I want to fly tie swarms. But the whole stay as a tight ball formation thing feels...odd.

If it's more or less about pointing all the arcs at a target at the same time, don't you get the same relative effect if you approach from all different areas and converge on a target?

It's easier to drive a cloud of individuals around things than a block . It spreads out your own squad making return fire a bit messy for the opponent and if you have everything pointed at something at the same time anyways....what difference does it make if some come from the front...some from a side...some from an angle?

Setting up perhaps in twos or threes a little spread out and converging doesn't sound awful on paper.

What's the story here?

Your assumptions are correct. Now pull it off

The formations are a product of range 1 buffs from Howlrunner and swarm tactics. If you don't depend on those you're free to move as you please.

I think spreading out and converging is viable, but it's going to take a LOT of practice to fine tune it. You should always think several turns ahead, no matter the squad, but flying TIEs loosely pretty much requires it, in my opinion. However, some excellent players, like Doug Kinney (1st world champion), has posted about loose swarms used to catch ships in arc. It's useful for boosting ships that want to arc dodge. If you spread your arcs enough, you're bound to catch something. But then, that flies in the face of what you're talking about, which is trying to get all the arcs to converge on a certain ship at the same time instead of flying in a tight formation.

Practice flying swarms every chance you get and at first it's best to forgo the tricks and combos and look to get the fundamentals down. A Howlrunner and 6 Academy Pilot list is a classic list and is still a viable benchmark. With this list you can ease yourself into remembering those critical action combos that are possible with some lists. Howlrunner demands precise flying to use her ability and remembering to use it all the time provides you with a great learning curve. 6 basic TIEs provides you with enough ships to take on virtually any oponnent, but action management is key. You are very vulnerable and a misspent token or bad action choice can lead to a quick demise and this will always be true of any TIE heavy list and for most Imp lists in general.

Of course, all the canny action management in the world won't save you if you're constantly bumping yourself. One of the best ways to learn how to move formations is by practicing a simple game. Place one small base on the mat and then without too much thought about it, place another ship base down where you think a given maneuver will take you. Once you can accurately and quickly guess where each maneuver will land you, add in another small base and try to move your two bases through a play ready mat a few times. Once this seems too easy, add in more bases and see what happens! Pretty soon you will be able to take your swarm or swarms through anything. Learning how to pin down an Ace or throw up a game changing block however? For that, you just need to play lot's of games.

If you can fly swarms erratically while keeping your turns open(one of the big advantages ties have over z-95s other than the black squadron pilot and howlrunner is having a 1-turn which you can do instead of k-turns), you will really be able to bother people. However, swarms are very tiring to play over multi-day all-day tournaments and having a good opening/general approach is worth a lot in that situation.

Most of the good players can disperse the ties when that blocking power is needed but you really need to focus your arcs when you're rolling 2-die attacks.

I tried to soread out and converge with a Howlrunner swarm exactly one time. That's all it took to learn my lesson.

Divide and conquer is something your enemy is hoping for. it shouldn't be how your squad fly.

Staying tight allows you to adapt to an evolving situation and its not a requirement that your squad stays tight the whole time.

say you are being approached by an arc dodger, you fan out your formation to catch the enemy in at least 1 arc.

or if you are heading straight toward a large ship, you can K turn your front ships, and short move your rear ships to trick the large ship to fall between your arc (or if they counter and move short, they are likely to bump your K-Turned ships and not fire at them, and your rear ships still maintain a shot on the enemy)

I'm actually thinking of continuing to practice with 5/fo with predator.just to eliminate the need for howlrunner and maybe uncork some weirdness with the better dial.

Howl runner has a R1 restriction for classic tie swarm.

For non-Range restricted things, converging is definitely doable. (Also, a method of convergence for tie swarm with Howl is the Drunken Shark / Death Blossom maneuver, created over at Team Covenant, look it up.)

