FC 101 - The Cross Jump

I make no claims to being a great Fleet commander but I want to share something I did last night that worked out for our fleet and seemed to surprise a few members who had not see it before.

WARNING: Terrible MS Paint Images Incoming

Scenario

You're in system A with your fleet and forward scout reports a hostile fleet that is heavier/bigger/better than your fleet. You don't want to engage as you will obviously lose and you have only moments to decide what to do.

Option 1 - Run Away

You tell your forward scout to escape and you turn your fleet around and run away. This has the advantage of being very straight forward, but runs the risk of some of your slower members being run down by faster elements of the hostile fleet, and you need to find shelter to get away from the hostile fleet, either a safe spot of somewhere to dock.

Option 2 - The Cross Jump

But let's say you don't want to go back. Perhaps the systems behind you are far from your ultimate destination, or another hostile fleet is back there and you don't want to barrel into it. What you can do is get your fleet on zero on the gate and when you see the enemy fleet jump in, jump out to system B.

Now you have the time it takes them to burn back to gate and jump to make your escape in the direction you want to go. It does run some risk if the enemy FC is willing to split his fleet and only jump some of the ships and keep some tacklers on the far side to catch the cross jumpers but often times fleets jump as one and an FC will be unwilling to split his fleet in a sudden encounter like this and you can make a clean get away like we did last night. This option is most likely to succeed when the hostile fleet doesn't have adequate forward scouting as well.