Cadet II/HTT

HTT piloting

EMP Missile

Capturing bases is often harder than bombing because not only do you have to fire EMP missiles at the enemy base, you actually have to dock while its shields are down. Closing the distance gap between the point where you become eyed and the green door requires much more than just piloting talent, this lesson will explore the different skills you need to bring along to improve your chances for a successful HTT run.

Introduction

Bombing seems trivial when compared to how hard capturing bases is. After all, when you bomb, you have the support of your entire team (ideally) and usually bomb runs are conducted when one or both teams only have regular/enhanced tech to defend with. By comparison, HTT, being an end game research, you often have to contend with much improved late-game tech (Mk3) that makes it even easier for the enemy to find (increased detection range, ie. adv scouts) and kill you (improved damage/better ships). Capturing bases is not for the faint of heart, it can be one of the most thrilling missions you can carry out in Allegiance... you can single handedly turn the tide of the battle.

Capturing bases with an HTT, at its most basic level consists of two things:

• firing EMP at a base until the shields are completely down
• docking at the green door while shields are down (they will regenerate over time)

What makes this task hard are all the other important factors that you need to consider to ensure the success of your HTT run.

Picking a Target

While capturing enemy tech bases can be crippling to the enemy, sometimes it is better to go for the easier targets (outposts) to increase the number of sectors you can launch from to attack theirs. Ask the commander, but generally speaking, assuming all targets are equally easy to capture, your priority list will closely resemble a bomber's checklist on how to pick a target, though you obviously won't be able to capture teleport receivers or refineries with your HTT since you need a green door to dock into.

Ask yourself:

• are there any enemy tech bases with green doors facing alephs that you can get to uneyed?
  • a quick look through the minimap will let you determine whether any of these green doors are near your alephs, allowing you to sneak close to the base completely uneyed until the last moment, when you pop through the aleph.
• if you intend to enter a sector with an enemy tech base, are there other bases (teleport receivers, refineries) which will eye you on entry?
  • consider entering from a different sector
  • if no other options exists, consider an eyed HTT run, with full support from your team.

Purchasing the HTT

An HTT costs twice as much as a bomber so you want to make smart decisions with the faith/investment that your commander has placed on you. Even before HTT research becomes available, you should already have been probing and deprobing various routes that you might take to capture enemy bases. This exercise will give you a feel for detection ranges of the bases you intend to capture when you approximate your HTT's signature as closely as you can with your scout's loadout (try no shields + dumbfires ARMED).

Loading the HTT

If you want to live on the edge, take one rack of EMP missiles and your medium shields (both in cargo). A safer loadout would be to take an extra rack of EMP missiles, in case your EMP missiles manage to miss the base (typically only 2 missiles needed to fully bring down the shields of any base). Having this extra rack, while optional, will also increase your mass and thus lower your acceleration which may be crucial if you were rammed head on by the defense and lost all your forward momentum. Having extra countermeasures really won't make a huge difference unless you are facing stealth fighters and even then your survival will mostly depend on your nans.

Launching the HTT

The success or failure of your HTT run largely depends on your ability to be stealthy; so before you launch, double check that you do not have shields/missiles loaded AND that you won't be eyed on launch. If you can't trust your teamates, just launch a fig/int yourself and boost right back into base to check for eye. Take one last look at the sector you are about to enter and check to see if all your probes are still intact... if not, a scout may be in the sector actively deprobing and you might consider an alternate base to capture instead. If you can convince a teamate to fly ahead to look for uneyed probes, do so, as that should keep you from getting eyed by some random probe/scout. If you are going alone, avoid direct paths between alephs since these areas are likely to contain probes.

Flying the HTT

By now you should have entered their sector without eye. If you did get eyed, there's a good chance that they will send scouts after you so just start ripping out (rip time = 20 s) and try a different sector instead. Be patient and fly along the outskirts of the sector where there is the least chance of encountering enemy ships/probes until you have a direct line of sight to the green door of their base. It does not need to be on the plane, in fact, it's better if you can get to the green door at an angle off the plane.

