Cadet II/Interceptor

Support flying

You're just one member of your respective team. Metaphorically speaking, one component of a larger machine. Knowing how to use your ship together with other players in a variety of roles - from combining firepower in dogfights to defending weaker ships in escort runs - makes the larger machine that much stronger and victory that much more likely.

This article was written in respect to interceptors, but some of the concepts are applicable to other ships with a bit of thought.

Escort

An interceptor's strength lies entirely in its ability to perform its namesake: Intercepting. When escorting anything (con, miner, bomber, etc - referred to as "your charge" from now) you want to engage the enemy before it has a chance to open fire on your charge. Be proactive, not reactive.

You should be able to spot incoming threats because the escort should contain at least one nan. On that note, it is important to defend your nans, more important than defending your charge in most cases.

vs. Expansion

Your targets are enemy ints. They are small, nimble, fast, and need to get in close to kill your nans. If you have difficulty in aiming at small fast targets you are probably better off in a nan. Practice hitting small targets by nanning friendly ints.

The first option is to stick close to your charge in a tight group and deal with the enemy as they boost in. Ignore poor pilots that overboost and focus on killing the int pilots that are killing the nans. Don't get distracted, keep an eye on the location of your charge and stick close to him. Change targets if the person you are shooting at is too far to be a threat - even if it means you have to finish them off later when they boost back in for a second go.

You may find the best position is to be a sternguard, trailing behind the group and shooting the ints that are shooting the nans that are repairing the charge.

The second option is to provide a light defence on the charge and have a strong vanguard, camping the aleph/red door/teleporter. It is important to have at least some defence on the charge - too often the whole team will camp the red door and no one escort the charge, only for an enemy to pop out of nowhere and kill the undefended charge before you can blink.

Secondly, you need to have some idea of how good this light defence is. Chances are that enemy ints will get past the vanguard and you need to know how many you can let slip through before you need to abandon the vanguard position and go back to option one.

vs. Supremacy

Figs have incredible spiking power. If you let them form up into a group ahead of your charge and launch a volley at it, you can wave goodbye. So the key is to stay a fair distance ahead of your charge and kill the figs before they have a chance to organise. Go head to head with the fighter waves, strafing to avoiding dumbfires, then spinning around and rocketing after any remaining fighters, while you shove bullets up their booster. You want to be 2-3k ahead if you're escorting. Think of it as if you were a piranha. You're more agile then most of the other fish in your body of water. Tear them up before they get within missile range.

vs. Tactical

If your charge is a miner or a con then it is very vulnerable to utility-cannon fire, which has a range of 900m. So you need to stick damn close to it and rip the sf to shreds before it kills the miner.

If your charge is a normal ship then the sfs will likely try to pick off the nans with hunter missiles. You need to roam around and track the missiles down to their source. If you don't have pp or scouts with decent scan ranges, chances are you won't find the sf and thus you're better off in a nan.