Advanced Dominion Earth tactics and positioning
The basics get you flying. These are the things that separate pilots who win fights from pilots who survive them.
Hyperdrive is a decision, not a button
The drive charges only while you are neither firing nor being hit. That makes it an explicit choice to disengage: you stop shooting, you stay clean for a stretch, and then you cross the map. Trying to charge it in a fight simply does not work, and being caught mid-charge is worse than never having started.
Use it to change where the match is being fought, not to escape a fight you are already losing — by then you will not get the charge.
Hold a range
The instinct is to close. Resist it. At point-blank range a moving target crosses your sights faster than you can track, and a head-on pass damages both of you equally — which is a trade the lighter ship always wins. Sit at the outer part of your gun's range where your shots still land and their aim is harder, and you will win fights you would otherwise trade.
The map has no edges
The sector wraps on both axes. The far left is adjacent to the far right, and there is no corner to be cornered in. Two consequences worth internalising:
- A contact that looks like it is across the map may be very close the other way.
- You can never be trapped against a boundary, so a fighting retreat always has somewhere to go.
Use the rear gun
Almost every hull has one and almost nobody uses it. A ship chasing you is sitting in the one place your rear mount points. Being pursued is not automatically a losing position.
Escorts win capture maps
On Total Occupation the kill counter is a distraction. A carrier that gets through is worth more than any number of dogfights, and the pilot who spends the match flying alongside one — unglamorous, few kills — is usually the reason their side won.
Split your wing
In an AI sector, one flight doing one thing is a waste of five ships. Two jobs at once is the whole point:
half attack the ships, half hit the planet
And when the shape of the match changes, change the order. They tell you when a job is done.