How many individual fighters are supposed to be represented in each squadron? Why do the die colors change from aces to the normal squadrons? Why are they all at range one? Also how in the world does escort work from a story point of view? One tie advanced squadron can block three a wing squadrons from four tie bombers… I understand they are abstract in a way I was just curious to see differing explanations for why they work they way they do.

How many individual fighters are supposed to be represented in each squadron? Why do the die colors change from aces to the normal squadrons? Why are they all at range one? Also how in the world does escort work from a story point of view? One tie advanced squadron can block three a wing squadrons from four tie bombers… I understand they are abstract in a way I was just curious to see differing explanations for why they work they way they do.

1. Standard squadrons are 12 fighters.

2. Because the squadrons with named leaders are elite.

3. Because fighter weapons have shorter ranges than the capital ships.

4. Escort works because they represent a threat to attacking fighters. If the attacking fighters ignored them, they would be at a significant disadvantage. That may be ok to the admiral in charge, but the pilots (even TIE fighter pilots) aren't going to blithely sacrifice themselves for no gain. If such a scenario were to happen, the escorting squadron would quickly find itself destroyed, and the fighters it's escorting would be picked off.

the answer to every single question is gameplay > fluff, but the explanation is a bit murkier

best way to look at it is with a sense of scale. The fighters are so tiny that the squadron numbers are basically irrelevant as long as there are enough to perform their tasks, and the range one represents the average limited range of all their weapons relative to cap ship guns.

Escort is probably just the X-wing and Advances being big burly bastards that bodyguard bereaved bombers by bodyblocking enemies . For whatever reason, the X-wing and Advances demand attention so that the engaging squadron can't possibly hit the non-escort ships while they are around, probably because they appear more dangerous than the ships they can protect (which doesn't really work with escorted interceptors) or they can engage more aggressively than other ships.

though the models are static, the squadron ships are always buzzing around in constant motion while dogfighting or setting up bombing runs, and the chaos of that kind of movement makes sense considering how abstract squadron health is in this game