User blog:Goldamainia/Starfighter Combat

This page is for Starfighter Combat and five different steps that most Starfighter engagements fall into.

Most starfighter (small, fast ships typically) engagements could be put into six different steps. Detection, Choosing, Positioning, Attacking/Maneuvering, and Disengagement. Although steps could be altered or skipped entirely based on previous choices, most battles followed this simple formula.

Detection
The first stage in Starfighter combat is to find and identify the enemy and if possible, avoid being detected yourself. Being able to find the enemy before they can find you will give you an advantage that can be the difference between victory and failure.

Choosing
Once finding the enemy, the pilot would have to decide whether or not to engage. This was an important factor to take into consideration because a pilot had to be able to take as many variables into account as possible, including the overall ratio of friendly craft to enemy, the chances of success, and the price of failure.

Positioning
The pilot would then have to find the best way to attack. This would give a massive advantage to the pilot if done correctly. The two ingredients essential to successful positioning were speed and concealment, both of which helped in limiting the amount of time an enemy starfighter force had to detect the incoming attackers and react to them, thus increasing the chances of a surprise assault. High closing speeds also had another advantage; it increased the energy available for conducting maneuvers as well as for providing for a quick disengagement if the attack run was unsuccessful or if the attacking force chose to break off.

Attacking/Maneuvering
During this stage the pilot would do his or her best to deny the advantage to the opponent, either by using aggressive maneuvers that would always give the best position or simply keeping pressure on an enemy to force them into making a mistake. The maneuver stage also began as soon as a pilot realized that he was, or was about to become, under attack from an opponent. The first priority then was to survive, and everything else became secondary. However, if a pilot was able to evade his enemy he could either disengage from the fight or attempt to fight back using any number of different tactics.

Disengagement
The last stage of starfighter combat, the disengagement, was also the most dangerous if one's forces were outnumbered to begin with. The longer a pilot stayed in the combat zone, the more vulnerable he or she would become. The best way to disengage was to destroy the enemy down to nothing. However, that was not often an option. Another possibility was for the attacking formation to maintain their high speed after having engaged the enemy in a full throttle attack pass, causing them to disengage automatically. However, this was dependent on the pilot having kept his or her initial course and not having gotten into a dogfight or other maneuvers. Disengaging from a battle or maneuver was, naturally, more difficult. Often the only hope of doing so if one was unable to destroy their opponent was to try and get to a neutral position (a position where neither the attacker nor the defender had a discernible advantage over the other).