i havnt seen my old wingleader boxer for ages!! you saying he's back again or you remember?... or have these been moved over from our old wing forums?
one of the best tactics boxer and i talked about involved op bashes...
the idea we came up with is to keep the fleet moving forward at all times. even a 5 speed is better than stopping.
rather than bunching up our lines, as we see every time, we tried having up to 3 long range defense lines moving slowly forward. 2 jorms and a hel say, at 20 speed.
they are our anchor. the rest of the fleet circle these 3 ships. circle around on the flat plane and if enough lines are there, up to 3 layers deep of circling ships with a 5 ship cross as the anchor - 3 stacked and 1 more each side of the central ship which i always saw as hels.
as the circling lines move out of attack range they are rarely fired on and can heal, if they are chased by anything it shouldnt matter much for long as the escorts and strikes should be aware and watching out for this. the hard part is getting all the lines to shoot the same ship as they come around again.. the carriers will help with that.
the same basic tactic works against an escort squad with an escort or line anchor and strikes/escorts circling, but is difficult to explain on the fly and easier to split as its all much faster.
this tactic keeps the fleet together, it limits the fastest lines to a route around the slower ones instead of steaming ahead alone and, obviously, lets the slower ones keep/catch up. it allows the strikes to keep moving with the flow when protecting from missiles instead of having to 'park' on a stationary lines nose while also giving them more time because the missiles are chasing instead of coming towards thier targs.
is simple enough to do but should be very effective if done well. it limits the slow degredation that a fleetball has by keeping most or our ships fired on for only a short time and allowing them to heal while we can take them down with the usual 1 at a time concentrated fire while they sit there or, more often than not, turn and run.
we aim for escorts first, allowing our strike squad to chase down the damaged runners with less danger.
the main problem is that we only have the forward circling ships shooting at anything untill we're pushing into the enemy ball. but by then, if we've done it right, they should be running.
all we need do is protect the anchor against missile boats by having the central hel/carrier in the strike squad directing them and for the circling lines to target the heavy hitters aiming for our anchor ships.
If they do hold the ground then we do not stop.
we practised it a few times during a defenceless op bash as we travelled the distance but never against an actual fleetball. well, not a big one. niether of us could think of an easy way to defeat a well organised fleet circle.
attacks from above/below would face the entirety of our fleet if we're tight enough instead of just the forward arc and against this most other tactics mentioned fall apart.
obviously, doing this after planning ahead - having the anchor armoured/repairable with lr... having the escorts and strikes with the right leaders in the right place doing the best thing... having all the pilots know and trust in what each other will do - lines not chasing because they know the strikes will finish the job... keeping the formation up under pressure, mainly, keeping those lines moving around instead of slowing to try and finish off the target that is getting out of range again.. etc.. works far better than ending up as a bouncing messy and dangerous mistake filled nightmare.
getting enough of the fleet to understand it and do it on the fly was always the problem - even for Boxer.
Fri Mar 20, 2015 1:57 am by 
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