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Strike craft work well early in a mission or multiplayer game to harass enemy workers and eliminate opponent's recon vessels. Use waypoints to send a recon on patrol around your command ship to maintain an alert for incoming enemy craft. Research advanced sensors to give recon vessels the ability to detect incoming leeches. This is extremely important in a multiplayer game, where many players will exploit any neglect of advanced sensors and upgraded recon vessels.
Keep strike craft in X or claw formation when battling other strike craft. Wall formation also proves somewhat effective. Avoid sending strike craft into combat against a hive frigate and Beast multigun and missile corvettes - if you must, support your strike craft with multibeam frigates. The Somtaaw fleet offers a recon, which is best used for earlier recon (as it name suggests) and prevention of mimics and leeches (when up against a fellow Somtaaw fleet). The Somtaaw acolyte is rather weak on it's own, but a sturdy vessel when two are linked into an ACV.
Both the acolyte and the ACV contain special abilities. The acolyte can fire off a barrage of missiles, especially effective in weakening enemy strike craft and gaining an advantage against an enemy squadron. The ACV's special ability is an EMP burst, which can temporarily disable an enemy ship. Keep a group of ACVs around in a large capital ship battle to send your opponent's most powerful ship into a harmless spin and roll.
Hide mimics, disguised as asteroids, in resource patches to retain sight on enemy movement and to ram an enemy worker. Holding MCVs back with your fleet (perhaps disguised as asteroids) could give your opponent a sudden shock when these kamikaze units charge an enemy capital ship and reduce its health and weaken it for your own large ships. You can also use MCVs to mimic friendly ships and give your enemy the impression you have ships that you don't actually possess.
Leeches offer a wide variety of strategic fun. These small ships are undetectable by standard sensors, but can be spotted by proximity sensors and vessels equipped with advanced sensors, such as an upgraded recon craft. If you can sneak a leech inside the enemy fleet, though, you can inflict an amazing amount of damage. The leech can perform one of three tasks: leech, vent, or spy. The leeching ability eats into an enemy ships hull then returns that piece of hull for resource units. Spy lets the leech remain harmlessly on the enemy craft while providing line of sight for your own fleet. Finally, vent rips into the hull and starts venting waste into space - eventually destroying the ship.
Consider this: Sneak a group of leeches onto your opponent's worker group early in the game. This will be devastating to your opponent's economy and very difficult to recover from. To prevent this, research advanced sensors early and keep recon ships guarding your workers and other important frigates and capital ships. Combine this tactic with booming your initial economy by producing many workers or rushing crystal processing to further the gap between your economy and your opponent's economy.
Produce sentinels and position 12 around a capital ship to protect it from enemy attack. Keep strike craft on guard around the sentinels to prevent Beast cruise missiles from sneaking through.
The Beast fleet can produce interceptors (good against other strike craft), cloaked fighter (good for surprise attacks against workers or strike craft groups), and attack bombers (good against small frigates). But, the Beast can also infect Somtaaw strike craft and research the technology for its own use - the Beast fleet can capture and use acolytes, ACVs, and sentinels.
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