Now Wingmates do suck, but they only benefit you on missions that only have something to do with tie fighters (maybe bombers but doubt it). Use the command on only these levels if you wish to benefit them:

-Death Star Attack (on the 2nd phase of the level)

-Ison Corridor Ambush (probably only the first phase since A-wingmates don't got a lot of power)

-Vengeance on Kothlis (its optional but its risky too if you want to destroy the ties fast so you can take out a good chunk of ground troops early before the transport lands.)

-Battle of Endor (till the bombers arrive)

Why not Raid on Bespin?: when my wingmate destroyed some of the fighters the game didn't count them as necessary points for some reason. the game wants you to destroy them to make them count.

On the first 2 missions, Sending wingmen on ties can help, but from my experience it makes the tie segments less consistent. \If you send them off, a lot of times they can split up groups of ties by killing or shooting for a leader, which makes them break off their pattern and more difficult to kill. I find that it's easier and more efficient if you keep your wingmen off ties and just have them stay with you most of the time. If they stick with you, they occasionally land a hit on a tie that you're trying to get, which is better than nothing or causing ties to go off in some random direction.

Having them fight ties in Vengeance on Kothlis is more often than not what I do in my runs, it's basically an escort objective if you do it quick enough.

Battle of Endor is good too, I personally keep them on the bombers because iirc they prioritize objective targets.

This is a really helpful breakdown. Wingmates are one of those mechanics that sound useful on paper, but in practice they can make things way more chaotic than expected.

I definitely agree that consistency matters more than just having them shoot at everything. If they split up TIE formations or mess with enemy flight patterns, that can easily cost more time than they save. Keeping them with you and letting them occasionally land extra shots seems like the safer option for most levels.

Vengeance on Kothlis and Battle of Endor sound like the best cases where they actually make sense, especially if they are helping with objective-related targets instead of randomly disrupting groups. The Raid on Bespin note is also super interesting. If the game only counts kills done by the player for certain objective progress, that is definitely something worth knowing before relying on wingmates there.

Good info overall. It is cool seeing these older routing details still being useful, especially for figuring out when wingmates are actually helpful versus when they just create more RNG.