Cadet II/Bomber

Bomber piloting

Well, it's base destruction week. By the end of it you should know both how to fly, and the strategies revolving around, bombers, heavy troop transports, and to a lesser extent frigates, cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships.

This lesson starts with the basic nuts and bolts of how to fly a bomber.

Introduction

So you've flown and killed ints. You can nan bombers. You can slaughter miners in your stealth fighters. You probably even got to galv once or twice. All of that helps you to win. But if the enemy is too stubborn to resign, you need to go further. You need to end the game the only way the game accepts -- destruction or capture of all the enemy bases. That means you need to learn to properly fly the ships capable of doing that.

You should have picked this up yourself by now, but let’s just say it again: Bombers are used for bombing enemy stations. Subtlety is not their strong point, and if the enemy have done their job right they’re going to know you’re coming. This cannot be understated – if you truly think you can bomb uneyed then you are truly relying on the other team’s incompetence. Straight-up bombing is difficult as the enemy will throw everything they have at you to save their station. However a smart bomber, that works with his teammates, can catch the enemy team unprepared and succeed.

There are situations where bombing is good and others where it is a waste of your time and more importantly a waste of time for all your support pilots. How to tell the difference between these situations is covered later.

When you pilot a bomber you have to be suicidal at times and you have to have the attitude to go for the throat at any chance you can. You have to plan your bomber campaigns to eventually hit the big targets and you always have a clock ticking above your head counting down to when their defence tech gets too strong. This is all a part of your game awareness. You need to have patience, but there should also be a sense of urgency.

Picking a target

Before you ask for a bomber, find a target for your run. Often, as a Cadet, the target will be picked for you by the commander.

Priorities

• Adv Tech base
• Tech base
• Garrison/Starbase
• Teleport receiver
• Op
• Ref

Let me explain the order:

1. An adv tech base is most important, because without it, the enemy wont have access to adv. tech. That fact will make your future bomb runs much easier. Also realise that if you destroy every station except their adv tech base, that is going to be one hell of a last nut to crack.
   Make the adv tech base your number one priority.
2. A tech base threat, because adv tech is just around the corner and there is some evil tech in the basic tech bases (Tac: hunter2, utl2; Exp: Mini2; Sup: Dumb2, Mine Pack1).
3. A Garrison/Starbase offers the basic tech for a team, but most of it will remain accessible to the enemy after the garrison blew. Garrisons/Starbases are also very tough and it takes a lot of AB-Missiles to blow, so your run is more likely to fail. That's why normally it has a low priority.
4. A teleport receiver is a huge threat, not so much for enemy pilots that can appear, but for enemy cons ripping to it and spreading throughout the map. Early game most factions cannot defend teles very well, as ints cannot rip and most factions do not have access to basic figs. If you have a tele and op in two different sectors, blow the tele first.
5. An op is a nice launching point for miner hunters and bombers. Blow it, if you cannot reach other targets.
6. Do NOT blow refs, unless you need that sector clear of eye. Refs are a huge magnet for enemy miners. Probe the sector and kill the miners.

Tip: Attack garrisons instead of techbases to stop the enemy spamming tech cons. Important if the enemy are belters or rolling in cash.

Purchasing the bomber

Obviously the next thing you have to do is get yourself a ship. As a Cadet you should only do this if your commander is asking for bomber pilots. That way you can rely on him to organise you nans and trail blazers too. Organising them yourself requires you to have a bit of a reputation.

Anyway, simply select the bomber in the F4 menu and hit “Buy Ship”. A few seconds later you should hear your commander go “Affirmative” and your credits will go up. If this doesn’t happen, try hitting “Buy Ship” again – he may have missed your first request.

Once you have the credits you need to hit “Buy Ship” one more time to actually change ships. You will notice the button changes colour to reflect this change.

Note Players can not board your turrets until you complete this step.