F3 and zoom

As you navigate your HTT to avoid eye, use F3 (Command_view) to judge distances between objects of interest. More importantly, target the enemy base and zoom in to make sure you are facing their green door. This table[1] will give you help you figure out the predetermined orientation of each base's green and red doors.

Waiting for the right time to strike

Hold position 5-6k away from the base to stay uneyed, minimize your ability to eye them by pointing your ship directly away from their base and look at the minimap for signs of possible distractions. This is where your situational awareness comes into play.

• is there an upcoming con push into a crucial enemy sector?
• is there a bomb run in progress?

Your ability to communicate with your team will allow you to make the best of your surprise factor. The more enemy pilots are in disarray, attempting to defend multiple targets at the same time or if they are all out of position galving a base in a different sector, the fewer defenders will be available to launch from the base you are intending to capture. Better yet, coordinate with another teammate to capture a different target and you might end up with two stolen bases.

Using rocks to mask your approach.

Unless the asteroid is 1k-1.5k in front of their green door, don't bother. Maneuvering around a rock will cause you to slow down and you need speed, lots of it.

Bring at least one scout nan/pusher

Having a good pusher able to get your speed to a consistent 100 m/s means you will get to the green door that much faster after you get eyed. Even higher speeds are possible given the right conditions (Belters/GigaCorp/Dreghklar_Empire due to their faction specific speed perks) and having an Interceptor pusher. The flip side of this is having too many people supporting you. Getting in position is a time consuming task so often, you will want to tell everyone that you won't need their help until you are in position. This way, half your team won't be held up on this run when they could be doing other useful things like probing. Additionally, it is much harder to coordinate a group of pilots than just one or two. Bad things happen when you have too many pilots involved... some might forget to unload missiles/shields, others might reveal their location by ejecting cargo, or worse, an eyed teamate could fly directly to you, revealing the vector to give away your location.

Know when you will be eyed

The better you are at estimating when you are eyed, the more effective you will be at timing your runs so that they occur after their defense has launched elsewhere. If you start your run too far away or you misjudge your timing, the defense will have dealt with the distraction and be back in base ready to defend.

Making your final approach

As you speed closer towards the green door, keep a close watch on your distance readout on your HUD. If you are BIOS, cloak at the last possible moment before detection, wait for your signature to reach its lowest possible level, and then load your shields and missiles. Other factions using EMP missiles, you can raise your shields and load your missiles as soon as you get eye.

Fly as straight as you can, only making very minimal corrections if you absolutely must. You may turn slightly to avoid a direct head-on collision with a defender that can send your HTT flying backwards or you may try to dodge well placed proximity mines but remember, every adjustment you make will slow you down. It may be useful to learn how to dock on the first with different types of bases. Some are more challenging than others... you don't want to get caught bouncing off the green door multiple times after having wasted all your EMP missiles.

Firing EMP Missiles

For the factions that use EMP Missiles, you will get 3 missiles/rack. As mentioned previously you should either bring one or two racks... bringing more will just slow your acceleration unecessarily and increases your chances of failure. Some care should be taken when you fire these missiles because having to reload may be a very costly mistake. Two missiles ought to bring down all the shields, hold on to the last missile of the rack and fire it [i]just[/i] before you enter to be absolutely sure. Focus is the key, don't target your nans or the enemies boosting at you or the wrong base... wait for lock and fire away.

Planning ahead

If you were successful in capturing a base and there is no danger of a recapture by the enemy, check if there are any teleport receivers near your new base that you may need to camp and kill before the enemy rips in a bomb run. Additionally, if you fully planned out your HTT run, you would have also taken into account your next target to capture. By taking advantage of the confusion created by the base capture and perhaps the fact that a few defenders are still floating home in pods, you can very realistically relaunch your HTT immediately to capture yet another base. Timing is everything, so encourage your teammates to stop dming and support your new run. Executed perfectly, you can hop from sector to sector, capturing all enemy bases in rapid succession.