Having an extremely tight formation however has lead to serious increases in firepower that I don't theoretically understand. I try to understand a lot of things, but I haven't figured out why. I think its cuz the tight formation with practice is just generally a lot more precise. It also gives extremely powerful breaking options for blocking.

Flying in formation does not benefit you at all if you're not flying Howleunner. You're absolutely right OP.

It actually hurts you to fly in formation. You become more predictable and a single enemy ship can easily block multiple ships of yours. A single barrel roll or boost can dodge almost the entirety of your formation some times.

Spreading out completely is a good tactic against fat turrets with engine upgrade, especially Super Dash. Against other lists you may not be able to fire with all of your guns at once.

I get a decent amount of success out of initially setting them up in a formation, then turn one having them do varied straight maneuvers. This gives you a large cloud of ships that an enemy ship, especially a large base simply cannot avoid bumping into.

To people who say it's hard or tiring to fly a swarm, go play your wave 5 list someplace else. Just because it has more than 3 ships in it and has no turrets in it, does not mean it's hard to fly.

And take anything PGS says with a size 10 grain of salt. He just loves PWTs too much.

The strengths of the swarm come from blocking and many ships shooting in a row at the same target. It's not terribly hard to have 5+ ships shoot at one target if you have good asteroid placement and you can fly the swarm decently.

You could do worse than to watch Andrew Pattison's final game from the recent Yavin Open. He flew his Crack Academy very well all day, and had a lot of neutrals supporting him by the time he got to the final.

His jumpmaster opponent obliged him with a straight-up joust, but his approach and blocking were very good in that game.

I come down in favour of the formation, right up until the point you need to break it! Converging your arcs back on one target is doable, but welcoming that brain-pain into your day by actively mussing up your formation is another thing - especially over, say, the length of a regional!

Flying in formation does not benefit you at all if you're not flying Howleunner.

This just tells me you've never flown a swarm. It absolutely benefits you to fly in formation even without Howlrunner. It allows you to concentrate fire on a single target and burn it down. That's how a swarm works. With a 2-dice attack, you have to concentrate fire to bleed off tokens and punch damage through. Spreading fire across multiple targets doesn't help you since your ships are usually much squishier than whatever you're shooting at. You have to bring down some enemy ships before you lose too many TIEs or it's game over.

Flying in formation does not benefit you at all if you're not flying Howleunner.

This just tells me you've never flown a swarm. It absolutely benefits you to fly in formation even without Howlrunner. It allows you to concentrate fire on a single target and burn it down. That's how a swarm works. With a 2-dice attack, you have to concentrate fire to bleed off tokens and punch damage through. Spreading fire across multiple targets doesn't help you since your ships are usually much squishier than whatever you're shooting at. You have to bring down some enemy ships before you lose too many TIEs or it's game over.

Against highly mobile ships, it's better to push a loose cloud of ships at them, than to push a large brick of ships at them that effectively only has one firing arc at low PS.

If you're flying your swarm against another Joustwing squadron, fine, fly in a formation. If you're flying against Acewings or Brobots or Super Dash, you want a large cloud of ships that your opponent's ships cannot avoid easily.

It is actually easier to fly 6 Crackshot Ships in a loose cloud than it is to navigate a huge brick of ships around asteroids. You're free to treat each ship independently and to pick the optimal maneuver for each ship instead of being forced to pick a potentially sub-par one that works for all of them. Each ship does the obvious best maneuver, with a little bit of wiggle room for Sloops and stuff.

the problem with approaching all from different directions is that the opponent has to cooperate. If he ends up not being at the place you are going to then you have a problem. Swarms are very good at focusing a target down even though you have low attack value. The problem most people have is bumping, and what do you do if you face a list that mandates you spread out. A great swarm player knows how to fly the swarm without bumping and when to break apart and go individual.

Not flown /ln or /fo swarms much but A-Wings definitely benefit from flying in pairs in a loose cloud. You're better placed to set up a net of blocks and I rarely loose more than one shot on my priority target over running a neat formation.