Loading the bomber

Tip: To save time select the bbr in F4, hit “Buy Ship” first thing, then immediately start choosing your loadout. Confirm your purchase of the ship as soon as you have credits, then finish your loadout while you wait for gunners to arrive.

The default loadout for bombers is not actually that bad, for a short run. The most important item, of course, are the ABs. Assuming AB1, you need:

• 2-3 for a refinery/teleport
• 3-4 for an outpost
• 5-6 for a techbase
• 7-8 for an adv techbase/garrison
• 10 for a starbase.

So the default loadout of one rack loaded + one in cargo will allow you to take out 2-3 minor stations, or 1 major station. As you can see, techbases can really take a pounding, and you’re going to need a high kb and missile damage bonuses (whether that be AB2/3, faction bonuses, or missile damage GA) if you want to take it down in a reasonable amount of time.

The remainder of your cargo space is up to you. 2 spare racks of ammo should be plenty for your gunners, though you can trim it to one if you need. You may want to put your shields and missiles in cargo to lower your signature. In fact I would recommend always doing this if possible, or at least always putting your missiles in cargo – that will cut 100% off your sig easy. There is no point flying around eyed if you can avoid it.

Launching the bomber

Press the launch button. Simple, right?

Wrong. Stop. Don’t launch.

The first thing you should check is F8 – are you in the right sector? Plenty of stations have lived because the bomber pilot launched in the wrong sector, and by the time he redocked and transferred the enemy team had mustered a defence.

The second thing you should check is F3 – is your base safe to launch from? Are there any enemy camping it? Are there any probes nearby that would eye you when you launch?

Now look at the enemy sector in F3. If you can approach from two different sectors, which aleph emerges closer to their base? Which one is straight in front of their red door – you want to avoid that one if possible. Can you get a better approach angle if you detour through an uncontested sector?

Finally, check F6 – are there any friendly pilots that are docked (their name is red)? You need nan support as a bomber pilot and you can’t get that if the entire team is out of base.

Flying the bomber

The bomber pilot is in charge of the bomb run, not the commander.

Think about that for a second. I realise you’re a Cadet and need your hand held, but this course is about becoming a better player and part of that is realising the commander is busy enough, without trying to micromanage your bomb team for you.

This means it's up to the bbr pilot to shout out that he needs turrets, that he wants nans, where he wants them, what the target is. This means calling out peoples names and saying "Oi, you! Get in a nan!", not just spamming `nu and typing in CAPS (although that does work).

Once you have a team together, you have to give it orders and keep it together. It's up to you to choose scouts to go ahead and look for enemy probes and peek through alephs. Once again, name pilots specifically or you will get half the nan-train wandering off when only one is needed.

You need to decide whether to go through a camped aleph, or retreat, or rip out and hit somewhere different. Sure, the commander has a better view of what is on the other side of the aleph - but so does that scout you just sent to peek through. Listen to your intel, don't sit there trying to get the comms attention to make a decision for you. If you decide against going in, tell your comm - ask if he wants you back in base, ripping to a different target, or to go in regardless.

You need to make sure nans nan each other, and that you have someone acting 'sweeper' to pu pods and, once they are picked up, you need to make sure they come back.

Whenever you change targets or start a new bomb run, you need to inform your team. Don't leave your nans stranded wondering where you ripped to.

General flying tips

As I said before, you should be flying around with shields and missiles unmounted to lower your signature. “But if I unmount my shield it takes 90 seconds to charge!” I hear you complain. So what? The shield is not protecting you. It’ll evaporate in about 2 seconds of sustained fire. Even your hull isn’t protecting you – it’ll evaporate in about 3 seconds. Your nans are what protect you, and being uneyed is what keeps you from being shot at.

Always get one scout to fly ahead to spot probes. Even if they can’t find it to kill it, at least you will have some idea at what point you will be eyed. In F3, right-click-and-drag in order to go above / below the grid with a waypoint. Most people stay damn close to the grid, both flying and probing, and you can avoid a lot of attention by flying up high or down low.

