Random idea- Kamikaze Fighters?

I've tried to copy the mine-fighter from the Advent to figure out how to do it, to no avail- there's no 'ability.'

That's a good question. My first thought was to have a look at the FighterPsiMinelayer, which pretty much does what you are intending. Looking at the fighter's entities though I don't see anywhere where there's an ability slot with a referral to the ability used by that fighter. Nor can I find any referral in the ability, or buffs to the fighter.

I guess, as an experiment you could try giving the "FighterPsiMineLayer" entity a referral to the "Entry vehicle" mesh, instead of  "SupportShip_PsiMine" and see what happens. It might at least give some insight as to what's going on there.

Okay, I found the 'Squad" entity and tried to just test it by dropping in the "Mine" detonation ability from TEC in place of the advent deploy ability.  now Dev. Entrenchment just crashes without any explanation.

but I DID get the mesh working correctly x.x

Good idea!

I'm pretty sure it is possible, don't forget about kamikaze style ability the Advent scout has either.

that's a surprisingly good idea, maybe I can tear that ability out....

okay, I tried to just drop that -specific- ability in and it doesn't even show up >< ideas?

edit: Testing new version. Forgot about the research requirements.

Great, here comes an error message.

Entity 'SquadTechMine' can't support abilities that single target and ability:0 'AbilitySuicideFighter' has a singleTarget buffInstantActionType

Guess that's it then, can't be done. =(

UNless someone has a genius idea? x.x Some way to make the game code stop going, "MAKEDEAD CAN ONLY APPLY TO ONE TARGET" ?

You could put the ability on the host carrier and ApplyBuffToLinkedSquad->MakeDead? (Some creative constraint use will stop it from killing non-suicide SC)

Or you could try ApplyBuffToTargetsLinked, though I only looked that one up on the Modifier list, so I have no idea where it comes from or how it's used.

interesting. Testing.

Another option, although maybe not exactly what ur looking for...is to make the "kamikaze fighters" an ability for the ship(s) i.e. Carriers and Capital Ships. When activated it "summons" a bomber and sends it at the target. There may be a way to have it summon more than 1 and then have them form a formation somehow...it might end up being similar to the fighter squads, but it wouldn't be quite the same.

The summoned bomber would have the "kamikaze" ability that the advent guys have...and it would have to be set to autocast w/no cost or something of that nature, so that they could use it as soon as they're summoned and head for a target...or however the ability works, I honestly haven't looked at the mechanics of it.

The downside would be it would take up an ability slot on the ability pages of them to summon the "fighter" itself, although some of the capital ship abilities and whatnot are "weak" enough that they could be switched out without much noticing, lol.

The ship would probably end up being a "normal" ship, assuming you can't get the squad bit working - but you could make it so it doesn't take up any slots in the "supply".

Actually if the kamikaze fighters are supposed to be an ability, and not Advent Mines with a quickfire button, you would just have to change the projectile animation of Missile Barrage to the drone. As long as you aren't supposed to be able to shoot them down, you can simply make them a Missile-type weapon animation.

Edit: Oh, and I checked the ApplyBuffToTargetsLinked action: It's used for the Rapture's meditation aura

    buffInstantActionType "ApplyBuffToTargetsLinked"
    instantActionTriggerType "OnDelay"
    delayTime 0.000000
    buffType "BuffBattleMeditationChild"
    targetFilter
        numOwnerships 1
        ownership "Player"
        numObjects 1
        object "Fighter"
        numSpaces 1
        space "Normal"
        numConstraints 1
        constraint "LinkedSquad"
    effectInfo
        effectAttachInfo
            attachType "Invalid"
        smallEffectName ""
        largeEffectName ""
        soundID ""

Is the setup required to apply the buff to all fighters hosted by the affected ship via an InstantAction (the original one has the AlwaysPerform trigger type and is part of a periodic action)

Would the 'magnitize' ability be of use? Just turn it around so that you target enemy vessels, but only a specific type of friendly fighter (in this case your divine wind) is affected.

That could work. For example, if you set the magnetize range to infinite/very high, give the ability to the kamikaze squad, set the initial cast range to your desired kamikaze range and set the max. number of targets to the base number of SC in the kamikaze squad.

Don't the Advent have mines on their carrier? I think I remember seeing Mine squads flying in formation with them. If I've got my head on straight, you have a kamikazi right there.

The Advent Mine Squads are useless by themselves. However, the Mine Squad has a "Deploy Mines" ability, which converts the squad's SC into the actual Advent Mines. Sadly, this conversion method is hardcoded and only works for converting SC into mines.

What the OP is trying to do is make SC kamikaze directly into the enemy ship, similar to Magnetize or Advent Seekers.

SC squads can only have AoE abilites.