[nerfman]

If you have shields on your fighters, then smaller Groups may help. Damage applied to your Groups to one fighters shield then to the fighters themselves. If there is enough extra damage to destroy 2 or three fighters then it does so, not "attacking" the shields of the other 2-3. Subsequent attacks on the next turn will have the shields for say the forth fighter. Basically, once you burn through one fighters shields, all the rest of the damage is applied internally and damage that leaks to other fighters does not interact with their shields.

With this in mind, smaller sizes mean more of this "extra' damage is wasted. Also, by increasing the number of targets, you diminish your opponents ability to engage you with their normal weapons. Even w/ multiplex tracking, they can only engage a few targets regardless of size. This works even better when closing w/ heavy ships simultaniously. Of course the point defense will not really be affected since it is autonomous but timing with some standoff missile strikes can really force the same type of targetting delema on the PD guns. Saturation is key!

So my suggestion is if your enemy is killing most of your fighters with standard weapons then break up your Groups, but maybe if they are heavily armored or have lots of PD then jack up the group size.