Cadet II/Stealth fighter

Stealth fighter

Refresher The academy entry for stealth fighters.

The stealth fighter is primarily designed for stealth assaults on the enemy's economy, although it can be used in a combatant role. Its stealth comes from a low base sig, a cloaking device, and a selection of weapons with low sigs.

Stealth fighters have low health, poor agility, and a long ripcord time which means they rely on remaining hidden to survive. Going toe-to-toe with an enemy ship is a poor choice, whereas sneaking around with missiles and shield unmounted is a good choice. These attributes make the stealth fighter poor at defense and if your commander goes Tac, then you need to maintain a good probe net and/or active pilots in enemy sectors in order to spot incoming threats.

Tip: In fact, most of the time you don't need to carry a shield at all because by the time it is mounted and even 10% charged, you will probably want to take it off to hide again.

What a sf is good at, is decimating the enemy's economy. They can sneak behind enemy lines, wait until the enemy is distracted, and then kill their miners. They are good because their main weapon is the Utility Cannon does a whopping 200% damage to ships with Utility-class armour, which happens to be all cons, miners, carriers, and drones.

Allegiance is an economy game - miners bring in the money, money buys the tech, team uses bought tech to win the game (most of the time at least). When your commander buys a Tac he wants you to kill enemy miners as quickly as possible to cripple the enemy team. Then your focus is killing any new miners/cons before they have a chance to earn their money back, while at the same time making sure your own miners don't die and your bases don't get bombed.

Note If you successfully kill all the enemy miners, then keeping your own stuff alive can become problematic as the enemy now have 0% of their pilots needed on defence.

Flying a stealth fighter

Ship load out

Utility cannons devastate utility hull (not shields though, use your missiles to take down shields) and suck vs everything else. Sniper cannons are average vs anything except utility hull. Recall that all constructors, miners, tower drones, carriers - basically everything AI - has utility class hull.

As mentioned earlier, the small shield isn't generally worth taking. Leave your missile rack and shield slot empty, fill up your cargo with Hunters, and you're good to go. This will allow you to launch with the lowest possible sig**. This is NOT the best loadout for EVERY situation, but it's the most ubiquitous.

Tip: **If you have a cloak activated when you dock, it will still be activate when you next launch.

If the enemy don't have any miners or cons then you'll probably want to take snipers. If they have cap ships you'll probably want to take Killers (which function a lot like dumbfires). If you're trying to kill a miner which is defended you'll have to work with other teammates. Either take snipers and concentrate on taking out the escort, or utils and wait until the escort is dead/distracted before attacking.

Cloaking tips

Unless you're fully teched out, managing your energy reserves is important if you want to hide when you need to, and attack when you want to.

• If you want to remain unseen as you fly around the map, you should cloak whenever you enter an aleph or fly within 2k of an enemy base.
• Your stealth fighter has a sig of about 50% when it's uncloaked and missiles unmounted. You can get fairly close to the enemy, especially if you're in their rear arc.
  • Minor bases and techbases have a scan range of 2400m (you can get to almost 1200m).
  • Adv techbases have a scan range of 3600m (you can get to 1800m).
  • Garrison/Starbase has a scan range of 3600m/4000m respectively (1800/2000).
  • Scouts and miners have a scan range of 2400m (1200).
• You should always cloak before loading missiles. Preferably you wait until the cloak is fully engaged before loading the missiles, because they cause a sudden spike in your sig.
• If you are eyed and are unlikely to lose eye, then uncloak and save your energy for your weapons.
• When you are camping on defense, you should remain uncloaked until just before the enemy enter the sector (i.e. cloak at the same time someone yells "Drop!").
• If you're attacking, then uncloak before firing your main weapons because they will drain your energy quickly.
• If an enemy is flying straight at you then unmount missiles, cloak, and dodge to avoid getting podded.

Tip: Rebind "Swap missiles" to a more convenient key so that you can do this quickly.

Combat tips

The stealth fighter is a long range combatant. This is reinforced by its terrible torque and turn rates which make it hard for a sf pilot to keep a nearby ship in its sights. If you try to fly it like an int (like so many voobs do) you will be in a pod before you know it.

You want to lob a few missiles at your opponent to soften them up. Then, while they're blundering around trying to figure out where you are, attack them from the side or rear. Do not head directly at them while you're softening them up; use your side thrusters to move around them. Remember that if you spend a long time cloaked trying to soften them up, then you won't have enough energy to finish them off with your guns.

Example of a ship outrunning a missile, even though it was fired when it was in range

Ints and figs can and will use their boosters to outrun your missiles. Just because you have 100% lock and the int is in range, doesn't mean the missile is going to hit! Keep a close eye on the distance between you, your speed, and their speed (for example if they're already 1500m away, doing 100mps more than you, and accelerating away, then chances are your missile won't have enough oomph to catch up).

