At parameterization-time, OpenMM doesn’t try to make any judgements about relationships between chain IDs and mutually connected atoms. There is some notion of a difference between “internal and external bonds” (internal or external to a residue)
At loading-time, chains are used to inform whether there should be peptide bonds between adjacent residues. At parameterization-time, chain info isn’t used.
If noncontiguous atoms are part of the same chain, they’ll need to be part of different chains.
If OMM writes out an OpenFF topology, standard residues won’t have CONECT records written. Check what happens if a nonstandard AA with a modified chemistry is exported. It will see the name “ALA” and omit writing the bonds, which will be a big problem if it’s not chemically alanine.
Multiple OpenMM chains can share exactly the same name!
Two residues with the same number/resSeq value, in the same chain, are assumed to be AltLoc.