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well after researching bfg for a while I've decided to get into it and start my own fleet. anyway here's what it looks like so far:

apocalypse battle ship-365

lunar cruiser-180

lunar cruiser-180

dictator cruiser-220

dictator cruiser-220

fire storm frigate-40

fire storm frigate-40

fire storm frigate-40

sword frigate-35

sword frigate-35

sword frigate-35

cobra destroyer-30

cobra destroyer-30

cobra destroyer-30

fleet admiral-50

total-1530

this is a fun list that will be spending quite a bit of time sitting on a shelf while i wait for opponents to present themselves. anyway any ideas on how to use what i've already got or a way to rearrange things to better suit all comers would be appreciated.

edit: escorts are in squadrons of three divided up by class. i.e: the three cobra's make up a squadron.

Your escorts will have to be in squadrons of 2-6 escorts.

well the idea was that they would be in squadrons of 3. sorry if there was some confusion.

I don't liike the apocalypse. If you keep it back and give front to use the Nova, can't use the lances. And if you take it near to the enemy line and turn to use the lances, can't use the Nova. A Mars battlecruiser would be better, giving you the Nova and two orientable long range lances.

I have yet to use my Apoc in a game, but it certainly seems like it can put the hurt on in the right situations (probably not against Eldar!).

On the escort question, I like to run my Swords and Firestorms in mixed squadrons of 4-5 ships, with one or two Firestorsm to 2-3 Swords. Cobras I typically run at least 6 of. From my experience, squadrons of 3 ships are just too vulnerable and don't kick out enough firepower to counter-act that. It's almost as if there is a tipping point at the 5 ship level.

Just to be clear, you are using the Bastion Fleet list, right? That is the only one I know of that lets you use those escorts with the Apoc.

If the two squadrons of 3 frigates work toghether they might do the same of a bigger squadron with more flexibility.
In my opinion Sword frigates do their best when operating in conjunction with Dauntless cruisers. ( 3 sword, 1 Daunt )

Well, the problem there is that pesky gunnery table; taking more ships allows you to stay deeper in the table for longer, and the more strength you have the more dice you get to throw. This is a big consideration when fighting Eldar, with their annoying right column shift. Pairing the escorts with a Dauntless isn't a bad idea, I've done that myself with some success.

I use escorts in pairs as often as I can afford to. For indepenent squadrons pairing off is ultimately too cheesy and can also get confusing when you have lone survivor escorts everywhere, its is still optimally efficient though. That lone survivor escort can be used to ram a huge wave of ordnance or harass an individuasl cruiser by sticking behind it and sometimes just by being the closest target, when not what ther enemy wants to shoot at and especially when he has only lances in arc.
Nevertheless that is endgame play.

Large squadrons of five ships or more are for cheap torpedo vessels (Cobra, Infidel and Nightshade) and all orks, and I might put Hemlocks into that category too, simply because you can.

Other firepower based escorts really need to be in smaller squadrons, you still get the same firepower, but are an extra target. If the enemy shooting goes extraordinarily well this will result in overkill, not extra ships lost. A good balance of fairness and practicality is to use squadrons of 3-4, it looks good, is not minimaxing and itsd is how the miniatures are sold anyway.

Where do pairs come in? Pairs tuck neatly behind a cruiser to form a tight turret boosting riangle. This is useful enough for Chaos and very good indeed to Imperial. Ironically I dont try this with Dauntless mostly because as the cruiser moves seperately to its escorts and it might be difficult to reform the triangle unless you hold back the cruiser by 5cm or so if you turn. Besides 3 turrets is still not a lot, 4+ turrets is a lot, Dauntless cannot really be safe without a fighter escort.

I guess we have just had drasitically different experiences with our escorts then! What I have found is that when I have my gun-based escorts in 3 ship squadrons or less they typically die without being able to get a good hit in, but then I have to admit I am not all that skilled at the game and at least 50% of the games I have played are against people who are just learning how to play. This might have a lot to do with it.

Back to the list above, though, I think that Dregogg would be better off either taking more than 3 Cobras in a squadron, or not taking them at all to buy more Swords/Firestorms and/or upgrades for his fleet.

Put it this way Ruckdog, if you had two squadrons of three instead of one squadron of six you can only profit from it if they do not have ordnance. I suggest if I may that you might have misread my remarks about taking units of only 3-4 escorts as an encouragement to reduce your total number of escorts. This is the only way you could be justiyably worried that the small squadrons die too fast. escorts die at the same rate regardless, with exception that a very lucky salvo might waste extra dice of hits on a very dead small escort squadron that would cause further losses in a larger one.

The six escorts can perform equally well, for a start you could still mass them together, so long as they are identifiable as from seperate squadrons (or not). The only things you cannot do is AAF together or mass ordnance.

I tend to find AAF is a waste for (non ork) escorts, they ought to be fast enough to in the right place and AAF can cause you to overshoot your intended position bringing into close range of the wrong ships or in extreme cases passing the target entirely.

Smaller squadrons can be in different places, this is very useful if you are facing Eldar, give them nowhere to hide from your guns.

I totally agree wirth you over Cobras, three Cobras yields six torpedoes, and here are few other places where you can't get six torpedoes. Even though not at 90pts its just for the other 90pts you get a whole lot of cruiser!
When you put it this way you see you need to go all the way with Cobras or dont bother with them.

As for your tactics, mileage will vary. From the look of your fleets you do play bigger games than me and that will skew results but primarily our differences come from the fact that BFG is a tacical game. Unlike 40k its not all about the list and then a good deployemnt and getting the first turn, tactics matter a whole lot more ajnd rthere are several ways to use most fleets. So far all that you have said I found to be sound advice, however different from my own. The only actual 'mistake' i think you have made is to underestimate Infidel class raiders. I strongly suggest you take a second look at them, perhaps you could suprise your opponent next time you play Chaos.