Special things to keep in mind
A second advantage for you is that with a nice ES bonus enemy ships tend to get captured sooner. Using the default weaponry of Mk7 torps and disruptors, I've captured myself many an MBR and some Rubies. Patriots are best fought by a Nova with disruptors, not using any torps. It will nicely shoot down all the fighters, only suffering minor shield-damage, and then capture the Patriot.
Getting the right side of the battle
Host/VCR has a couple of odd things, one of them being the inequality of the left and the
right side in battle. In short here's what it comes down to: Carriers fight better from
the left. They somehow launch their fighters sooner and faster when fighting from that
side. To compensate this disadvantage for the torpedo-ships Tim has come up with the
following: when a torpedo-ship fights a carrier, with the carrier fighthing from the left
side, the torpship has a 60% chance of gaining an extra 360 KT in hullmass. This applies
only to ships with a mass already above 140 KT For you, those are the same ships already
mentioned in the ES-bonus part, and the Arkham.
I won't bother you with statistics here, just this short example: A Thor going in first against a Biocide, fighting from the left, doesn't get to fire a single torpedo unless the ES bonus is on. Fighthing from the right it will still get toasted 40% of the time, but will be able to fire four full salvos of torpedoes when it gets the bonus mass. Four salvos of Mark 7's from the Thor's eight tubes take down the shields from the Biocide and damage it up to 30%. (Mk7's and Mk8's have the same result here)
So how will you get this to work in your advantage? Obviously you want your torpedoships to fight from the right if you're facing a carrier. There is an easy way to control this: ships with the lowest FC fight from the right side. Very handy indeed, because ships with the lowest FC also fight first. If you have a Thor/Kittyhawk combo you want to fight another ship with, you'll want your Thor to fight first, and you'll want the Thor to fight from the right. You also want the Kittyhawk to fight from the left. So the Thor gets a friendly code with a low number like 118 , the Kittyhwak will have an all letter - FC like 'jle'. Now the Thor will fight first and from the right (unless your enemy has set an even lower FC), after that the the Kittyhawk fights from the left. If both you and your enemy are trying to get the left side by setting an alphanumerical (all letters) FC, the ship with the lowest ID fights from the right - or better said: the highest ID gets the left side, lowest ID gets the right side.
Two things to keep in mind: Friendly codes lower than 100 don't always work correctly, so it's best to start somewhere above 100. This would ofcourse run you the risk of facing an enemy who is using codes below100. There are also some pretty common friendly codes, like 101, 102 etc. And when both you and your enemy have the same FC, there will be no fighting. This can be very hurtful for you: your Nova set to fight after the Thor will probably get blown to bits if the Thor didn't strip the enemy of his shields because his FC was matching that of the enemy ship. Even when you both have eachother set as primary enemy and mission to 'KILL', matching friendly-codes overrule this. So you want to avoid these.
There can be situations when you actually want to match your enemy's friendly code, so his Rush for example won't make mincemeat of your Diplomacy. You can try setting one of the common friendly-codes (maybe he has set his Rush to fight before the Iron Lady he has there, so when you match the 101 he just might have set on that Rush you won't fight the Rush but you will toast the Iron Lady). You can also try using some of the more common alphanumerical special friendly codes like 'mkt' for torpers or 'lfm' for carriers to prevent a battle you're about to lose, or use an 'alm', 'alt' or 'ald' friendly code to avoid wasting torps on the Merlin in orbit of your enemy's starbase. If your enemy knows what he's doing it won't work and you might even lose a ship surrendering to a base, but it's worth the try.
But gravity wells have more uses: they're a pretty safe place to be. The point is you can only move at warp 1 within a gravity well without getting sucked onto the planet. So an enemy ship flying around in that well is very hard to catch. He can fly three lightyears away from the planet, and he can fly all around the planet. If you intercept your enemy with, oh, let's say warp 4, you intercept the enemy alright, but then the gravity well pulls you back. This happens right after movement but before combat. So you'll have burned some fuel and still be back at the place you were. So the only way to intercept the enemy is at warp 1. Means you'll only fly one lightyear per turn, and so does the enemy. Catching up at the same speed doesn't really work, so you're gonna need a lot of patience and probably multiple ships to catch this one enemy ship. And most players don't have the patience or free ships to do this. Especially when the ships you've put safely in the warpwell aren't much of direct threat (freighters, terraformers). But what if you wanted to use this gravity well for warships?
Gravity wells are a great place to have ships doing minesweeping/minelaying in hostile space. It will be a bit hard to enter a gravity well when flying in from a position other than the planet itself, because you'll have to stop just a bit more than three lightyears from the planet, and then fly into the well at warp1. If your first stop was more than four lightyears from the planet, you won't reach the gravity well the next turn and will have to fly one more turn at warp 2 or so very close to the planet so you can be intercepted and will probably get toasted. If the first stop wasn't more than three lightyears from the planet at all, you're pulled to the enemy planet where some hostile enemy ship is probably waiting for you.
You can also use the wells as a sanctuary for ships low on fuel. You can easily move about without running out of fuel in a gravity well. You can use them as a storage area for damaged ships in hostile space. Dump your damaged ships in gravity wells and your enemies will have a difficult time killing you off or recapturing you - in the case of freighters and such. Gravity wells could also form a sanctuary for ships carrying colonists and resources off worlds threatened by attack. You may not be able to outrun the enemy due to fuel or drives but you can play hide'n'seek in gravity wells and keep your stuff instead of leaving it for them to destroy or seize. Merlins and Neutronic refinery ships are fine ships to ship off into the gravity well if their planet is under heavy attack: load them up with as much minerals and clans as possible so you'll leave next to nothing for your enemy.
If worse comes to worse, you can always dump everything if it appears
you're going to be captured. Another use for gravity wells: Alchemy processing area in
hostile space. Use captured alchemy ships to process resources ferried in by other ships.
Fuel making is the most logical, but I suppose other minerals could be created as well.
This might take some practice, reaching the ship from deep space at warp 1 if you can't
fly to the planet anymore.
Lokis are nice ships to park inside the warpwells as well. They decloak everything within
10 LY, so the planet is still secured, but it's gonna be very hard to kill that Loki. The
only downside would be that when you do this in your own territory everybody will know
you're there and that you have a Loki.