The bedrock of good defense is setting up escorts. Escorts are ships that accompany another ship or ships. These ships don't need to be commanded independently once they're assigned to their charge. If the escorted ship is ordered to move, the escorts move with her. If she's ordered to attack, the escorts attack to support her. It's a lovely relationship.

Remember that specifically ordering escorts to do anything (such as attack or move) overrides their guard order and they'll cease acting as escorts.

Choosing Escorts
The purpose of escorts is to "complete" the ship they're guarding. For example, if the ship is a slow frigate that's vulnerable to strike craft attacks, a wing of Multibeam Frigates would be the perfect choice; together, they make the perfect ship.

It doesn't matter how large a ship is, it can always use an escort. An Attack Bomber, for instance, is itself a fighter but has trouble attacking other fighters. A small escort of Acolytes or Interceptors shores up this weakness and frees the bomber to do what it does best: attack frigates.

The problem is a matter of distributing your fleet. You can't have escorts on every ship. You have to decide what is important and what isn't.

Escorting the Command Ship
One escort priority is simple: Your Command Ship must have an escort at all times. What this escort is depends on what you expect to attack. If it's early in a game, a school of fighters will be quite adequate. If Capital ships have entered the fray, some heavier guns mixed in with these fighters should keep the home base safe.

Above all, keep the Command Ship escort balanced against probable threats. Work toward having a ship type in the gang for every occasion. Good balance makes for near-perfect defense.

Fortunately, the Command Ship is mobile (unlike the Mothership in Homeworld). Therefore, it needn't be a remote and vulnerable target on the other side of space. You can bring it with you on big strikes or keep it behind far enough to be safe but close enough that its escorts can be brought forward to join the battle if needed.

The second priority is protecting your resource operation. Your Workers and Processors are the most vulnerable link in the operational chain thanks to their minimal or non-existent weaponry and constant operation far from the Command Ship.

If the supply of resources breaks down, you're finished. Always send attack ship escorts with Workers and Processors. It can be something as simple as a wing of ACVs, or it can be as elaborate as a small wall of Destroyers. In the later stages of the game--when resources are at a premium and aggressive players make a play to shut down enemy resource operations--it's important to defend with all of your might.

Work toward having escorts for each individual Worker and each Processor. This may sound impossible given the demands of combat because you can't commit many ships to resource operations. That's true, actually, but the escorts don't need to be large; they can be a single ship.

As long as the Workers are toiling near each other, the escorts from all in the group can converge if trouble does arrive. This way, each ship has at least one friend to take the pressure off until help can arrive.

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