Difference between revisions of "Stealth Bombers"

Revision as of 05:14, 24 July 2008

Original text by [Rells]

Introduction

The stealth bomber is one of those interesting Enigmas of the Eve universe. It is a ship that packs an enormous punch but cant take much more than a sneeze without blowing up. The combination makes flying a Stealth Bomber a risky, adrenaline filled exercise. At the same time a few stealth bombers added to a larger gang could provide a huge tactical edge in defeating gangs of other ships. However, in order to get that far, we first need to figure out how to use it in a solo experience.

Basic Stealth Bomber Operation

When fitting out your bomber it is important to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the bomber and to anticipate your combat scenarios. Whether you are fitting up a bomber or carrier, you should close your eyes and imagine a realistic battle and your role in that battle. What happens when you get targeted? What happens if you start taking damage? Where will you be in a multiple ship fight or in a solo fight? Once you can visualize this, fitting the ship will be much easier.

Typically there are two major roles that a stealth bomber can assume. In a cruise missile role, the bomber is configured to deliver cruise missiles to targets at range while in a bombing role, the bomber will be delivering area effect bombs to the targets and using tactical evasion to avoid getting blown up. Because of the light armor of the bomber, the bomber tanks but avoiding getting hit through a combination of EWAR and cloaking evasion tactics. In fact, whichever role the bomber assumes, skilled evasion tactics can make the difference between life and death of the battlefield.

Cloaked Evasion

Since a bomber can not warp while cloaked, a pilot will need to know good evasion techniques to escape bubble camps and to position for a shot on the opponent. Cloaked evasion is the process of evading enemies while the bomber is cloaked. These enemies may either be trying to actively search for the bomber or merely stumble accidentally near the bomber. In either case, the pilot of the bomber will need to be alert and react fast to avoid losing their ship.

The first thing that a pilot needs to know about cloaked evasion is that any ship getting within 2 km of the bomber will decloak the bomber and it will have to wait for the cloak to reset before it can recloak. Even with good skills this can be as much as 5 seconds which is quite enough time for small ships to get a lock on the bomber. Once an opponent has a lock on your ship, you may not cloak. So your main goal is to make sure that you avoid having anyone pass that close to your ship when you are in a vulnerable position and to ensure that if you are decloaked you have a warp-out escape planned.

A stealth bomber goes faster when it is cloaked than when it is uncloaked due to bonuses on the ship. This presents a significant advantage when trying to evade an enemy as the stealth bomber can instantly warp when coming out of cloak so long as it aligns to the warp while cloaked. When the pilot drops the cloak, or the cloak is lost by a close encounter with another object, the ship is already traveling faster than it needs to to get into warp so there is no chance to lock the bomber and if the bomber is not already in a bubble it is unlikely the interdictor will have the reflexes to put one up before the bomber can warp out.

However, there are many circumstances where it is impossible or undesirable to warp the bomber out. The key to evasion is to exploit the turning radius of the ships searching for the bomber or just flying around aimlessly. Usually when an opponent is searching for a bomber, he will be using fast ships and often he will deploy drones to increase the area of the search in a hope to decloak the bomber. By contrast the bomber will have much lower speed and be able to see the trajectory of hunting ships while they can not see the bomber. This means that the bomber can turn much faster than the hunting ships and this can be leveraged to evade. By making sharp turns that are 90 degrees different from the hunting ships, the bomber is able to evade the hunter assuming it has enough time to clear 2km before the hunter gets there. The higher speed ships would need much longer to make the turn even if they knew which direction the bomber went. This makes it easier for the bomber to put distance between the hunter and the hunted bomber.

The final rule when doing cloaked evasion is to always stay aligned for something on a warp out if you have to and be prepared to go. Since a stealth bomber can travel faster while cloaked than when uncloaked, it can instantly warp out when dropping cloak so long as it is aligned. This is in sharp contrast to other non-covops or recon ships using cloaks. Putting a cloak on a battleship, hauler and so on will slow their cloaked velocity significantly and they will have to speed up to enter warp after dropping cloak.

Cloaking Rules

Its important that you keep in mind several rules when it comes to using a cloak.