Never fly with autopilot on! Scouts will ram you from behind to increase your speed, but autopilot will attempt to dodge such collisions, lowering your average speed.

Never allow your scouts to ram you through an unscouted aleph! Swear at them, start braking, shoot at them – whatever it takes to make one of them peep through and check it’s clear.

If you are camping an aleph with your bomber don’t get too close to it, you don’t want to get rushed by the enemy team. The further away you sit the more time you give your turrets to fire, and the more time you have to start ripping out!

If you are making an uneyed run and an enemy bomber is spotted in the adjacent sector, hang about 700 from the aleph and give him a very nasty surprise when he pops through. After the bomber is podded go through and hit them as hard as you can while they are all podded.

If you’re eyed and unable to lose it (“Big eye”) then mount your shields and let them charge. Don’t bother with your Abs though – they’re only useful when you’re near the enemy base. (Although don’t forget to mount them at all! About 2k out is the latest you want to mount them.)

Clearing camps

Whether to go into a camped aleph is always a judgement call. It depends on how long you’ve been eyed, whether you “know” enemy pilots are busy, what techpath they are following. Being eyed for 1 minute vs hvy ints that have been base sitting is not going to end well. Being eyed 5 secs vs hvy ints which are all on the other side of the map killing your miners is going to be a better bet.

Make sure your nans go in with you. Often I’ve seen nans show up a few seconds after the bbr comes through. Unfortunately this is a few seconds after I killed the bbr. Ideally nans should be hitting the aleph at the same time as the nose of your bomber, meaning they need to enter beside you, not behind you.

If you know, or think, the aleph is going to be proxed then go in slow since mines do damage based on speed. I heard that if you can stay under 20mps then mines does no damage whatsoever (although your health will still flash). Even if this isn’t true it’s still a nice speed to aim for as the damage done will be negligible. Don't worry about damage to your shields - if you have nans on their toes they'll keep you at maximum hull and that's all that matters.

The moment your hull starts to go down significantly you need to stop and wait for your nans to get a bead on you.

If the aleph is not mined, then get a run-up and hit it at a decent speed. Make sure you hit the aleph dead centre, since being off causes your ship to rotate on exit, making your turrets' job a lot harder. (This rotation effect happens to all ships, its just harder to get rid of on more massive ships due to their low agility. I've seen Capships fly over 3k and still be rotating).

If the aleph is towered but not mined, then you have an option. You can either go in and halt to give your turrets a stable platform to shoot the tower, or you can go in full speed to avoid campers, and try and get out of its range asap. Either way, you'll want to familiarise yourself with the 'Attack towers' VC (`av iirc).

Uncertainty in action

Whatever happens, do not allow your run to stall in a state of indecision. Even a small run with just 2 turrets and 2 nans means 5 inactive players. That's bad. That's 5 extra players the enemy have, and any minute now one of them is going to blunder into your sector in a scout, or all 5 of them are going to rush you in ints.

Either abort it, or go. Saying stuff like "Get me more nans here NOW or I'm aborting" would probably be justified.

I am sure you have seen many bombers camp an aleph for no purpose other than they had an eye. This is stupidity. Yes it ties up some of their team to guard it, but more times than I care to name an enemy team was caught flat footed and had no defenders for at least a minute, but the bomber sat and camped and let a defence gather at the aleph. Even worse, the defenders will often rush and kill an enemy bomber that is hanging around too close to the aleph so that they can stop wasting time defending against it.

The only time you want to do hang around after being eyed is as a distraction for something else, or you are defending against their counter bomb. Otherwise hit the aleph before a bigger camp forms, or rip out and find a different path while they are mustering a camp. It takes awhile for them to get a scout in there and check you are not there and in that time you could be popping into another area unexpected.

