yes its that important. if u lose swarm, u lose game, period. rest of the ships are raped, burnt and sent to hell no matter how bold they look by the infamous bomber mod rapage.

to make it not happen, you need to know some stuff...

1) dock the shit... group the fighters. i just group the whole fighters as 1 group. find out which is damaged (i dock at half green health), press D on that, and take that out of the group (shift click will deslect it out of group and regroup the rest). repeat, dock, deselect from group, repeat... until i have ships repaired, then i group the whole fighters again and repeat... repeat... till other side is dead...

2) learn how to emp. emp... the best thing in the galaxy... usually from vaygr. 4 emp 14 fighters, just rock the hell out. but do give team mates some emp to be more effective. and... target the emp to different fighters, not all on 1, obviously this will blow emp at wider range halting quite some fighters in the bunch. and do dock scouts... they're weak, try to reuse them and not just for once... so many people stop emp'ing after first one, if you lose scout, rebuild them, if you docked scouts, wait a minute, and reuse emp, a way to win.

to avoid emp, try to spread fighters to different locations and the important thing being, send 1 of the fighters on the scout, if one of the squadron dies out of a scout, the emp basically becomes moot as it won't have enough power to stop fighters, until another scout blows emp onto the same fighters.

and when emp'ing, do emp the scouts first, and then send 1 or 2 emp to the actual fighters. leaving other side's emp open for attack is quite annoying.

3) visually follow the fighters. even if one of the fighter looks healthy but getting chased by several fighters, do dock it already. so all the attack becomes waste on that fighter if docked. advanced move being, reassign it's target location while getting chased, as getting chased in a straight line will definately end its life before docking. turning it around manually back and forth can actually avoid fire to some extent and try to dock it anyhow...

4) cloak the docking ship. it's very important... i mean, very... if the cc is cloaking even if the cc attacks and it's not cloaked, the docking fighters will cloak while lining up to be docked, avoiding the finish blow from chasing fighters. it's just so good docking several fighters than losing them, it's just so necessary...

5) same for lasers, if torps are seen attacking it, dock already, than just waste them all, since torps do never repair (no one use col repair on torps anyway...) if lasers are docking, laser has more advantage.

6) when u look like taking advantage on fighters, it's actually the time to make bombers... no one make bombers at the right time, but when fighters are winning, instead of couple lasers or ion frigs or even a dd, bombers do better. disabling ion turret on bc is a lot better, or even better screwing a cap fac on sy...

so, if all is done, theres more chance of winning game...

I like the cloak strat a lot and will likely start using it whenever its usefull. Funny how i've only seen this done once - ever - by someone docking his lazer vettes a long time ago (possibly you smurfing? lol)

Might i add that you should keep your int as close to your dock points as possible. I usually hold my int behind my production ships or attack force to try and make the fighter battle happen over my dock points. Because of the 'home field advantage' of close dock points, I try to avoid attacking first in a swarm battle whenever i can.

good point i forgot to add

well, other point is: if u lure enemy fighters to ur Caps, u have advantage of firering CAPS at enemy ints too, and with FireControl, its even more advantage.

also, when u dock, press D on fighters to dock as that will spread the dock to all the docking ships. if you dock them all to 1 capital ship, its just that bad. it makes them all lined up, while enemy can blow emp on the sitting fighters and finish them off, as well as repair takes forever as only 1 ship is used to repair them all. so, once retreated closer to docking points, use the D button for better docking.

and this is not all too related but, ships can be stuck in the docking ships, for mixed races. if a team mate has max fighter or vettes but cant see where they are... try checking the dock list, they may be stuck, since the bug won't repair those ships thus they never get released. you just have to release them manually, and maybe re-dock them for repair.

nice stuff. Never knew this shift click shit.
Thanx for info hidi.

damn, i made them better

well. It is good to learn, even from an enemy.=)

when i think about it... for using cloak to defend the dockers... its very annoying when the undocking fighters all sit still than attack even if they are on F4 offensive mode...

dunno how to get around it but keeping the cc cloaked definately make your fighters to lose... since they never take part in the fight once they undock, unless manually told to do so...

maybe cloak when docking, uncloak next moment... pfft, too much micro... anyone know how to get around fighters to attack under cloak?

another little fact to add against avoiding emp as much as possible is to send single fighter to scout to each of them.
if other side sends fighters before emp, then obviously it looks bad, but if its possible to hit scout, target them with a single fighter, once a single squad out of a scout is lost, the emp isnt effective enough to stop fighters.

and to dodge this move, just move scout out of the place to let some fighters roam around while other fighters fight in other places and emp later.