well if you were playing me 4 or 5 fighters. all i see is a one turn speed bump I kill them and attack your ships turn because I will have you out numbered 2 to 1and attack 3 to 1 and move on. (Most of the time 2 ties will kill an A wing) If I was flying only 4 or 5 A wings I would attack 2 on 1 and hope to move on but will most likely get taken out by the 8 to 10 Tie fighters piling on. I just don't see 4 or 5 fighters of any type as enough

in my last game I killed 4 X wings and did 6 damage to a ship by turn 4 with 5 ties, Howrunner, Bobafet, and the other tie pilot I don't remember his name. with no combat till the end of turn 2 I lost one tie fighter the whole game to the anti fighter fire from the damaged ship. My opp had 3 other fighters but they started to far from the point of contact to get into the fight.

I think the idea with having a light fighter screen is to keep them close to your ships and combine your ship flak and your fighters attacking. So if you keep a small fighter screen you should perhaps still invest about 60-70p on fighters and mix X-wing and A-wing squadrons, say three of each for 72p.

You should view them as a safety net and a way to hold the enemy for a turn or two where your ship gets to add their flak as well, can do some considerable damage that way. I also don't think you expect to completely being ably to ignore enemy bomb damage but mitigate it for a short term.

In my opinion you never spend less than 70p on squadrons in any list at 400p, for me that is a light fighters screen. But 70p can be effective if used properly.

3 hours ago, jorgen_cab said:

I think the idea with having a light fighter screen is to keep them close to your ships and combine your ship flak and your fighters attacking. ....

You should view them as a safety net and a way to hold the enemy for a turn or two where your ship gets to add their flak as well, can do some considerable damage that way. I also don't think you expect to completely being ably to ignore enemy bomb damage but mitigate it for a short term.

I think that you are right when your opponent does not have Rhymer and its a skill I have yet to learn. Rhymer on the other hand changes everything.

One thing you can always include is a GR-75 combat refit with a Jamming field. This way you can put that ship in front of your fleet with your fighters covering it. That way you can aggressively threaten any bombers including Rhymer earlier. Perhaps even force them to attack the flotilla. If they attack it at medium range it has a good chance to survive for at least a few turns, that is enough to put some serious damage to those bombers.

You are also not expecting to stop Rhymer from doing at least one bombing run, it is about tying them down after that which is important and that you can do with clever positioning and disrupt their efficiency for a few turns even kill of a few bombers in the process. Try to draw them into a section where they can be caught in the crossfire of several ships the turn after the initial fighter clash, that will whittle down the opponent offensive fighter capacity fast.

You need to expect that early attack and DON'T fly straight at your opponent so they can combine Rhymer with attacks from their main combat fleet, force Rhymer to attack early or be attacked by your fighter screen, their choice. Use Repair command on ships you expect the bombers to attack so you can regain lost shields. If you have a ship with black anti-fighter dice you can often lure Rhymer to attack that one at medium range to avoid your AA. Use that to your advantage with stacking repair on that ship and lure their bombers to a spot YOU chosen so they can get caught in AA crossfire the turn after.

You know the capacity of the enemy so try and turn that against them by trying to anticipate what they want to do and control their actions if you can't stop them. It is all about positioning and anticipate where ships will be in a turn or two, even when positioning your squadrons this is very important and how you engage and keep enemy bombers pinned down. You can easily pin down a tight group of bombers so they can only loosen up ONE bomber with an intel squadron or they need to start eliminating your squadrons first. Spread them out around that bomber group... keeping them busy is your priority one because that mean more time for ships AA to fire at them too.

Remember that you have six turns in a game, you don't need to kill the enemy ships in turn three. Try to divide and conquer as much as you can.