You can have a squadron's ability apply a buff that targets fighters, but you cannot have squads buff themselves (ApplyBuffToSelf). An example of the former:

buffInstantActionType "ApplyBuffToTargetsAtOrbitBody"
instantActionTriggerType "AlwaysPerform"
buffType "BuffHeroicFighter"
targetFilter
	numOwnerships 1
	ownership "Player"
	numObjects 1
	object "Fighter"

this will apply the "BuffHeroicFighter" to all fighters in the gravity well. I'm assuming that you could also use "ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadius" and perhaps a few others without causing the game to crash, but don't quote me on that.

If "ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadius" also works, then you run into the issue that when attacking, fighters are never within X radius of the squadron center, so it would be impossible to apply a buff to only that squadron's members using "ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadius".

Unfortunately, I don't know of anyway to manage an ability on a squad-by-squad basis (but would be curious to hear if you figure it out).

Hope that helps.

edited for clarity

Well, in this case, the squads only consist of one ship, so if I set the range to something like 1, it should work pretty reliably...

I still don't think you guys are understanding...

I wasn't trying to make the squad buff the squad.  I was making the squad buff a single fighter within a radius of one (and since I set the squad's number of fighters to one) so it will buff just that fighter.  For whatever reason, that fighter was not then using the applyorremovebufftoself correctly.  It never applied the buff to itself.  That said, when I cut out that step and made the squad directly buff a fighter within a range of one, and gave it a duration of 10 seconds (rather than the toggle I wanted), it worked just fine.  ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadius works fine when used by squads.  I wanted to know why ApplyOrRemoveBuffToSelf wouldn't work.

And I am aware that the thing could potentially pick up the buff from another squad instead of itself, but that is unlikely unless you park multiple squads on top of each other (which is doubtful in combat).  Beyond that, I'm going to add a constraint to make sure it is the only squad capable of being buffed because the new fighters have phase missiles and pulse beams on them (so the energy weapons constraint will work).

Because the squad only had one fighter, the fighter and the squad were always located in the same place. Thus he could use a very small range with ABTTIR and essentially it will only buff the given fighter unless another strikecraft flew right threw it, which I do see happen quite a lot actually, but with the constraint it shouldn't get to many extra targets.

The problem with fighters is that is not that they can't buff themselves, but its almost impossible to ensure that they only buff themselves and work 100% of the time. With a conventional squad using a ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadius, sometimes the buff will be given to other fighters that happened to fly close by and sometimes that squad will be so far apart you'll miss some of the fighters. With a solo fighter, you can ensure you always buff the intended target while using a small radius that makes it far less likely you'll get unintended targets, which is good but still not quite perfect.

Is it the same something about a spawner that spams up Developer logs? Yeah I don't know what the problem is, though I'd be interested to know too.

could anyone point me to a buff that has stacking so I can see how it works?

Um, did you actually test this in a combat situation? Lavo tried making an ability like that but it caused a crash whenever a fighter with shields took damage.

No I hadn't...  Kind of assumed they'd work...  Just tried it and it crashed.  Is there a particular reason for the crash?

Pretty much it. While the graphic interface seems to be able to handle showing fighter having shields just fine, internally the game engine just can't handle it. It doesn't expect strikecraft to have shields, and thus just gives up when the damage calculations come around because it doesn't know how to handle it. Whether its the shields or the shield mitigation causing the problem its anyone's guess, but regardless shields on fighters are impossible. You'll just have to come up with something else, say a damage reduction buff, instead.

It sees a fighter with shields as essentially an error--it is not supposed to happen and seems to have been coded to be this way.

Alternatives are high hit points and/or fast hull regeneration.

Yeah, the game does not like shielded fighters. Maybe IC can change this for Rebellion, I really hope they do, even if it's just so modders can use it.

Just an idea, you might want to look at one of those damage distribution abilities the Advent has (iirc one of the support cruisers has it) and consider putting that onto the squadron; this would essentially make an individual fighter last longer.

where can I find the addons mentioned here?

And how do you disable XSI from mirroring everything you do to a polygon?  For instance, I try to distort one side of it and it immediately thinks I'm trying to mirror it on the other side.  This is fine sometimes, but idk how to get rid of it because it makes extruding impossible to do.  Other times, I wish I had it on...  How do you do that?  I'm assuming It's just a matter of me accidentally hitting some key, but I don't know what key that is...

Theo, this depends a lot on what file extension/type the X3 ships are in. Would you be able to get that and tell us? Or better yet, give us an example to work with.