Cadet II/Teleport probes

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Teleport Probes

A teleport probe is a probe that can be deployed by scouts and works as a ripcord receiver. Any ship can rip to it, from scouts to battlecruisers. It is mainly used as a part of a surprise attack to rip anti-base ships into enemy sectors, such as bombers. One or two scouts will sit in the enemy sector and deploy the probes once the team is ready to attack.

In order to research it your team needs a Starbase. To get tp2 you also need to already have tp1, and an Advanced Supremacy Center. The tp1 has a 30s warm-up time whereas tp2 is only 15s. Both have a small self defense capability vs enemy missiles.

Once deployed a tp has a sig of 1000%. A deployed tp will self-destruct if it is too close to an asteroid. TP's have unlimited energy so any number of ships can rip in to them.

Planning the route

The most important thing is not to get eyed en-route. Or if you are eyed, to not look like you're trying to lose eye!

Consider your route in F3. Plot out a path that is unlikely to have enemy ships, and no alephs that emerge close to enemy stations. You may have to take an extremely circuitous route to achieve this, but it's worth it. In fact, your route may take you so long that the situation changes and you need someone in base to tell you whether the route is still safe.

The basic close drop

First up I will cover my favourite one: Getting in close and personal.

Your target is a techbase. Do not waste your time on minor stations - you should be galving them. In order to blow the techbase you will need a rock nice and close to block the station's radar. Most of the time you can find one at around 1-2k from the base. A well chosen rock will be on the blindside of the base, opposite the red door, and when you're hugging it you won't be able to see anything hostile, or indeed any flight paths that hostile things might be using.

Once in position let your commander know that you're ready and allow him to organise some bombers to rip to you. Drop when ready/told to. If you've done your job right, then unless you have bad luck the first warning they will have is when the bombers fly out from behind the rock.

More commonly the probe does get eyed. Once the enemy are inbound you need to drop prox around the probe(s) and nan them try to keep them around for the few extra seconds needed for the bombers to rip in.

Basic long range drop

A slightly easier drop is to partner a tp drop with bombers mounting XRM ABs for long range devastation, or fighter bombers armed with regular ABs. Regardless of the flavour, the technique is the same. This is slightly more likely to succeed than the close drop as the defense has to come further to kill the probe and it's also less reliant on not getting eyed.

In essence you drop the probes about 4k from the base. As many bombers rip in as possible and start loosing XRM ABs at the base from 3.6k. It becomes a contest of whether the defenders can kill the bombers faster than the bbrs fire missiles.

My technique for doing this type of drop is to get in the sector and stay about 5k out from the base until I get the go order from the comm, then head in dropping the probes when I reach the drop point.

Try and drop the probe on the opposite side from the red door so defenders need to circle the base.

Note XRM damage got nerfed in the Community Core, so it became less popular. Currently the most common tactic is to use fighter-bombers instead.

Extreme drops

The third sort of drop I'll cover is the extreme long range drop used simply to get sb/htts into the sector. Two choices here, either drop behind an asteroid on the far side of the sector from the station or go out to the sector boundary and drop there. If you choose the second they will know you've ripped something in but they won't know what. Using the first you can keep them from even knowing that you've ripped stuff in.

You can also use this tactic for psychological warfare -- for example, to pull a camp away from the alephs (in search of mythical ships that must have ripped in) while you prepare the real attack at the aleph as normal.

Finally, you can use this tactic to get a Cruiser into the system. Cruisers are very powerful ships and are difficult to attack once the gunners are all oriented and ready to kill stuff. They can use their range to pepper small ships long before those ships close in to do their own shooting. In other words, cruisers dominate everywhere except at an aleph camp. Got 10 extra people? Rip in 2 fully packed Cruisers with XRM and nukes, along with a pile of ammo. Gunners will tear apart the incoming singles and pairs of enemy ships (since it's unlikely they'll be able to form up properly to all hit you together, which is the correct response. Even then the odds are against them), and XRMs will either distract the defense who need to chase them down and kill them, or kill the base. If the XRMs fail, the defense was distracted, so you can survive to close in and get your nose up on the base to Nuke it.

Aleph drop

As you sit in F3 planning your attack you may notice the enemy techbase is directly in front of an aleph. Even better, there is nothing in that sector. This is a perfect chance to perform an aleph drop. You fly to the empty sector, sit next to the aleph in question, and drop the probe. Bombers rip in and fly through the aleph to attack. The advantage is that it lowers the chance of being eyed. Even more cunning, if the sector is not empty but has an enemy base, you will be able to use that station as an immediate and convincing distraction!

Distraction drops

There's also the distraction aspect of tp probes. They are fantastic tools for getting large numbers of defense to launch in the wrong place.

