How fares the Escalation Swarm, in a post-Gozanti world?
Historically, the Swarm's suffered in Escalation ever since Aces that didn't care about 2 attack ships entered the public conciousness (Fel? Whisper? Lookin' at you).
However, the Gozanti shipped with two ships that seem bred as Ace-Hunting Technology: Youngster and Wampa.
Wampa is fairly self-sufficient after receiving a Targeting Computer (the logic being, if you TRULY need the crit, a Target Lock to re-roll away even your hits puts your luck at an appx 41% chance), and is most feared by Aces with low hull-count (like the aforementioned Whisper, and also Corran Horn).
Youngster has two potential aides de camp: Expert Handling and Expose.
Now, we all know that there's some controversy here, but hear me out.
A TIE Swarm, when facing something other than high mitigation Aces, has almost no need of Expose. For that matter, Expose is a very circumstantial option.
However, vs Fel or Whisper, who effortlessly dodge the 2 damage a TIE Fighter can produce, suddenly have the 1/8 chance of needing to dodge 3.
There's also the tangential benefit of Expose being slightly more offensive than Focus at Range 3, and the lack of defense is irrelevant when the enemy will be focusing one of your swarm-buffers, and it honestly isn't a bad option.
Expert Handling, contrariwise, is used to break the target-locks that linger from previous rounds, countering one of the primary benefits of that action. Since Academy Pilots will be barrel-rolling often anyway, it's a decent fit as well.
So, excuse my rambling, let me get back to the question: When you Escalate with a TIE Swarm, how do you do, and what do you do?