1. You can not cloak within 2000 meters of any object, including asteroids, wrecks, cans, corpses, gates, stations and other uncloaked ships.
2. Cloaked ships can never decloak each other.
3. Wrecks, Cans and Corpses are not material so whereas they will prevent you from cloaking, they will not decloak you.
4. If you come within 2000 meters of any ship, stargate model or station model, you will be decloaked. When it comes to stations and gates, it is the model that is important. Specifically you can be at 0m on a station but still be more than 2000m off the station model itself (a fact used by capital support pilots dropping cynos). The model is defined by what you can collide with in your ship.
5. Being within 2000m of a POS shield wont decloak you but actually bouncing off the shield will.
6. An errant missile flying within 2000m will decloak you. This has killed more than one pilot after their target finishes a rat and the missiles fly off randomly.
7. Cloaks never expire and you can not run out of cap while using them because they use so little energy.
8. Most things including reloading, off-lining and so on can not be done while cloaked but you can still cycle while cloaked and without breaking the cloak.

The Cruise Bomber

A cruise missile bomber is designed to deploy cruise missiles against opponents from a long wa away. They rely on the suppression of sensor dampeners with targeting range scripts to keep them safe from hostiles. They also can deliver significant damage because they get bonuses for using cruise missiles. The precision bonus will make the cruise missiles lethal to any light ship that can't outrun the damage (which requires about 3 km per second). The damage bonus makes them even more effective as a missile platform. In addition, stealth bombers with a well trained pilot have only a very short sensor re-calibration time after cloaking, allowing the bomber to lock very fast after decloaking.This adds significantly to the suprise factor with the bombers. However, even without the cloak they are formidable weapons. AGONY used them successfully and decisively to win our second tournament match.

Fitting

Like all bombers, you will need to have a cloaking device on the ship. If you cant use an Improved Cloaking Device II then you will be at a significant disadvantage. The improved cloak gives you much better speed of sensor re-calibration and cloaked velocity than a Prototype Cloaking Device. In addition, you should stack your high slots with the best cruise launchers that you can use and afford; a bomber with tech 2 cruises is lethal indeed. For ammo, make sure you are using Caldari Navy faction ammo to get the maximum damage. For the mid slots you will need at least 2 Remote Sensor Dampeners. If you can manage tech 2 damps that is even better. Load each damp with locking range scripts. For the rest of the modules, a webifier is an excellent choice for a third mid slot for reasons I will discuss in a minute. The final modules should be taken up with getting enough grid to run your equipment as well as augmenting speed. If you feel compelled to rig your well-armed piece of glass, go for auxiliary trusters, warhead calcification or hydraulic bay thrusters.

Combat

This ship is a surprise ship as well as a damage augmenter. A frigate fleet would be augmenting its damage significantly with a couple stealth bombers in attendance. However, since you cant tank much more than a strong sneeze, you need to utilize range and your damps to keep your ship alive. In group bomber situations, each bomber will be assigned a target to suppress and they will use their damps to reduce the targeting range of the opponent to less than the bomber is away from the target. In a situation with more bombers than dangerous targets the bombers will team up to suppress the targets. Once the targets are suppressed, the bombers can unleash a large amount of damage. However, the bomber must always keep in mind that he is a very fragile piece of hardware and he should be ready to warp out at a moment's notice.

Fishing

Fishing is the art of luring a ship into attack you and then killing that ship. Since the pilot that is fishing is anticipating the conflict, he can specifically fit for it. Fishing works especially well in situations where the opponent you are trying to fish perceives that he has an advantage over you. AGONY pilots have done this so much that enemy interceptors where we live will refuse to engage our tech 1 frigates in one-on-one fights. Those interceptors have found out the hard way that those tech 1 frigates are not quite as defenseless as they appear.

Bombers can also accomplish fishing by using a stealth bomber. Often interceptors will anticipate that they have enough speed to outrun your cruise missiles so they will come after you and kill your ship while keeping at high speed. This is where the web and dampeners come in. With two damps on the ship, all but the most highly skilled intereptors will have to come within web range to attack your ship. As they fly out to meet you, you lock the damps on the target and wait for them to realize they need to move closer to get in under damp range. Once they get in range the bomber pilot click the web on and immediately fires all three cruise missiles. The 90% web will decelerate the interceptor to the point that the cruises can hit the ship. As a result, the interceptor will be blown up in a single volley and likely before the pilot of the interceptor even knows what is going on. The easiest way to implement this is to have the web and cruises all on F keys so they can be quickly invoked one after another. If for some reason you dont get the ship on the first try, approach them and try to keep them in web range for another volley. It also helps if you have Thermodynamics skills and can overload the web.