There are quite a few ways in which TP probes can be used to distract. Commonly you get two TP probe droppers one of which is purely distraction. He drops 10-20 seconds before the real drop to draw the defense to the wrong sector. Meanwhile the real drop goes unopposed.

Alternatively if their base is close to an aleph but they have it heavily camped. Drop a TP probe on the far side of the sector. Normally the campers will hurry off in search of the ships that ripped in leaving the aleph unguarded for the real run to come through.

Tip: Generally speaking, versus advanced tech a tp attack will always need a distraction in order to be successful

Other uses

TP probes can get you out of the situation when you're boxed into a single sector. Basically you get one scout out with a few tp probes. He gets into an empty sector, drops a tp probe and more scouts with more tp probes rip in. Then they all roam around and whenever you want to get anything out of your home, say for example an htt run, a tp probe gets dropped and the htt and nans rip to that.

Additionally if you are sup or tac, anytime one of your free range scouts spots a miner or con he can drop a probe and your figs/sf can rip in and kill it.

You can use TP probes to make galv run attacks on stations which are long way from your own bases.

At a pinch they can even make decent home rips.

Tips on picking the right distance

The closer you get the easier it is for bbrs to launch missiles. But the easier it is for the defenders to intercept. There are a lot of variables to consider to decide on the right distance:

• Check how fast are the ships of the defenders are.
• What boosters and ships do they have?
• What faction perks or nerfs do they have?
• Check for enemies flying around in the sector. Keep away from them.
• If they have to undock first it costs them some extra seconds to do so and to orientate after the launching sequence.
• Consider the kind of weapons they have. From what distance will they be able to hit the tp2?
• Is it possible to outnan the damage a single defender will deal to the tp2?
• Also consider your own team's tech and faction. How long will your people need to rip in? Do you have rip GAs?

Different ships available

Scout

Basic scouts are a starting ship and always available for tp2 missions. Often you will have to use them, as tp2 is an expensive tech and for most commanders upgrading your scouts is a low priority, especially compared to getting figbees, cruise booster and antibase missile 2.

Advanced scout

Advanced scouts have a 33% lower sig, than basic scouts, making it easier to sneak into the targetsector and to set up. It is almost necessary to be able to set up a tp2 drop, if the enemy has pulse probes.

Also the speedperk of 12.5% helps to get there quicker and to avoid enemies.

Heavy scout

Different to popular belief heavy scouts don't really provide any more advantages for tp2ing. The only perk compared to the adv scout is a 10% boost of acceleration.

Assault ship

Every faction can get an assault ship. Although it can deploy TPs, it often doesn't need to because it is a large rip receiver itself. Unlike the probe the assault ship has a limited amount of energy, but is mobile. Considering it needs energy to use its heavy cloak, the ability to drop TPs is not to be sniffed at.

Factions

Bios

All bios ships can mount hvy cloak. This makes it much easier to sneak a scout into position. Also the bombers can cloak once they ripped in, which can give them a few extra seconds. Keep your energy for when you need it.

Belters

When tp2ing in a Belters scout remember to use your booster to outrun your pursuers. Also the capability of belters' bbrs to mount light booster and the strong fighter nans make a tp2 drop with even just basic bbrs much more likely to be successful.

Gigacorp

Gigacorp has two unique ships that can mount and drop tp2s: The luxury scout and the luxury fighter. Lxy scouts have a 10% higher sig than hvy scouts, so in most situations you should take a hvy scout over a lxy sout.

Lxy figs can be very useful to break through a camp, as nearly noone expects them to be carrying a tp2 in the first place and with their booster they can get away quickly. The downside is that you can't nan your tp2 once you dropped it.

Rixian Unity and Technoflux

For these two factions their stealth fighters can mount tp2, which is so cheesy it's almost broken. The upside is that you can sneak to the enemy sectors easily, but the downside is that you can't nan your tp2.

Also their bombers use energy weapons instead of missiles. This reduces your bombers' range, but their figbees have a significant higher damage output, than the figbees of other factions.

Final tips

If all the tips don't help and the enemy found you and is about to kill you, drop your tp2 so the enemy can't pick it after you die. Otherwise the TP2 will just get ejected when you are podded, and the defended team can use it against you.

You are on the defending team and killed a tp2 scout? Grab it and pass it along to a smart scout pilot. That way even after they dock to secure it, it will still be in their equipment ready for instant use!

Conclusion

Tp2ing is one of the most complex strategies of the game. So don't worry, if your first attempts fail. It needs some time to internalize all the stuff mentioned above, but be sure, once you succeeded with your first – perhaps even uneyed – tp2 drop, winning the game for your team, you get the credits for your efforts.

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