[MarkShot]

Well, maybe I will try the escorts then sometime in SH4. I have it, but not installed at the moment. I thought I would give it another year of modding and see if it got patched again.

I play SH3/GWX2, AOD, and SHCE. As far as escort difficulty goes, in particular breaking contact once detected, I think AOD has the hardest escorts I have seen.

The trick you mention which I often do with SHCE, is virtually impossible to pull off with AOD. That is baiting the escorts such that you can force a group attack which causes them to mainly end up in one quadrant with evading in the opposite direction. In AOD, they form a circle, coordinate, and take turns attacking. Thus, at the point that you reach about 5 escorts in AOD, there is no longer an escape window to slip through. In SHCE, you still have a chance pulling them all off to one quadrant. That's why in AOD it is so critically important to learn the art of attacking followed by displacing and disengaging without ever being detected. That's what keeps you alive. If you should be detected, then you need to break contact as quick as possible while their numbers are still low, since each minute brings you close to being completely encircled.