Cadet PRS Bomber Tactics

Tactics

I hope you know the difference between Tactics and Strategy. Basically, it's a matter of scale.

Fake run

A common techbase defence is to build an outpost or teleport in the sector ahead of it as a buffer zone. But if you look at F3 you will sometimes notice that the outpost has been built behind the aleph leading to the techbase, or some equally useless spot.

To fake a run is pretty easy: attack the sector with the guardian base, make the defenders launch, pod some, and then change directions and head to the techbase aleph. It will have no camp, and less defenders will launch in time. It is best if the aleph and the guardian base are in pretty much the same direction, that way your real target is not so clear to the enemy.

This is, of course, a gamble. You might end up killing no base at all and it is better to blow an op/tele, than to merely damage a tech base.

Of course you could do a fake-fake run - head for the techbase aleph so they scramble to defend that, then hit the guardian base.

Another variation on this tactic is where an uncontested sector leads to two different enemy bases. Once you’re in and eyed fly to a midway point between the alephs. Tell your scouts to find and kill the probes so you lose eye. If you must unmount shields and missiles to do this, start with the missiles as any enemy watching you in F3 won’t know you’re unmounting them – as opposed to if you take off shields they will know what you’re up to straight away.

Now, what does your enemy expect you to do? Will he camp for the more important base, expecting you to hit the high priority target? Or will the enemy expect a deception and camp for the less important base? Will the enemy expect a double deception (You fake for tech base, you lose the eye, your enemy thinks you changed course to less important base, but you hit the tech base. You fake for a lesser base, you lose the eye, your enemy thinks you changed course to more important base, but you hit the less important base )?

It is a matter of experience and gut feeling. When it works, it is an amazing feeling, you just outsmarted your enemy, if not, blame your nans and gunners. Just kidding, try a different route or just try again.

Teleport Probe attack

There are two ways to do a TP attack. Either one bbr ripping in with supporting nans, in which case it's just like any old regular bomb run, or a swarm of bbrs ripping in. This section is written assuming a swarm, although some concepts are applicable to both.

As part of a swarm your comm will want max bbrs, minimum gunners so you can eject turrets to lower your mass (ammo weighs nothing). If you do take a gunner, try and stay in the middle of the pack so you don’t get targeted first. You can expect to either succeed or fail quite quickly, so 2 racks of missiles will be more than enough (unless your team is planning to conduct multiple attacks one after the other without redocking).

It's important to rip to the correct sector - sometimes your team will be dropping 'fake' tps as distractions for the enemy. Find out what the target is and which sector you need to get to.

Don’t give the enemy early warning - if they spot a huge swarm of bbrs on the minimap, they're gonna know that a TP run is going down and react accordingly. So pick a base to launch from well behind the front line and stay in base until the TP is actually deployed. If you've got time, launch in a scout and deprobe the sector.

As to timing, don't bother launching from base until you see the 'Teleport probe deployed in X sector' message. By the time the launch animation has finished the probe is just about activated. You do not need to go earlier, just so you can float in space outside the station. Make sure you are ripcording to a sector with an active probe in it, and not the 'closest sector' to a deployed probe.

Sometimes when you click on the minimap the autopilot will swing around to face the nearest aleph before starting the ripcord sequence. This can waste precious seconds and the TP may be destroyed before you rip. To avoid this click on the minimap before the TP activates, then abort the autopilot once it has ‘locked on’. If you launched when the probe was deployed you don't have much time to do this - be careful you don't abort a rip to the correct sector!

XRM

XRM haven’t been used since their damage got nerfed, but we’ll cover them here in the hope they make a resurgence. XRM are mounted by heavy bombers, and are usually used as part of a TP attack.

If your team has XRMs, you'll probably want to mount 1 rack of them hot, and SRMs in cargo. You should swap to SRMs about 1800m out from the base (even if you haven't used all the XRMs) so that your SRMs are armed when you reach 1300m and can be fired straight away.

This is because SRMs do a lot more damage, and hence it is better to be firing them ASAP rather than get one more XRM off. On the other hand, if the defenders are going to kill you before you change missiles you may as well fire that last XRM.

XRMs have a lifespan of 12.5 secs, and a default range of 3344m. At 30mps you can fire at 3700m. 50mps at almost 4k.

Aleph res

The aleph res is a weapon introduced by the original MS dev team to crack open teams which are turtling in a single sector. IMO it doesn’t work that well when wielded by bombers, but nevertheless we cover it here.

Aleph res are missiles used to destabilise an aleph. The aleph pulsates for several seconds (15s on most cores) then explodes, dealing high damage to everything around it. Most small and medium class ships will die, although capships can survive with only moderate damage. They are an excellent albeit expensive way of clearing caltrops and drones.

Aleph res 1 has a range of 1000m, res 2 2000m, and res 3 3000m.

I say they don’t work that well on bbrs because by the time the bbr has picked up speed and entered the aleph the enemy have already boosted back and are camping it again. So either you need fire it at max range and then coast closer while it pulses (I’ve run the numbers for res 1, it is difficult and still has a 10 second delay before you fly through) or you need to use it in conjunction with your teammates. Teamwork, huh? Who woulda thought.

Some suggestions:

• Fire an aleph res, then get friendly ints to boost through and prevent them forming a camp.
• Get sbs to sneak in while the camp is absent.
• Have two bbrs and use the first as a sacrifice to draw the enemy into range of the aleph res.

Ass bombing

Assault ships are a medium-class capital ship which act as large rip receivers. That means any other ship can rip to them if the ass has enough energy.

Ass bombing involves the ass ship creeping into the enemy sector, recharging, and then flying towards the enemy base. At an appropriate distance he will yell “Need bombers” (~no) and “Ripcording!” (~yr) so that by the time the bbr rips in both him and the new bbr will be in range. Then the bbr simply opens fire.

