Chapter 5: Toying with Opponent's Thinking
Another tactic that works great preys on the human weakness, while playing a human player is always more difficult and inventive, the human has one flaw over the computer's AI. The human can be confused and mislead to believe what you want him to see. The computer sees ships for what they are and their classification and knows when they were constructed and what number they are, humans can be easily mislead. One way of doing this is hiding your numbers, say you start with two ISD's, name Imperial Star Destroyer 2 to I.S.D 1 and now you have two ships which read Imperial Star Destroyer 1. It will take your human opponent a while, if he does ever notice, to realize what you have done. Another way of exploiting this human flaw is to increase your numbers, say make Corvette 4 to Corvette 7 and change Bulk Cruiser 1 to Bulk Cruiser 3, etc. Or you can play the old imitation "Shadow Fleet", I do not condone the use of Shadow Fleeting, as it is a game flaw and is considered cheating by most. This tactic involves letting the opponent see Corvette 2 going to the neutral planet of Ghorman, the Empire cannot arrive in time to confront you, once at Ghorman change Corvette 2 to Corvette 5 and move to another planet, say Corsin. All the while you have Corvette 5 make a run in with an Imperial Patrol at Bortras, but you destroy their fighters move up to the neutral planet of Uvena and change it Corvette 2. Now your opponent sees Corvette 5 arrive at Corsin which he now controls by means of democracy and does not know the location of Corvette 2, yet. Not that this tactic has many uses, but it is just another clever way of imposing deceit upon your opponent. Another way of using this is to mask say a VSD with say the title of Imperial Star Destroyer 3, some less experienced opponents will mis-recognize this ship as actually being an ISD and run from it. Usually they won't pay much attention to it until they see its actually a VSD in a tactical battle. These few tactics are just the basis of misrepresentation to your opponent, I suggest you coming up with your own ideas.
Another such tactic I use is against players who like espionage their planets 24/7 in hopes of detecting my missions. To combat this, I came up with flooding the enemies sector full of one team spec force missions, mostly expecting most of them not to succeed, but occasionally do, but just as a way to cover my real missions. Your opponent will be so busy trying to seek out the real character missions coming in from Solo's team, etc. that he will have to go through dozens of "masking" missions of suicidal spec forces invading his planet. Though managing all these spec forces and reassigning the Training Facilities to build more is a hassle, it pays off with success against such a tightly secured sector or system. Spec Forces are cheap and require little resource to use, though using them in this mass amounts of number can drain them somewhat, but only at the sacrafice of 3 neb-b's at max.
Chapter 6: Meeting Your Goals
Well you have crushed his planets and destroyed his fleets, your opponent has a few small bases left and you are dominating him, but you need to capture Vader and the Emperor. Make sure you have already scanned the rim to make sure you have obliterated or taken out any rim systems. Build up lots of troops and transports. Load up and take off to his core systems, and just start planetary assaulting, I suggest moving and replacing units that you land on the ground with others you have on fleet, and make sure you use a general on your fleet to assault. If there are say 6 fleet regiments you took the planet with, move down 2 sullustian units, and pick back up the fleet units. Your opponent will not be able to sab those units without getting current espionage, and by the time he gets one, you will have pushed him back and taken most of his planets, so he is basically out of range and options. Save Coruscant for last, assaulting all the surrounding planets of the Swessanna Sector and then assault Coruscant. If you were careful to have taken out all his bases, then Vader and the Emperor will have no where to escape to and Coruscant will be yours, thus you have won by complete domination and no Imperial controlled planet survives.
The same can be done for Rebels, but their rim HQ and moveability factor will be harder to track, just follow the above routine, but compromise for Rebel tactics. For one thing, they could send out Mon Mothma to a neutral rim system to diplomatize it, but all you have to do is wait after all the planets have been taken, and or assualt all the rim planets til to catch the old hag, of course the emperor could have easily have done this, but there is little point to playing if you are that beaten, save your opponent the time and surrender. Better luck next time. Originality is always a factor, so think original, use these tactics as a base line, and create your own game plan.