Topic: Is it ALWAYS a good idea to keep freighters and cap ships together?

OK, so I'm rather fanatical about keeping cap ships and freighters as close to one another as possible, for safety's sake. Each ship has a lower chance of being attacked in a 'swarm' of ships than when they're alone, and several ships have more firepower than one, and can cover each others' blind spots. Keeping all ships together also means all the escort fighters can cover one group of ships, rather than having to spread out all over the map. Since cap ships and freighters are also fully visible on the map and HUD, there's no gain in trying to hide them, either.

But are there advantages to not keeping the ships together? The only example I could think of is the 64-player version of Escape from Hoth, where I believe it's possible for the lone Lancer to take out, or at least severely damage, a whole group of Gallofree transports. But then I realized that the Rebels have a Corvette, and it'd be suicide for a Lancer to take on a Corvette and a fleet of transports.

Any ideas? Any reason why I should not stick close to the other ships?

PS: Could we have a Tactics forum to discuss things like this in, please?

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Re: Is it ALWAYS a good idea to keep freighters and cap ships together?

Well the chance of friendly fire and collisions is increased but its still worth it.

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3 (edited by FSDev| TALON 2007-11-11 15:32:25)

Re: Is it ALWAYS a good idea to keep freighters and cap ships together?

It's all different tactics at the end of the day. Holding the whole fleet together is useful with the Frieghters healing your capital ships as they take hits going into battle. But then it's also good to hold your Freighters back away from the front lines so the bombers have a longer run to try and reach them. All depends on how you want to play it. I find the 64 player Hoth Escape map adds a nice dimension with it's introduction of a few medium sized capital ships, making good teamwork a really high priority as if that Lancer is still up when you're doing a run in a Gallofree for the Hyperspace Beacon you're gonna get torn to pieces, so you have to co-ordinate your team to concentrate all their fire on taking that Lancer out while you're moving your Gallofrees forward, otherwise if you take out the Lancer and then get your Gallofrees starting their run the Lancer will respawn before you make it and put you in a whole world of hurt. Some fun matches those.

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Re: Is it ALWAYS a good idea to keep freighters and cap ships together?

Safety in numbers.

First strike, playing from day one: SirKillsalot30

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Re: Is it ALWAYS a good idea to keep freighters and cap ships together?

no 2142 players will be smart enough to do what they're told

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Re: Is it ALWAYS a good idea to keep freighters and cap ships together?

I find, as a TIE Bomber, it's easier to evade capital fire when they're all bunched up in a group.  That said, I still gotta go with safe-T in numbers for capital ships, in general.

I haven't seen a "divide and conquer" strategy work well enough yet on Taloraan.  Usually everyone goes for it on their own, or more likely the two fleets group up and go after each other head on.

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Re: Is it ALWAYS a good idea to keep freighters and cap ships together?

Canadiens1160 wrote:

I find, as a TIE Bomber, it's easier to evade capital fire when they're all bunched up in a group.  That said, I still gotta go with safe-T in numbers for capital ships, in general.

I haven't seen a "divide and conquer" strategy work well enough yet on Taloraan.  Usually everyone goes for it on their own, or more likely the two fleets group up and go after each other head on.

i had about 3 capitol ships together. but everybody seems to want to be in a fighter even though they do mostly nothing

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