Strikecraft with repair ability

Strike craft don't have proper ability function.

For the Utility craft, you should be able to set the squad as mines and manage ability usage that way.  The defensive strikecraft wont work that way though.

The only way to get ability function onto a proper fighter is by applying it from the host ship.  You're also stuck with PhysicalDamageAsDamageDealer, or PhysicalDamageAsDamageTarget(only in Rebellion) for a method of blocking missiles.

Getting them to stay near your ships wont work out well, auto attack range isn't something to mod, it's a setting you can change in game.  You could default it to local area, but that's it.

You could try creating a new frigate (corvette style) with said abilities, and have a carrier with the ability to spawn them for a time. Then you could have 3 distinct abilities to spawn one of the 3 types of frigates.

For Diplomacy (I don't have rebellion yet) at least it looks like it's possible to put abilities on squads. However it also seems as though putting an ability on a squad that requires anti-matter (While also giving the squad anti-matter) just resulted in a mini-dump! That however can be solved by giving the abilities appropriate cooldowns I guess.

As for getting the craft to stay with the carrier. I did change the "DefaultAutoAttackRange" to "Local" and they did indeed stay with the carrier. The problem was though that some of them fell behind and they didn't automatically try to catch up!

I tested these on the Advent Bomber.

Aha another kindred. I also do not have Rebellion. However under the frigatename.entity is a place where you can code fighter-style movement. Rebellion took advantage of this with Corvettes, but the capability was there in Diplomacy.

Fighters are not meant to have abilities, the ones they have are done via link with the host.

AM amount should not matter (no pun intended), you can change the cost to 0. Cooldowns should not matter.

Fighters are the most restricted type of entity to work with abilities. This is because Squads can have abilities, but fighers can't. Since Squads do not physically exist, this greatly limits what types of ability functions you can use. ApplyBuffToSelf and ApplyBuffToTarget for example, the most basic functions, do not work with strikecraft since Self refers to the Squad, not the fighters, and target needs a range.

For the most part you will be limited to abilities that have AoE such as ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadius or ApplyBuffToLocalOrbitBody. This will probably prevent colony and starbase fighters off the bat. Your other things might be possible but the AI don't use them well.

Adding shields to fighters minidumps.

Adding antimatter to fighters usually minidumps and at best does nothing.

Adding an ability that is not AoE, requires focus fir and the like minidumps.

Some abilites can be added but will not work.

Strikecraft are very limited.  psychoak spelled it out specifically in his reply.

Well the repair and jam functions should be AOE anyway so no problem there other than the fact they'll be centered on the squad not the strikecraft itself. But then again the squad will be centered on the strikecraft if I just make it a 1-to-1 ratio between squad and strikecraft.

And spawning a frigate seems kinda like overkill, especially since I doubt I'll be able to get it to behave correctly (Basically orbiting the host ship) shooting at any nearby hostile strikecraft...

As for the fighter movement. Yeah there is a setting called "UseFighterAttack" which causes frigates to move like strikecraft (In other words straffing and firing on the move). Sadly this still doesn't let me put a craft into "Guard"-mode where it protects one specific unit above all else! At least I don't think so... Anyway I'll think about it some more. I thank you all for your input so far, and don't hold back if you have other ideas how to make what I'm aiming for happen

Strikecraft don't guard anything, either. They just prioritize targets (fighters attack bombers). The same can be done with frigates, flak for instance will target strikecraft above other frigates.

It might be a little overkill, but one ability by the host can spawn any number of frigates, and that is the only way I know of for you to get all the abilities you want them to have.

You must have at least 3 strikecraft in a squadron.

Another issue on AoE effects with strikecraft is cpu lag.  Their fast movements do not work well with ranged effects and ships moving in and out of range as a combination of their own movmemt along with the strikecraft's really bog the game down.

You can drop down squads to a single craft but they must always be the same type if there are more than one in a squad.

In Trinity I had issues where squads would be 3 then 1 and then back again.  I am rold Rebellion is better.

Eh?  There's a whole bunch of 1's and 2's in SOA2, what kind of problem have I missed?

Interesting. Well even in Rebellion, I tried to reduce the number of strikecraft of the Advent minelayer squadron to 1. Gave me three instead. I assumed it was another hardcode...

Maybe something specific to mines?

Edit:  You're not being a total noob and forgetting the squad upgrade, right?

I don't know, I might have, but that was a while ago. Either way, yeah that hangar upgrade would screw up wanting just 1 homing mine anyways, so I guess its a goodthing I totally scraped homing mine squadrons.

I would imagine, if you can actually add antimatter to strike fighters, then you can set up a convert damage to antimatter passive ability (with the damage resulting in a loss of antimatter) with the antimatter acting as a crude form of shielding.

Does that ability restore antimatter from damage, or actually negate damage and turn it into antimatter?

Antimatter can be added to fighters and mines but I am pretty sure that it cannot actually do anything other than sit there.  When I assigned abilities to mines with antimatter it did nothing.

It might work as an antimatter storage tanks to be drained by another ship's ability.  I think the restore rate worked (it's been a bit since I played with this).

Frustratingly, mines and strikecraft seem more alike than with the other ships but they also are differnt from one another--something that works on one won't on the other.