The Bomb Bomber

In addition to using cruise missiles, stealth bombers can use bomb launchers which fire dumb bombs. These bombs are area-effect weapons that fly out straight in the direction the bomber is flying at 1250 m/s for a 15 second flight and then detonate. This means that the bombs fly about 18km away from the launching ship and then detonate. When the bombs detonate, they hit everything in a 15km radius with bomb damage. The damage of the bomb is attenuated exactly like that of missiles. Fast ships will outrun the explosion and ships with smaller signal radius will take less damage. By increasing your covert ops skills, you will increase the damage that the bomb for your race does. A raw bomb damage of 7680 is possible with covert ops 4 skill. Keep in mind that the bomb will fly dumbly out straight out from the front of the bomber. It can not be targeted at someone. Also keep in mind that if your ship gets blown up, the bomb will not detonate.

In general a single bomb will not kill small, well tanked ships such as assault frigates. However, the interdictors and interceptors can generally be killed with a single bomb. You can use up to 4 bombs concurrently, however the pilots must all be using the same variety of bomb for this to work. Bombs have 99.5% resistance to their own damage type but no resistance to other damage types. A 5th bomb or a single bomb of another damage type will destroy the other bombs in its radius. However, with a bit of synchornization, of pilots, it is possible to

Fitting

Unlike cruise bombers, bomb bombers focus more on speed and agility than conventional weapons and EWAR that is the focus of the cruise bomber. While it is good for the bomb bomber to have 2 cruise launchers, they may prefer micro-warp drives over damps to get an extra burst of speed just before cloaking. A bomb fitted bomber is trying to sneak in on a target and escape quickly. The missiles are only a secondary weapon. In addition a bomb bomber might put in a shield extender in case they get nicked by their own bomb.

Warp Out Bombing

This tactic relies on the bomber being aligned to a warp-out point. The pilot aligns and then decloaks 20 to 25 km off the target, drops the bomb and instantly engages warp. It is important that the mouse of the player be occupied only by the warp out. The pilot should have their warp out point and distance to warp at selected prior to decloaking so that they merely have to click to initiate the warp. The cloaking device and bomb launcher should be on F keys and are pressed nearly simultaneously. The warp out bomber might warp all the way to a celestial object or, even better, to a tactical bookmark aligned with a celestial object but still on grid to see the damage.

Snapshot Bombing

This tactic involves on the bomber warping into the hostile ships, dropping the bomb and then cloaking when the bomb has cleared the ship. This technique relies on the fact that the bomber's re-cloaking delay has passed during the warp in and the bomb will clear the ship much faster than many ships can lock the bomber. The key to this is that the bomber needs to have the grid loaded before he warps into the hostile ships or he will lag and die. The easiest way to do this is to be orbiting 400km off the gate or station and then decloak and warp down. Since the grid is loaded already, lag wont be a problem. The snapshot bombing also has the benefit of prompting the opponent to turn on microwarp drives to come looking for you The microwarp's increase the ship signal radiuses and will kill most interceptors outright. The bomber has to make sure that he warps to the target at 20km so that he is in the right position whether there is a bubble there or not. This technique works especially well when the targets have just engaged another ship and are going for the wreck. The bomber can warp to the wreck at 20km and drop.

Timed Bombing

This tactic relies on the fact that all ships take roughly the same time to decelerate from warp regardless of their size. The bomber sits 20km off a location where he expects the targets to come out of warp. If the bomber has support of an interdictor or a bubble and can make the exit point more predictable, results will be even better. To execute the maneuver, the bomber sets the scan range to 500,000km and continuously scans for the targets. When they come in range the bomber lets the bomb fly right at the point that the target will come out of warp. At this time the bomber has the option to cloak or to stay uncloaked just long enough for the target to see them and hopefully fire up a micro-warp looking for them. If there are a lot of targets, however, this is a bad idea as the lag can kill you. If you have an interdictor he should evacuate the area as well. The targets will come out of warp and nearly instantly be hit by the detonation with little time to react. 4 well timed bombs can wreak havoc on a large mixed fleet, killing anything smaller than battleship size. The bombers can also try to put some delay between the bomb launches to catch stragglers coming out of warp later. However, the more coordinated the enemy fleet is (the more they warp together) the better. One cloaked dictor and 4 cloaked bombers makes for a nasty recipe that cant be seen by the opposing fleet.

Conclusion