Late to the game, but here are my thoughts: I usually try to beat a game on my own, but this time I wondered if I was doing something wrong on the PC version, and this thread gave me the idea I needed...

USE LIGHTNING.

I didn't think to do that before since your lightning can't destroy ships in any OTHER part of the game, who would have guessed it would be so effective here. Trying to slowly force grip the TIEs takes way too much time, or trying to toss that piece of debris that floats from the left side of the screen every so often is way too hard to use effectively. Thanks guys!

Simple... When the TIE are barreling in, go left, about 2 inches left of the left tower/defensive position, then grip and throw fighters into one another. You should be able to gripe 3 in a row and slam them into other fighters.

One thing that is total bull**** is that PC players are verily ****ed unless they map something to emulate the mouse up/down. I have a nostromo n50 speedpad and did just that. One nice little detail that would have been good to know is that getting things into the green zone varies with difficulty so when getting no movement indicators, nothing was aligned -yes, get the damn thing level and pointing at you. Once I figured that out after 30 minutes of trying to bring the mother****er down, I remapped the speedpad z-axis and did it in no time at all. Bull**** for PC players.