I told you fighters are the biggest pain to mod in the entire game. The reason you can't give fighters target abilities or abilities that "ApplyBuffToSelf" is that the fighters themselves don't have abilities, the squads do. Squads do not physically exist in the game, they are just an obstruction that carries fighters and tells them how to carry out orders. Squads do have a position though so radius abilities do work as in DS.

Hmmm. Radius abilities. Could I then make it something where if they're -close- enough they make the enemy ship fizzle out slightly? I can't get DS to download right now because my internet is behaving poorly.

Im verrry new to modding sins, Im actually going through the learning process right now, so if my idea is stupid then im sorry lol.  But seeing how fighters arent "single" units but react as groups, would it be possible to take a frigate like the scout, modify the size of the ship down to a scale of what the fighters are on and give them the ability to dock.  so instead of a group of 5 or whatever fighters, you instead have 5 or 10 mini frigates flying around.  This could enable you to give your new "fighters" active/passive abilities and buffs etc. lol imagine having a fleet of mini capital ships flying around.  If its stupid, sorry, but I thought itd be cool

I suppose you could always make something that only applies a 1 second buff to a single owned fighter with a range of 1 which would allow you to give a single fighter an ability.  You can't make the entire squad shoot glowy missiles of doom or something though since you only have the position of the oldest fighter in the squad.