Don't be afraid to abort your attack and try again. It is better to unmount missiles and hide than try to get one more missile off at the same time as they pod you. After all, the sf is not designed for taking down enemy ships but for destroying the enemy's miners.

Note Do not expect to get to the top of the kill board when flying a stealth fighter.

Remember, the stealth fighters are designed to kill miners and constructors. Usually the only pilots you should attack are ones defending miners/cons.

Stealth Fighters against Fighters

Early game the fig is an easy opponent. Relatively poor scan range, large model, and slow. As the game progresses their speed and scan range will increase making them a tougher opponent. Use your side thrust keys to avoid getting hit by dumbfires, stay out of their gatt range and you should be good.

Stealth Fighters against Interceptors

Interceptors have the worst scan range in the game but if they spot you they are the fastest to close with you. Hindering you even further is the pulse probe they can carry, which spells doom for any sf that can't run quickly. A smart int will either use his booster to ignore you and kill what you are defending, or to close with you before pulse probing you out.

This is where mastering your ability to unmount missiles and cloak and change direction to avoid direction is sorely tested. Or your ability to time your missile launches so they will actually hit - just because hunter has better tracking, agility and range than a dumbfire doesn't mean it's any better at hitting the enemy! Time your shots so they will actually hit, for instance when they are reloading fuel, or trying to change direction to chase your miner.

Do not use your guns to finish him off until the last minute, as he will spot you and kill you that much quicker.

Stealth Fighters against Stealth Fighters

This is a cat and mouse game, with the first person being eyed dieing. Hope that your cloak lasts longer, you are pointing towards them so that your missiles lock faster, and your countermeasures work (for a change).

Tip: Fire your missile before you get full lock because 9 times out of 10 enemy sf will cloak before you can get full lock.

Stealth Fighters against Scouts

Think of a scout as a crappier fighter, but which is more likely to see you. This means that sometimes you don't have the option of hiding and running but will be forced to kill the scout - which should be an easy matter with their low hull.

Because a sf has a poor turn rate any enemy that gets in your rear arc poses a serious problem. If a scout does start chasing you then use your high speed while your energy recharges, then cloak and hope to lose eye long enough to throw him off. If the scout is moving faster than you and closing the distance, that probably won't work so you're better off spinning around and lobbing hunters in his face before he gets any closer.

Take care if you see heavy scouts. They don't only have a bigger scanrange(3000m instead of 2400m), they often have gunnners which can easily shoot you down. (check f6 to see if they have gunners.)

Factions

Most factions sf function pretty much the same, but Rix and TF are different enough to get their own section here.

Rixian Unity

Rixian Unity sf use combat drones instead of missiles. Combat drones work unlike anything else in the game.

• They are deployed like a mini-tower.
• They only shoot what you had targeted when you dropped them.
  • This means you need to specifically target the guy you want to die.
• They take 4 seconds to activate.
  • This means the guy you want to die still has to be in range 4s later.
• It only shoots at what is in its own scan range.
• This means if it has a scan range of 800m it will only shoot a scout with 75% sig at 600m - even if you're eying the scout yourself!

Note Combat drones scan range always match their weapon range (excluding Expansion-based range upgrades).

Your approach for flying a rix sf is to figure out where the enemy is heading, cut it off, and drop CD alongside its path - all without being seen. Ideally they'll be flying along blissfully unaware of you until your CD starts blasting them from the side. And even if they turn around to attack the CD, you've already moved on, preparing to attack from a different angle.

Rix sf can also carry probes and prox mines due to the way the Allegiance game engine is set up. This makes the rix sf good for probing enemy sectors unnoticed, or dropping stealthily dropping prox in a bomb run's path. When a sf tac team is bombed it is very important for one sf to load up on prox and camp the aleph.

Technoflux

Technoflux get SRP Killers instead of missiles. These things are extremely fast rockets.

• They launch in the direction you are pointing at a speed of 500mps.
• They also gain your ships current momentum (but this is normally negligible compared to 500mps).
• They have zero tracking.

Aiming with these killers is difficult, the best advice is to think of them as a gun with a different bullet speed. Compare them to the utility cannon, whose bullets have a speed of 1000mps. Thus utility bullets reach your target twice as fast so therefore, to hit with a killer, you need to lead your target by twice as much. Similarly, sniper cannon bullets travel at 1500mps so you need to aim 3x further in front.

This "aim twice as far ahead" means you will be constantly swinging your nose back and forth if you're trying to hit with both main guns and the SRP, so instead decide which one is the best for the job (based on enemy armour class, distance, etc) then concentrate on hitting with that one.

The tf sf can deploy plasgens, probes and beacons (tf rescue probes). Plasgens shoot at the nearest enemy ship in range.