What are your squadrons for? What is their purpose?

Mine are generally there to prevent bombing runs on my ships. Therefore if my ships are not in danger my squads will not engage. I would prefer to engage after the first bombing run, than to engage too early.

The battle happens on my terms, beside my ship based anti squad fire. If my opponent is not happy with that then they can just never engage. Thats fine with me.

I agree with Ginkapo on waiting for the first bombing run before engaging. In order to help minimize that bombing run, it's also better if the target ship isn't your carrier or at least the one you plan to activate the squadrons with (they like to hang back a lot more). That you can pop an Engineering command and mitigate some of the damage rather than be locked with your squadron command.

I sculpture my squadrons to my ship build, not the other way around.

If I'm running a yavaris I will make sure it has a specific high impact 3 squadrons ( bwing, Dutch and wedge, will hurt both fighters and ships, or three bs)

With a carrier list, I will try to run two carriers one with expanded hangers one with extended comm, first squadron will be larger, and have slower heavy hitters ( xwings, ywings, tie bombers, advanced and Intel ships) second will be fast ( a wings, interceptors). They can work together to go separate ways depending on the opposition.

With a high activation ship list I will run a rouge squadron ( firesprays and Intel ship or YTs and Jan).

One rule - and I consider this the most important for good squadron play - You need to be able to fully activate each Squadron every turn.

To be clear I have run builds with 4 Ties and no ship that wants to use a squadron command but I don't expect those Ties to do anything but pin a few bombing runs.

To be an effective squadron commander you need to build a fleet with X Squadron Command Value (SCV) where X= Total amount of Squadrons. Rouge is a massive warp to this rule because it allows you fully activate a squadron so it lowers the required SCV. However having the potential to activate every squadron prior to the squadron phase provides you with much better timing and control.

Example 1: If I have 3 Firesprays, 1 Agressor, 1 Rhymer and 3 other Non-Rouge Squadrons. I need at minimum 4 SCV to activate all my Squadrons per turn. So at minimum I could run a VSD + a squadron token and get 8 full activations.

Example 2: I have 1 Dengar 3 Tie/I, 1 Rhymer, 3 Tie Bombers so I need at minimum 8 SCV. So I need x2 VSD w/tokens, Tarkin ISD 2 + Floatila/token etc...

You can see how much a difference SCV makes to build a list and selection of ships and squadrons. But this is the rule I live by after an entire wave of squadron play.

That and Flight Controllers. Best upgrade ever.

Currently I treat fighters as upgrades for a capital ship. Essentially they're just another tool your ships can use when needed. I've never really tried dedicating a strategy to maximizing my use of them. They're there to defend my ships and maybe take the odd shot at an enemy ship. Basically just a few a wings or something like that. My experience is that crippling or destroying the enemy ships goes a long way towards crippling whatever enemy fighters remain anyway, so I don't focus on them aside from trying to minimize the damage they do in the early turns.

This may change with the new waves though. The transports look like they will make efficient carriers for a dedicated fighter wing and strategy, and the new pilots with the expansion will open up more options for sure.

@Ceejle : This is a pretty good question indeed ! It really depends on many factors and it's going to vary each game.

I think that Turn 3 to open up the fighter hostilities is usually a good turn because the rest of the battle will be set, but if you feel your enemy is really streching, sometimes as early as Turn 2 can work out.

We also have to consider at which point they are sent within each turn ! It's really different to activate them at activation 5 or 6 than it is at activation 1 or 2.

Finally, it also depends about the hull and overall tankiness of the squadrons. If you have very tanky squadrons (Hull 5, or aces with defense tokens, or Jan Ors), you can afford to send them earlier than hull 3 squadrons. So many variables !

I'll accept the plethora of variables, but in my experience the squadron battle actually tends to get underway in turn 2. I normally play Imperial, so unless the Rebel holds his units back farther than is standard in my (albeit limited) meta, I usually use the end of turn to 2 for an anti-fighter alpha strike, trying to knock out some squadrons as early as possible. If I've brought dedicated fighter units, I'm a lot less interested in using them as a screen than I am actively preventing any bombing run with an attack and early kills. I rarely find that I have the ship attacks to spare for anti-squadron work, and rely heavily on my fighters to pull their own weight. Especially as an Imperial, I can't allow my opponent the opportunity to strike first himself and will attack myself to ensure that does not happen. If I have bombers around as well, the fighters might stay near the bombers as a defensive scree, but even in that case striking the enemy space superiority squadrons first and hard helps keep everything in the fight longer by knocking out as much of the enemy force as possible as early as possible. My meta may be unusually aggressive in the squadron game though, judging by the general tone of comments on this thread.

I just finished a game, and I lost 75% of my fighters in one round, the last 25% lasted one more round. Overall my ships did more damage than the fighters to the enemy. I am thinking that I might try the fleet again, but with no fighters and adding an extra Raider.

@Pellaon : Fair enough, but remember that the maximum number of squadrons you can activate as an Imperial is 6 (ISD with EHB and token). When a Rebel fields Jan Ors, he is likely to tank your Alpha Strike without much trouble, considering it's going to take around 4 TIEs to get a single X-Wing base, and then he can just move about

Imperial Squadron Alpha Strike was very effective in Wave 1, and is still effective against the few squadrons escorting a fleet, but when squadrons are a dedicated attack force, having an effective Alpha Strike is much more problematic compared to damage over time with support of the ships' AA barrage.