Within the enemy sector

Now, when making your run on the enemy target do not attempt to fire at the fighters coming in. Do not vector lock and turn around. Do not load hunters on your bomber. When you bomb, ignore the fighters, ints, stealths, urgent phone calls, whatever. When you bomb, bomb. Your focus should be on three things.

1. Am I headed toward the enemy base as fast as I can?
2. Am I throwing out chaff when my missile lock alarm goes off?
3. Is there a scout in the area?

That’s right, the only ship we pay attention to in this situation is a scout. A skilled scout pilot will drop minefields in your way and if you plow through them at full tilt you (and your nans) are meat. If you see a scout crossing the path ahead of you change which direction your flying. Not enough that you’re no longer heading towards the base, but enough that you (and your trailing cloud of nans!) will avoid it. This way you maintain forward momentum. If it looks like you will clip the edge hit those side thrusters for a burst away from the edge. We don’t like side thrusters as they slow down your forward momentum greatly, but better to avoid mines than not.

To sum it up, aim slightly off the centre of the base so you can dodge most of the mines. Turn back on course when you are close.

Scouts are dangerous, but ints trying to ram you can also be a serious problem. The damage isn’t so much of a problem, but you might be knocked out of your cloud of nans and become a sitting duck. Even worse, every ram you take is another few seconds you aren’t moving towards the enemy station, giving the enemy more time to launch defenders.

As with scouts, changing directions and strafing are your best bets. Better yet, learn the shape of the bbr you are flying and tilt the craft so they can only land a glancing blow upon you.

Finally, do not abort runs midway unless you are 6k or more from a base and out pop 8 hvy ints. If you do abort, don’t forget to yell “Retreat!” (~l8) and “Ripcording!” (~yr).

Firing ze missiles!

You want to fire your ABs at maximum range. Since missiles always launch with the momentum of the ship that fired them, the faster you’re going the further away you can fire them!

SRM ABs have a lifetime of 5 seconds. Thus, if you’re doing 50 metres per second they will travel an extra 250m (50x5). If you’re doing 80 mps, they’ll get an extra 400m. So to figure out your max range for ABs ‘simply’ take your current speed, multiply by 5, add 1000, and you’re golden.

Or if, like me, you’re bad at your five times table, multiply by ten and then halve it. Or simpler yet just remember it’s 1300m for a normal bbr moving at max speed, and forget about trying to be an above-average bbr pilot . Don’t fire just after being rammed sideways, as your missiles have bad tracking and will probably be unable to compensate.

Once you're in range don’t continue flying towards the base at full tilt – you don’t want to kiss it to death. Use your side strafe keys to skim around the base so you’re not a stationary target. Move away from the enemy’s red door if possible.

Tip: If for some reason you need to reload missiles without interrupting your gunners firing, either unmount-remount the missiles (requires spare slot in cargo), or fire your gatts while hitting reload.

Tip: Missiles always track to the dead centre of the base.

Keep up the pressure

If you have blown up an enemy op or tele and you see that the majority of their team is in pods, keep going and put the hurt on. On the other hand, remember you only have a limited number of missiles. Let us say you have 8 AB left over blowing an op. They are all in pods. You decide to press the advantage and follow the pod train to their tech base. About 3K from you is their adv tac. 2.1k (and to the side) is their tele, which their pods are heading to to get a pickup. You do not have enough missiles to take down both the tp and the base. What do you do?

You skip the tp and press into the base is what you do. So it gets the pods? By the time they launch you will be in killing range of the tac. It will take them too much time to gun down your nans and then you. Now perhaps you have AB3 and could maybe get both, but it is still better to be over kill a techbase than get a tele and underkill the tac. Bypass that tele and blow the hell out of the tech base.

Afterwards, if you have spare missiles and are not in immediate danger of death, then take the tp out. I will stress this again and again. Bombing is mostly being AWARE. Situational awareness and the ability to tell what the other team is doing based on their position on the mini map will make all the different between a pod train and a dead base.