>>5395800>[Deploy the fleet - Fighting Retreat]See picrel for a really crude drawing.
We keep most of our forces in reserve, near the outer engagement radius of our black-hole cannons.
However, we split a relatively small intercept battlegroup to engage the small eldar group. No carriers. Only frigates, destroyers, and cruisers for a faster intercept. BUT, we augment this force by landing as many bombers as we can onto the warships in parasite configuration. If we do this carefully – and utilize the revenant’s sensor masking, we might be able to hide the bombers in our warship’s sensor shadow.
The Revenants hitch a ride until they reach stand-off range to save fuel, release a massive missile alpha strike that decimates the small group of elder ships. Then, the use their saved fuel to afterburn to the carriers for immediate rearming for engaging the large fleet. Meanwhile, the rest of the intercept battlegroup focuses on cleanup/PD screening.
This strategy has several advantages.
+ The small eldar force will probably underestimate the strength of our intercept force if we can hide our parasite fighters, making them more careless.
+ If we take only lighter ships, we can engage the small force early enough that our bombers still have time to travel back and rearm in time for the large group, which will stay back near our static defenses.
+The bombers may be able to travel back faster, since their entire fuel load is allocated for the return trip. This may allow them to engage the small force, rearm, and still have time to engage the large force.
+After we implement the strategy, the eldar will probably shit themselves. If every ship – not just carriers - might be hiding a squadron of bomber/fighter in parasite configuration, they will have to approach our battle lines with significantly more caution. We can put the large force in a passive/defense position, which is bad for eldar strategy. Sure – they can probably figure out a way to suss out which ships have it eventually – but not in time for this battle.
