Cadet PRS Tactical Defence

Stealth Fighters

These things will kill your miners, and you will need at least two people per miner. Please note the words there: at least, since many times this will be wildly insufficient. As for what the makeup should be, probably one int/fig per miner is sufficient, and the rest should be in nans. Figs should carry quickfires if possible, ints should carry 4 racks of fuel instead of 3, and I'll explain why in a bit.

Nans, on the other hand, should bring three-ish racks of countermeasures (including the ones in hull) as well as some quickfires, and a nan. See, stealthfighters are literally the ONLY ship with guns that can outdamage a nan2... and even then it's not by much. What this means is that as SOON as that shield drops to 0 you need to start nanning the miner, and pray that either 1) no more SFs show up, 2) the int/fig can kill them quickly, and 3) the sf runs out of energy soon. Otherwise you'll have one dead miner.

If you're the solo nan on a miner and two or more SFs attack the miner (and they should be attacking the miner, not you) then there isn't really anything you can do: that miner's toast unless your fig is REALLY good. Still, nan that sucker up and hope for the best!

The only real sure way to keep your miners safe vs SFs is to camp the aleph if none have gotten in yet. Most of the vets in this community will talk your ear off about how you need to camp the aleph, but... I refuse to do this if that means taking the minimum of one int, one nan off the miner. See, what if you're all busy camping the aleph, but whoops! There's Nuke@SysX who was hiding in the sector, and now he's hitting the miner that no one (or just a nan) is sitting on. It is not only possible but highly likely that you just killed a miner by camping alephs when there was already an SF in the sector. If you can be 100% sure there are no SFs in the sector, i.e. their tac just went up a minute ago and you just now entered a sector, then camping is a really good idea. Otherwise, it's more important to stick on your miners.

If you're ever alone on miner defense against SFs, it really doesn't matter what you pick the miner is going to die, and if your commander isn't very bright you will probably be booted. I know I'd never boot the solo D against SFs no matter how hard I thought he "failed." You can't defend a miner against SFs by yourself, no matter what ship you're in. If you're lucky and aim well, you can defend one miner against one sf using an int (maybe a fig), but try not to be alone. If you find yourself alone, all-caps and spam `dm + "DEFEND MINERS!" should probably fix that.

As for the unusual int/fig loadout: See, stealthfighters aren't very tough, but they tend to hit things from far away. That's why the extra fuel: it helps you boost around more, and you don't need that much minigun fire to down a shieldless SF. Quickfires over dumbfires (which are typically used everywhere else) because a quickfire a) locks on quickly and b) loads quickly. With a dumbfire you have to take time to line up your shots, but with quickfires you can just open up immediately and take down most, if not all, of their hull.

If you have pulse probes, your nan scout should be full of pulse probes, and nothing else. Carry 2 pulse probes, 2 fuel packs, and 2 ammo on your interceptor, and don't fly figs. Scouts should drop pulse probes like once every thirty seconds or so after they get eyed. It's not necessary to constantly drop them until the miner is eyed.

Also, one other thing: if there is a base in the same sector or you are IC and your miners rip, as soon as you see the first SF (and I don't mean get eye, that could just be a low-sig scout and we don't want bouncing to be that easy) coming you should be getting that miner out of there. If you have to mine this sector and there are no dockable bases, stick about or dock it at the ref. There's a fine line between whether or not you should distrupt the mining to get out of the sector. I mean, mostly you want to keep the miner alive, but the miner's no use at all if all you're doing is walking it from sector to sector.

Finally, if your last scout is podded or last int is podded, get that miner out of there! If that miner's hull gets hit and there are only two on miner defense, get that miner out of there! If you have like three nans and an int though, don't worry you guys will be able to handle anything short of a five person linked run... which is an insanely rare feat. Just keep mining.

Stealth Bombers

Stealth Bombers are a weird animal. See, you aren't going to stop good stealthbomber pilots, not even with the vaunted heavy scouts and pulse probes combo. It's very possible to stealth bomb against this, and the best defense is to caltrop and tower every aleph. If you went exp, however, there are a couple of useful things you can do vs stealth bombers.

The first you can do is scream at your com to buy you pulse probes, if he hasn't already. If the enemy is at stealth bombers and you are not also stealth bombing (or if they do not have an exp) you really will need pulse probes if you are expansion. Even if you're busy trying to HTT, you're better off getting pulse probes and switching gears (trying con pushes) than trying to out HTT a team with stealth bombers.

The second thing you can do is launch in a scout/adv scout/heavy scout with these pulse probes. If you are at heavy scouts, try to have a turret on board. AC1 hits pretty hard, and has a 1k range, and needless to say, hitting stealth bombers from far away is really what's going to make a difference. Don't ask for adv scouts or heavy scouts though, because really they aren't that much better at defending vs sb runs. Look for stealth bombers by deciding where you'd go if you were a stealthbomber, and dropping pulse probes around there. A pulse probe as 5000m scan radius, and a stealthbomber has a 1 sig (1.2 for belters), so you'll see any of them within 5000m (6000m for belters) of wherever you drop the pulse probe. If you see one, fly towards it occasionally dropping another pulse probe to continue to see it.

The third thing you can do is sit in an interceptor right outside your techbase. Sometimes (more often against rix) you can pod the SBs before they get a chance to fire two missiles (sometimes before one missile!) which can make a huge difference. This is not the most effective thing you can do since you'll likely only prevent one missile from hitting your base, and if they went with four they'll still easily kill it, but if they made some kind of mistake and decided to SB only using two or three people, you have a chance at saving the techbase like this.

Against rix this option is actually not half bad, since you can kill the station drones fairly easily before they have a chance to activate. Plus dropping a pulse probe (you have them, right?) will let you see the stealth bomber sitting right outside your techbase's scan range.

Some people will ask you to camp alephs. This is only realistic in larger games, and for the most part if you have any bit of econ at all your com should be using caltrops and towers instead so they can free you up for doing other things, like attacking back. Stealth bombers are like stealth fighters: the difference between tower/caltrop and prox scout/fig is whether the sf is dead in 4 seconds or 3 seconds.

Other than that, there are no real "tricks" to surviving an SB attack. Good luck, you'll need it.

Summary

Summary (v SFs):

• More fuel, less ammo
• Quickfires
• AT LEAST one nan and one fig/int per miner
• Consider camping alephs if you have the manpower
• Nan the miner immediately
• Drop pulse probes occasionally *after* being eyed
• Run the miner if it looks like you can't D it

Summary (v SBs):

• Infamous prayer defense
• Get PPs
• Drop PPs
• Towers/caltrops/camping