This is a late report for the skirmish that followed the meeting with Gunda Riehl in California in April. A wing of four Hellfire Legion fighters traced down our position in the vicinity of the Texas jumphole. I have set a remote sector in California as a rendezvous point for our reinforcements. I have relieved heat from the Unioner representative while soon after Mr Blackfriar and Mr Scorpius arrived at the battle. With even numbers we managed to contain Hellfire forces. Two of their fighters made a foolish decision to duel me outside of the main combat zone, which allowed me to drain majority of their nanobot reserves. Thanks to this I was able to finish them off quickly with support fire when they rejoined the main group. At this time Hellfire received a battleship support. From this point the battle started to get out of hand when one after another our fighters were lost to its fire during dogfight within its fire range.
Tactical Analysis
The biggest strength of the Hellfire Legion parties is tactical awareness of their commanders and their ability to call for reinforcements, especially capital ship support. The Hellfire Legion raiding party usually goes with an agile light wing and falls back to a capital ship support if being overrun. Majority of their pilots are well trained though can hardly be considered champions. What makes Hellfire Legion a hard opponent is mostly its ability to properly assess the combat situation and set proper priorities for their soldiers. Whenever situation is getting out of hand they prolong the fight through various evasive maneuvers, such as faked retreats, shield-evasion or utilization of capital ship covering fire, long enough to receive reinforcements and tip the scale of a battle.
Proposed countermeasures
As with any stronger opponent successfully utilizing capital ships and usually having numbers advantage the only viable solution is a hit and run tactics. Hellfire Legion fighters should be isolated and lured outside of reinforcement zones. If the attack is not successful during first critical phase, a quick retreat and regrouping is crucial. If the Hellfire Legion is utilizing capital ship support a retreat and switch to anti-capital ship solutions is also critical.
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