhat, but it appears that the in-game support for equipping powers in either hand appears to be buggy/nonfunctional. For example, I made a modified version of the starting "Flames" effect that continuously throws fire bolts every 1/5 of a second, designated it as a Power (with no cooldown, as opposed to some powers that are once per day), and set its valid equip slots to "either hand". When I had my character equip the testing effect in either hand and held down the corresponding mouse button, the effect stopped after a fraction of a second with a message "Powers can only be used once a day". (Remember that I did not set it up with a once per day limit). If I held down the mouse button again to re-test, the same thing happened. The amount of time the effect remained active was actually long enough for 1 or 2 fire bolts to appear before the effect cancelled itself with the incorrect cooldown error, which is obviously a game-engine or construction set bug.