Part 30

Fighter Ambush: In a fighter vs. fighter situation, after the first pass, press K (keybind for formation or attack order), select a fighter, and before your fighters crash, cancel the order and retarget for another pass. This allows your fighters to instantly 180-degree pitch and fire at the enemy fighters. Be careful, as smart players will order their wing to stop, potentially leading to the loss of all your ships. This tactic is somewhat effective with bombers as well, right after a pass.

Missile Destroyer Support: Use a Missile Destroyer as a large, primary target for the enemy. Position bomber wings behind it and use the bombers on capital ships. The enemy will likely focus on the Missile Destroyer, and any fighters they send will be destroyed by its missiles.

Mine Walls: You need 4 mine layer corvettes, 2 scout wings of at least 10 ships each, and at least one support frigate. When facing a large capital ship fleet, keep them busy with a wing of scouts while force-laying mines a good distance away from the enemy's Mothership (MS) or their objective. Rotate your scout wings onto the support frigate to draw them into a mine crossfire.

Bomber Mines: Use 2-3 attack bombers to go right through a mine wall. The bomber's lack of speed means the mines follow closely. When you see a capital ship, attack it; the bombers will fly directly at the capital ship with mines in tow. The bombers will pass once and veer off at the last second, but the mines will not veer off quickly, destroying the capital ship.

Sacrifice Deception: Send a cloaked fleet under the enemy's Mothership (MS) with a large scout wing circling above, harassing the ships. Then, attack from below; the enemy ships will turn to attack the scouts, exposing their flanks to major damage.

Bridge of Sighs: Assemble a large fleet of Ion Cannons (10-25 ships). Sphere them around your Mothership (MS). When the enemy arrives, hyperspace them to the enemy MS. They will point outwards when jumping out and inwards when jumping in, leading to a quick death for the enemy MS. Beware of grav wells, however.

Cloaked Fleet Maneuver: Use 4 cloakers to assemble a fleet and put it in a wall formation. Manually move the ships tighter. Assemble 4 cloakers in a sphere with a weak ship in the middle where there is a gap in the field. Move this fleet to the enemy fleet. The enemy will think it's just a single ship. Decloak to reveal your full fleet.

Mothership Ramming (Plough): Support your MS heavily and use it as a plough to go right through the enemy's expensive capital ship fleet.

Mothership Ramming (Direct): It is possible to ram one Mothership (MS) into another at massive damage cost to both ships. The one with less health usually dies, but the rammer can also die. To attempt this, move Motherships very close together and repeatedly order closer passes. They will clip each other, and one will die. You cannot ram directly (middle of MS vs. middle of MS) but can clip the edges as they are programmed to avoid each other. The Taiidan Mothership is considered a better battering ram than the Kushan MS because it turns away later, allowing more of the Taiidan ship to impact the enemy MS.

Probe Golf: To hit targets like fighters is hard, but Motherships are easy. Set a trajectory to run through the enemy Mothership at more than a few screens' distance so the probe can accelerate to 4000m/s. If you set the course directly on the enemy MS, it will decelerate as it reaches its destination. As it passes, scuttle it for psychological damage, though it does not inflict much damage.

Probe Golf on Fighters: For fighters, set a probe to travel through where you suspect a group will be. Scuttle the probe just before it passes them. This can hit scouts and even kill scouts if they are close enough.

Cloaked Corvette Walls: Cloak your corvette walls; these are nearly impossible to remove if moved around, nullifying 100% of fighters except for cloaked fighters.

Mixed Fighter/Scout Fleets: Mix expensive fighters with cheap scouts to reduce damage from probe golf and kamikaze attacks. Counter this by keeping them docked, which slows your fleet as they need time to launch.

Resource Collector Raids: Guessimate enemy resources. Latch 10 bombers and 4 heavies to a support frigate. Hyperspace in, take out the resource collector, and hyperspace back. You can waste enemy grav walls by hypering in things like resource collectors.

Ion Cannon on Dust Clouds: Use Ion Cannons on dust clouds. This causes them to kill fighters that stray near them and damages resource collectors.

Salvage Corvette Capture: Keep a small squad of salvage corvettes cloaked, teamed up with a gravity well. Use the grav well to nullify enemy fighters and the salvagers to capture capital ships.

Countering Power Attacks: If you see a power attack coming (well-escorted fleet of capital ships and corvettes), attack their MS to make them retreat. Simultaneously, attack their Ion Cannon frigates in the fleet, as these have the worst armor and are quickly destroyed.

Sensors Array Deception: Sensors arrays only show ship positions. Fake some fleets by gathering 9 scouts and putting them together.