Homeworld issues?

[Olorin]

I usually resorted to claw formation for my fighters too. I'd tag them to follow the ship they were escorting, and then try to set them loose to engage if they got into combat. Having them travel at corvette or frigate speed does make them sitting ducks.

The cap ships (especially ions) can sometimes get into a struggle of trying to move to maintain formation vs. turning to aim at their target. Not as big a problem for assault frigates, as they use turrets, but the ion frigates have to align their whole ship to aim.

One approach is to break up their formation and then assign targets, since then they won't break off lining up their shot to get back into formation position. Another method is to assign the group a target, then switch them to sphere formation. This has them spread out to form a sphere with the target in the center, but since they are all supposed to be pointed towards the center in offensive sphere formation, their targeting is much easier.

Sphere is also the way to go if you capture a bunch of the small white multi-beam frigates. They have a very powerful attack, but tend to spin wildly after starting the beam--which can lead to friendly fire incidents. I had over 10 of them, so made them a separate attack group to take down big cap ship targets. Sphere formation helped to separate them enough that they were out of range of each other's misfires, and the inward facing formation seemed to help them track targets better. It took a carrier or destroyer to last long enough for them to actually full surround the target (smaller targets were destroyed before the sphere fully formed.