This obviously requires a very competent ass pilot to get the timing right, and considering how seldom shipyards are seen let alone ass ships, such pilots are few and far between.

Fig-bombing

Fighter bombing more closely resembles galving than ‘real’ bombing, and will be covered in the appropriate week.

Solo bombing

NEVER SOLO YOUR BOMBER UNLESS YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE DOING! Going without turrets or nan's is usually suicide. The only times you do this are:

1. You are clearing out a ref from your system or the system next to you. Refs will generally not be defended in time and there is no sense wasting a full team to take it down.
2. An enemy minor station is ridiculously close, and directly in front of, an aleph you can get to easily.
3. You are Bios and sneak bombing. This takes more skill than you currently have however, and should be reserved for later, after you’ve had practice at regular bombing.
   Very few pilots can pull this off. It involves hiding behind rocks and engaging your cloak at just the right time.

Other than that, always make sure you have a team with you

Technoflux

Technoflux don’t have missiles, instead their pilot’s main weapon is an energy cannon. This makes them excellent at defending themselves – a single hit from one of those will wipe out an unwary fighter pilot.

Unfortunately TF turrets require energy too, and an overzealous gunner can deplete the ship to the point that the pilot can’t fire. Your best bet here is to reload your gunners ammo, as the 5 second reprieve will give your energy time to charge.

As an added bonus, the crosshair that the pilot gets already factors in momentum, and thus will turn green as soon as your in range – you can skip the whole process of taking your current speed and multiply by 5 that was covered in section 2.5.5

On the other hand the gun takes about 2 secs to warm up, so you can fire it 2 secs before you get into range.

Rixian Unity

As with technoflux, rix use guns instead of missiles and thus can rely on the crosshair to tell them when they’re in range. Unlike the tf, the rixian AB weapon has a huge amount of spread, so you want to close in on the base to ensure all your shots are hitting.

Bios

The sexy, sexy bombers. With their faction low sig and ability to mount heavy cloak these babies excel at sneak bombing. Always always launch low sig. When you approach the enemy sector activate your cloak just before you enter an aleph. This way you will be fully cloaked as you enter and your energy will last as long as possible. If you have a long way to travel you can uncloak, let it recharge, and cloak again – disappearing right in front of the defenders!

Once your cloak is fully charged mount your shields – the heavy cloak is strong enough that you still won’t be eyed, and it gives it a few extra precious seconds to recharge.

Also note that Bios teams get gunships far more often than other factions. Gunship bombing is a very real option with Bios. (Recall that gunship bombing is a variation on int bombing (sec 7.3).) In this case you don't want players on your turrets, as they would be better off using the gunship's far more powerful skycap turrets. As such you will need one gunship to stay close to you for covering fire, while another one or two range ahead to clear alephs. Gunship runs require even more support, as each gunship needs at least one nan to be effective!

Bombing vs Bios

It's a pita. Every ship can cloak and even their figs can carry prox mines. Expect to have prox clouds appearing in front of you at every turn - so keep turning! Don't fly in a straight line towards their base, and stay on your toes looking out for disappearing scouts.

Remember also that all Bios techbases are advanced, and thus are stronger than normal.

Belters

Belter bombers are tanks - they have more hitpoints than other factions' bbrs even before the belter faction-wide buff! Belters have higher top speed than other factions and every nan escorting it has a booster to help the bomber get up to that high speed. The sight of a belter bomber and nan train barreling along at over 200mps is enough to bring a tear to the eye.

Belter bombers can mount light boost. Even if you can't squeeze a spare fuel canister in cargo, the small amount it comes loaded with can be a real help in a tight spot. It is best used after a good ram to maintain your high speed, or to avoid an enemy ram or prox drop.

Bombing vs. IC

Two things to note about IC bases:

Firstly, they're extra tough. Not only do their minor stations have heavy base armour class which means they take less damage from weapons, but all IC stations have 15% more hull and shield points (from the faction buff).

Secondly and more importantly, they have holes in their hitbox. As noted in 2.5.5 (Firing ze missile!), missiles always track to the dead centre of the base. In the case of the IC sup and IC exp there is no base at the centre of the base! If you fire from the wrong angle then the missile will pass straight through the gap.

• Expansion example (70 meg download)
• Supremacy example (120 meg download)
• No guarantee that links will still be active.

Final tips

You can target enemy bases that are in different sectors. If you do this then you can engage autopilot briefly after entering and your ship will swing around in the right direction. Much easier than looking in the HUD gutter.

Bombers have the ‘Small ship’ flag in ICE and so can dock at carriers for repairs and reloads.

After being rammed, hold on the thrust forward key to stop your ship from automatically using it's side thrusters to correct your vector to the center of the screen. Using side-thrusters = slowing down to normal top speed faster.

Keep an eye out for powerups near alephs you're heading for. If you mount your shields just before you fly through them you don't need to wait for it to charge.

Conclusion proper

I used to be scared of being a bbr pilot. In fact I didn't want to take ANY ship which required money (even buying rescue probes was anathema to me) because I didn't want the entire team's success riding on my performance.

But then, in certain games, everyone felt the same way as me. It got to the point that I thought "ffs, if no one else is gonna do it I guess I'll buy the bbr."

And then I found it wasn't scary at all, it was kinda fun. Sure I messed up occasionally and ruined the comm's plans, but I kept buying bbrs in games and that is how I've learnt everything I've said in this thread.

So, don't feel that you have to memorise everything I've said here, just start buying bbrs and have fun! This is a game after all.

Just read this as a refresher whenever you can, find if there is anything I do which you want to try out. Hell, post and tell me a trick or tactic that you've discovered!