Chapter 4: In Game Tactics
Well by this point, you should have made a clear game plan of what you want to do. If you had an eligible planet nearby, you have established your Rebel base in the core sector. You have turned over several planets to your side, and are still diplomatizing neutral systems. You have established, lets say, Orto for your base of operations. The Empire has turned Sluis Van to there side through diplomacy, and have a small fleet in the system. You may want to send a y-wing recon and/or bothans to check it out. Take info on what you do know is there, and send out missions using solo. Target known facilities first, create a sabotage mission with Solo as the main agent, and chewy and wedge as decoys. Luke, Leia, and Dodonna should be doing diplomacy, and are not well fitted for sabotage missions any how. Early in the game Wedge is most useful as a decoy, or commander, I don't usually send him on a ship research mission until I have a planet with 5 or more shipyards available and can spare his services. If no facilities are available or have already been sabotaged, target any ships which may be in orbit of the planet or start plundering off his mines and refineries. Now a smart thing to do if you are getting struck with unstoppable sabotage attempts, is just to scrap the planet. Its better to get the benefit of the refined materials from scraped facilities then to get them sabotaged out from under you. Defenses on planets that have been stripped serve little or no purpose, so scrap them as well. The refined materials you get from scraping will speed up your current construction projects. Scraping facilities, etc. is also good if you know the enemy is blockading and is planning on assaulting and taking your planet by force, or of sabotaging it clean with missions, if you have reason to believe this will happen, its your best bet just to scrap the planet.
Hopefully Solo's missions will put a hurt on the Empire's productivity in that sector. Its also a good idea to keep your fleet on the move, leaving ships idle for too long, even at your own base, can mean a sure chance of sabotage by Rebel or Imperial agents. In a quick and random decision you send a espionage mission to Orto by chance, abort it, and see that the small Imperial fleet will be arriving at your base on Orto in 2 days. While, this does not give you enough time to get more units into place, it does give you time to assign a commander and/ or admiral to your fleet. The Imperial fleet enroute is say a carrack and a vsd. Carracks provide a good amount of anti-starfighter defenses while packing in a strong durability in long battles, the carrack most be your first target. The VSD while posing a threat with heavy weapons fire against capital ships, poses little threat to fighters. Depending on what the Imperial opponent decides to do with the two ties aboard his VSD, act accordingly. Lets say your small fleet consist of 2 corvettes and one bulk cruiser. Move the corvettes into a intercept course targeting the VSD, but reassign them to hit the fighters when they start to go after you fighters you had on ground patrol. Assign the bulk cruiser to target the carrack, and keep the cruiser's fire concentrated on the carrack. Your ground defense fighters consist of say 4 x-wings and 2 y-wings. If the Imperial opponent assigns his ties to go after you fighters then assign the x-wings to attack his fighters first, and follow up about 2 seconds later by assigning the y-wings to attack the fighters, by this time the corvettes should have broken off their VSD run and be attacking from behind. It is important that you keep your fighters back at your start line, and let them huddle until you assigned the attack orders against the fighters, as that when ties are assigned to attack the fighters, they go for y-wings first, same for rebel fighters, they go for bombers first. This way your x-wings will have a good jump on the ties as they fly past going for the incoming y-wings, and you should drop the ties with no problem with a few shots, taking minimum damage. Now turn your corvettes on the closing carrack, your bulk should still be firing at it, and order all your fighters to attack it. With your concentrated firepower of ships and fighters, the carrack should be easy pickings. The VSD should either be blasting away, and depending on the targeted ship, if he has not changed his fire, and has keep firing on one ship from the start, that corvette should have it shields badly damaged or neutralized. Once the carracks weapons are useless, turn all remaining fighters and ships to attack the VSD. The VSD will be helpless against the rebel fighters, and any smart Imperial commander will order retreat if they were not smart enough to do so at the battle start.
Rebel fighters are the heart of rebel defense in the beginning of the game. Without fighters, the Rebellion does stand much of a chance against large imperial ships, and while a two corvettes and bulkcruiser may be able to push back a carrack or vsd, they will not stop a mighty ISD. Early rebel fleets should concentrate on defense, this means you should build a hefty amount of x'wings and y'wings for sector defense before concentrating on your ship construction. Rebels will not have battle offensive capital ships until the introduction of the neb-b's or mon cals. Mon cal cruisers are not worth the price, they serve as a good back bone if you want one in a large fleet, but for conventional rebel fleet, you can have 3 neb's for the price of a mon cal. Neb-b's are best ships for the price and durability early in rebel fleets, providing a considerable amount of both laser and turbo laser fire, these small, but deadly ships can pack quite a punch in mass numbers, they are my number one favorite rebel ship. Corvettes and gunships are a necessity to the rebel fleets. They are the offensive against imperial ties, its best to have as many as possible to protect your fighters, these ships can intercept fighters and open fire while you hold you fighters back until it is apparent your opponent has ordered them to attack your fighters, then you attack with yours, with the corvettes and guns coming in to help, imperial ties won't last long and then you use the corvettes and guns to focus fire on appropriate targets. Depending on the manner of the fight, offense or defending your system you will want to act appropriately. If there is the chance you can win, concentrate firepower on anti-fighter imperial escorts one at a time, until there weapon systems have been neutralized, then target the next one. If you are trying to defend your system from Imperial invasion, meaning your are taking a stand against a Imperial fleet that would win and would crush you, and you are willing to risk your fleet to defend the system, you will want to cause as much damage as possible. Neutralize the Tie Fighter threat, and then instead of going for imperial escorts, mount a full offensive on their command ship, usually an ISD, and with all fighters and ships firing at it, you will hopefully take it out and slow down the empire's hopes of overtaking your system or sector by killing or injuring the characters on board and destroying the troops or spec forces you will buy yourself considerable time to rebuild.