They suffer a bit the same way any jack-of-all-trades suffers. Okay at everything, great at nothing.

I am retraining my Imp tactics and haven't dug tnto squadrons. Wikk be re-evaluating firesprays and 666s.

My view is that Firesprays make excellent bombers and passable fighters, rather than that they're a jack of all trades. Two blue dice is a great anti-ship armament - often more useful than one black. Three blue anti-squadron is less powerful, and they're never going to serve a primarily interceptor based role, but with no heavy and 6 hull they're excellent at tying up enemy formations long enough to prevent damage being done elsewhere. Their biggest advantage against both squads and ships is that rogue keyword - they form an independent fighter threat, and that means that points are being spent directly on ways to do damage, rather than on ways to activate the squadrons.

Their biggest advantage against both squads and ships is that rogue keyword - they form an independent fighter threat, and that means that points are being spent directly on ways to do damage, rather than on ways to activate the squadrons.

You're still very much spending points on activating the Firesprays. It's just baked into the cost of the squadron itself. That's fine if you don't want to bring carriers and/or you're going MSU. Just don't mistake it for a clear advantage. If anything, it's a disadvantage against other fighters in the initial squadron scrum. If you wait until the Rogue keyword to activate your Firesprays, you're going to take an alpha strike to the face from commanded squadrons during the ship phase. If you did bring carriers and you command your Firesprays to avoid that problem, well you just somewhat wasted the points you spent on Rogue. I'm not trying to undermine Firesprays or Rogue squadrons in general, but there's a give and take between them and regular squadrons. Neither is necessarily better.

Their biggest advantage against both squads and ships is that rogue keyword - they form an independent fighter threat, and that means that points are being spent directly on ways to do damage, rather than on ways to activate the squadrons.

You're still very much spending points on activating the Firesprays. It's just baked into the cost of the squadron itself. That's fine if you don't want to bring carriers and/or you're going MSU. Just don't mistake it for a clear advantage. If anything, it's a disadvantage against other fighters in the initial squadron scrum. If you wait until the Rogue keyword to activate your Firesprays, you're going to take an alpha strike to the face from commanded squadrons during the ship phase. If you did bring carriers and you command your Firesprays to avoid that problem, well you just somewhat wasted the points you spent on Rogue. I'm not trying to undermine Firesprays or Rogue squadrons in general, but there's a give and take between them and regular squadrons. Neither is necessarily better.

I don't disagree with you that there's give and take between Rogue and non-Rogue squadrons, but I do think the ability to move and fire during the squadron phase does give them a flexibility (if not an advantage) that makes them very attractive. If you combine Firesprays with a mixture of Advanceds, Jumpmasters and Rhymer (to make a pretty standard Fireball), then the advantage that I find Firesprays offer is the ability to go at either point in the game. I take ships with enough activation to cover my non-Rogue squads, and I can then chose how I want to activate. If I need to combat an alpha-strike, or I want the bombers to soften a target before my ship fires, then I activate the Firesprays. But if neither is imperative, I can activate the non-Rogue squadrons, knowing that that way I can take advantage of all my squadrons' abilities. I don't see the former as wasting points, because I brought the Firesprays precisely to give me the option - the ability to choose is what I'm paying for.