Sorry for the double post but having read through the earlier posts I really think this deserves comment:
Interceptor carriers can also be ordered to escort friendlies - they will fly there at top speed and engage what is around them. I've used this to help save ships that overextend or are losing duels: a quick disposable swarm to cover it and let it get out goes a long way! That order I need to cancel manually if things work out, so it takes a bit of micro.
This is not true. It does not do this.
I see the tip about doing exactly this repeatedly. At first I thought: "Oh cool! I didn't know that!" Then I tried it. Then I decided: "It must be leftover from some previous version of the game where it actually did behave that way." Because, in the current version, it absolutely does not. I have tried it. I have tried it with Talons, with Broadswords, with Thunders, with any random stuff I happen to have. I have tried it with Condors, with Drovers, with Herons, with Shepherds. It simply does not work this way. I click the carrier, right-click the ship to be escorted, the carrier shows a green arrow from it to the ship to be escorted and starts moving in that direction. And the fighters stay right there next to the carrier. Every single time. It doesn't matter whether it's right at the start of the battle, whether it's in the middle of a battle with ships in combat, or late in the mop-up phase. I have never, ever, seen fighters fly out to a ship to be escorted and fly along with it. They simply do not engage in this behavior, at all, ever. They fly out to a ship that the carrier has a strike order on, or they fly out to ships the carrier is selecting on its own if it has no orders, or they fly around and fight other fighters that happen to be in the general vicinity of the carrier, or they hang around the carrier. If the carrier has an escort order, it flies toward the ship to be escorted, and the fighters hang around the carrier or attack stuff in the general vicinity. That is all they do.
In fact, I typed up that paragraph, and then I went into the game and I tested it. I had my flagship battlecruiser out front, an unofficered condor trundling along in the rear, I set the condor to escort the BC. The condor's fighters stayed RIGHT THERE next to the condor. They had plenty more speed. They had the needed deployment range (4000, and no range d-mods on the condor, and the BC wasn't more than about 1000-1500 ahead). They just didn't go anywhere, except to slowly circle the condor.
In fact^2, I typed up that second paragraph, then I thought "maybe it is specific to interceptor-classified objects only and nobody bothered to document that", went and started an unmodded vanilla game, did the tutorial stuff in Galatia because I knew I could get a Condor and some Talons, and went and did the wormhole fight and tried the escort-with-fighters. Guess what? IT DOES NOT WORK. The Condor was given the escort order, moved toward my Hammerhead, the Talons flew in circles near the Condor until the pirate Venture got near the Condor, then dove in and blasted away at the Venture. My flagship Hammerhead - which they were supposed to be escorting - was nowhere near.
It does not work. Please do not say things work a certain way when they very clearly and verifiably do not.
And yes, I am running .95.1. The first test I did was with mods but I did all my earlier experimentation with this in an unmodded vanilla install, as was the second test.
