Hey everyone. New to the game and trying to learn some tactics to be a better player. I've read a lot of threads where folks playing swarms use certain ships as blockers to hinder opponent movement. No one really talks about how this is accomplished efficiently though. Is there a strategic way to get your ships into blocking positions without having them simply blown up on the way in? How many ships are typically dedicated as blockers? How do you time/maneuver them to get them into position? Is it just a matter of getting better at eyeballing distances?

I'd appreciate any insight available.

Academy Tie Fighters are great at being blockers, for a number of reasons.

1. They're cheap, so you don't really care that much if they DO get 1-shot getting into position.
2. They have a wide array of maneuvers, including a 5 forward, that helps them to clear the distance very efficiently.
3. They have a mobility action (Barrel Roll) that lets them get into blocking position more accurately. It also gives them a small amount of forward or backward momentum added before the first shots are fired, and the agility to approach through an Asteroid Field.
4. It has high survivability, even though that survivability is luck-based.
5. You tend to have lots of them, so you can block large distances.

Another of my favorite blockers is an Outer-Rim Smuggler with a Navigator, an Intelligence Agent, and some Anti-Pursuit Lasers (build courtesy of SableGryphon). It has high survivability, excellent ability to predict, excellent ability to get into position from the Navigator, and is FREAKIN' HUGE, so you can probably block the majority of their ships with one go. And it has a 360 firing arc and deals damage to folks when it is blocking.... so yeah, it's nuts.

But ultimately, you shouldn't think of designated blockers in your fleet when you're building. You plan for what's on the board. If you have a ship that's about to die that can block, remember that the ship that runs into it cannot shoot at it. If your A-Wings are out of position, but you're reasonably sure your X-Wings can block for them, it might be worth doing.

Try practicing with your fleet alone on a table with randomly placed Asteroids. You'll improve quickly at your tactics that way .

Thanks DraconPyrothayan. Appreciate the input. I guess from what I was reading, I was interpreting the blocking as "the plan" of attack whereas it sounds like maybe it's more of "if you get the chance to do it" type of tactic.

With regards to the tie swarm, it really is just throw ties at the problem until they can't profitably move and don't cry over losing a tie or two cause they were cheap?

The one thing I would add to Dracon's good feedback is that the Academy Tie's also have 1 Pilot Skill so they move first (so long as you have initiative).

One of the strategic uses for these ships is to move them into a spot (or spots) that force your opponent to land on them thereby causing your opponent to lose their action for that ship. Ideally that causes a chain reaction and makes several of their ships bump.

The TIE swarms can really make a mess of things for your opponent but it takes skill to fly them well otherwise you are the one bumping all over the place and not getting actions.

blocking is hard to pull off in real games. it takes practice. lots of practice. it relies on you moving before enemy ships and predicting where they are moving to, using a combo like navigator.intel. agent is nice but thats a lot of points to invest - not to say its not going to work, just pointing that out.

blocking ships are sometimes referred to as spam - for their ability to jam up areas ur opponent is wanting to move into. One reason why blocking is hard to pull off effectively is it assumes u r able to predict your opponents movements - clever opponents will fly unpredictably!

something to consider is using a few low skill pilots in ur squads. These ships can be put on the frontline and used to disrupt enemy movements. Easier said than done but essentially u want them to be range2-3 in front of ur secondary force (the more valuable guys). Any low skill pilots will do the trick - iv used cheap Y-Wings with no Ion Cannon upgrades in the past and they do the trick nicely due to their high durability.

Something else to consider is total squad points. If blocking is a real priority tactic for ur squad then keeping at 99 or even 98pts is an option - i know that its tempting to spend those last 1-2 pts on cool upgrades or better ships but if u want to move first every match you need to have less total squad points than ur opponent - if they have ships with the same pilot skills as urs, ur initiative allows ur ships to move first.