Defending against HTT

• with Supremacy tech
  • use advanced/heavy scouts
  • use probe 2/3 to probe spam alephs and possible HTT routes
  • get both scan range GA
  • maximize the effectiveness of your defenders (gat3/df3)

• with Expansion tech
  • use pulse probes
  • maximize the effectiveness of your defenders (mini3)

• with Tactical tech
  • place skycap towers on your green doors

• Camping your own base
  • don't wait for (HTT detected) to launch, sit outside your green door, the launch sequence wastes a precious few seconds
  • spam PPs periodically to keep HTTs at bay

• if preventing the capture is not possible (ie. most of the team is away on bomb run and the incoming HTT is accompanied by multiple nans and interceptor escorts)
  • buy a bbr to deny them the base they have just captured (you will auto-launch as soon as they capture the base)
  • prepare an HTT yourself, if available, to recapture the base (see next section).
  • if neither option is available, switch to another base to prevent auto-launching and getting podded by the enemy

Recapturing a base

• Make sure this is not your last base, otherwise this isn't going to work.
• Launch your HTT and position yourself in front of the green door, BEFORE the base is captured. Launch with both missiles and shields loaded (since you'll be eyed anyway) and follow the enemy HTT into the green door, letting them go in [b]first[/b].
• Timing is important, if you launch too early, the enemy will realize that you intend to recap and will focus their attention on you. Launching too late will allow the enemy to launch more defense from their newly acquired base to prevent you from recapping.

Anti-HTT probing

• probe all alephs and be ready to reprobe alephs as soon as they are deprobed.
• probe your green door starting from 1-1.5k away (any closer is useless since your base will definitely eye the HTT anyway) in a cone pattern to cover a wide region around your green door to spot the HTT ahead of time.
• probe rocks that may be used to mask the approach of an HTT (better yet, remove the rocks by galving / bombing)

Defensive HTT ramming

• The HTT may weave in and out of prox fields, but it has an ultimate destination: the green door. The HTT pilot may be less likely to try to dodge you if they are < 1k away from the green door as they are entirely focused on firing EMP missiles and docking. A good last second ram, especially while they are inside a prox field will severely damage an HTT, buying a few additional seconds for your team to launch additional defense.
• a head-on collision with enough speed will stop an HTT in its tracks, maybe even send it flying backwards momentarily, but the slim profile of most HTTs makes this a tough task that can set you back even more if you miss and overboost past the enemy.

Faction Specials

Some HTTs are different. The Omicron Hive HTT has a turret, but it is usually useless because you when you have HTTs you should also have heavy ints which are stronger. Technoflux HTTs mount an EMP-gun which works the same way like the missiles. But there are a few faction-specific HTTs that deserve special mention:

Bios HTTs

Bios troop transport

Bios HTTs are able to single handedly capture outposts (no nans/pushers needed). With heavy cloak 2 and sig2 GA, you should only be eyed < 900 from their green door. You can achieve this by making sure you attain maximum velocity by starting your run from at least 5k away. Then you need to know exactly at which distance you will be eyed and cloak [i]just[/i] before being detected (somewhere between 2.2k to 2.3k for outposts). Your heavy cloak will give you a few more seconds to get closer to the green door undetected even as you mount your shields and EMP missiles.

Rixian HTTs

Rixian troop transport

Rixian HTTs don't mount emp-missiles. They mount an Anti-Base Gun and do half the damage of a Bomber. Usually you use this for getting the shield down but it is also possible to kill bases. It is a good tool to remove teleport receivers from the map, but you can also kill outposts if you accidentally fire on it for too long before docking.

Gataran AP-HTTs

Ga'Taran troop transport

GT can get a special type of HTT, called Armour-Plated HTT. It's main advantage is it's higher mass (it has also a stronger hull), therefore ramming defensively is much harder.