Unfortunately I haven't.  However, I intend to have ships with tractors and missiles out on my side of the WP the next time that it happens.  I almost feel like this is going to be a scene from the movie Ice Pirates; there is fighting, and there are people right behind the fighters fixing and reloading, and then the fight starts up again...

Thanks, all of that was helpful.  Now I have another question (which may have to go to another thread if I don't get an answer here):

In terms of battle management, I have to start shuttling ships off of the WP as they suffered a lot of damage from the minefield (see other thread).  Can ships go through a WP from both sides (incoming and outgoing) at the same time?

I would like to get damaged ships away from the bad guys and still bring in new ships to help with the battle.

Yes they can go in both directions.  The limit is one way.  You can have six ships transit from system A to B and 6 more go from B to A without risking a simultaneous transit.

Just remember that the informational loop is about 3 turns.  One turn for the ships to transit, a second for information to be passed and then a third turn for action to be taken.  This is actually incredibly fast all things considered.

Brian

Resetting Datalinks takes the same time as reloading XOs (5 Tac Turns) and is under the same restictions wrt sheilds & drives.  You ALSO cannot use any weapons or datalinked point def.   Note that the 5 turn duration is modified by crew grade.

It can be done at the same time as reloading the XOs.

Basically you will have the units out of the battle for about 8 turns (transit out t1, t2-6 reload & reconfigure, t7 reverse heading, t8 transit back) maybe a little quicker if they are elite or crack.

I had a house rule that CMs and other bigger missiles took proportionally longer to load up, so that if you loaded XOs with CM it took 10 tac turns, if you had one or more EDMs then that took 15 tac turns to get the ship ready.

You should be able to set up alternate links if you are reloading xo racks.  One of the other options that you can set up ahead of time is some basic alternate datalinks.  If for instance you have 24 bc of one type and 12 CA that could be fitted in to the link in a usefull manner (missile with missle, beam with beam etc) you can have that set up ahead of time so when a datagroup of bc's lose one ship they can add one of the ca's that were preset into the link.  This can be dangerous, in that the datagroup that is being pulled from just got more vulnerable to missiles possibly, but would help keep your firepower up.  This can be especially important for a long range missile duel as losing 1 ship from a datagroup means you probably don't have much chance for the other 2 to do much good against full point defence.  The time to switch to preset links is one round I think.  It has been a while though, and you might want to check out the rules.  The two relevent areas were the actual tech descriptions and the rules themselves about datlinks

Brian

How quickly can you load XO racks?  Are there any requirements in order to be able to reload (if all or most of your armor is damaged, etc)?

IIRC an  XO rack takes 5 tactical turns to Reload.

You have to be drive down AND shields down to do it  (making realoading in a battle environment a VERY risky proposition - unless you like the idea of 5xMissile Damage).

Of course the XO must still be there - each point of damage inside sheilds (excepting damage caused by  P, N or ADMs) destroys 1 XO (loaded if avlaliable).  If you have suffered extensive Armour damage you are likely to have lost a number of your XOs - particularly at high TLs where you may have a lot of advanced armour as XOs are lost PER HIT, not per hull space.

In my experience, I have never reloaded XOs in a battle, only between battles, and if you have 1 interception turn between engagements, then you have enough time to reload as long as you can stand still for that time - which has never been a problem for me - the shortest delay between battles I have been involved with was 12 hours.