Cadet II/Stealth fighter

Stealth fighter

Refresher The academy entry for stealth fighters.

The stealth fighter is mostly designed for stealth assaults, as its name implies. In addition to its cloaking device it carries weapons with low signatures and long ranges.

Stealth fighters rely on remaining hidden to survive because they have little hull and poor agility, which amounts to dying quickly in a stand-up dog fight. They can mount small shields but it is strongly recommend that you leave it at home because nine times out of ten the extra signature is not worth the extra protection.

This also makes the stealth fighter poor at defense, but they excel at destroying the enemy's economy with their anti-utility weapons. It's a bit of a catch 22 though, because most enemy teams upon losing all their miners will focus on attacking.

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 making sure any new miners/cons they build die quickly, and making sure your bases and miners aren't dying. Do this for ten minutes or so and you will have a tech advantage great enough to win the game.

Flying a stealth fighter

Ship load out

Utility cannons devastate utility hull (not shields though) and suck vs everything else. Sniper cannons are decent 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. Fill up your cargo with Hunters, and you're good to go. This will allow you to launch with the lowest possible sig. While not the best loadout for every situation, it's common.

Tip: If you have a cloak activated when you dock, it will remain activated 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.

Basically your default load out should be both main guns, utl cannons if you're going to kill utility ships (carriers, constructors and miners) or snipers if you're going to kill anything else. Missiles and Shield UNLOADED. Cargo full of LRM missiles and a small shield or full of LRM missiles. With this load out you launch with the lowest signature without cloaking (this applies as well to fighters, bombers and anything that has a shield or missiles, keep in mind just stealth fighters carry cloak devices, all bios ship carry cloak devices as well). Again this isn't the ultimate load out but it's one of the most used ones. I'll list some of my preferred load outs as well:

Cloaking tips

Until you have adv tac with the energy upgrades and the cloak 3 device, 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 hidden 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.
  • Adv techbases have a scan range of 3600m.
  • Garrison/Starbase has a scan range of 3600/4000m respectively.
  • Scouts and miners have a scan range of 2400m.
• You should always cloak before loading missiles. Preferably you wait until the cloak is fully engaged before loading the missiles.
• If you are eyed and are unlikely to lose eye, then uncloak and save your energy for your weapons.
• When you are defending you should remain uncloaked until the enemy are about to 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 and cloak 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

Against ints and figs you can expect them to use their boosters to get out of your missile range. Keep a close eye on the distance between you and their speed - when your LRM Hunter has a range of 1800m it's no good launching it at 1600m when they're doing 150mps the other direction!

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 before they pod you. After all, the sf is not designed for taking down enemy ships but for destroying the enemy's economy.

Note Do not expect to rack up a lot of kills with a stealth fighter.

Remember, the more time you waste trying to kill an enemy pilot the more time that sectors are going unprobed, miners are going undefended, bbrs are going unnanned, and enemy miners are freely mining.

sf vs figs

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.

sf vs ints

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.

sf vs other sfs

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.

sf vs scouts

The scout is a crappier fighter that 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.

Note See tf and rix sfs at end of this lesson for tips on fighting with them

Destroying the enemy's economy

The stealth fighter is designed to kill utility craft - miners and constructors. It is not designed for fighting enemy pilots, defending bases, or escorting friendly miners and cons.

If your team has gone tac, the enemy team should have zero miners. Or they should be committing 50% (or more) of their team to defending their sole surviving miner. Any other result and you are failing as an sf pilot.

Finding a miner

1. Check the minimap for an enemy miner icon. If you find one, proceed to 4.
2. Bring up F6 and check where the enemy miners were last spotted. Check that sector - is their still helium left? If so they may still be there. If not, then where would have they moved to next?
3. Check sectors until you find one which has been recently drained of He3 - for instance, one He3 asteroid has a lot less helium left than the other ones, or any rocks have precisely zero helium left. This is a clear indication of enemy miners at work. This is referred to by veterans as "He drop".

Tip: If you expand the minimap by pressing the arrow, then it will display the total He in the sector. By changing between sectors the number will refresh and you can easily spot any drops

Note The He3 bar displayed in command view is likely to change in future releases of Allegiance to more accurately portray Fog Of War

4. Now that you know where the enemy miner is, examine the sector in F3.

• Is it likely to stay there while you fly to it?
• Where will it move to next?
• Are the enemy defending an aleph?
• What aleph will you need to enter through to avoid defence?

Entering the sector

If you followed the cloaking tips above chances are you entered the sector cloaked and with missiles unmounted to minimise your signature. But what if the enemy miner is very close to where you entered? Should you attack it immediately or wait? That depends:

• Is the miner undefended?
• Do you have enough energy left to kill it easily?
• Are there any enemy bases nearby where reinforcements will launch?
• Is the miner about to finish and leave the rock?

If for any reason you don't feel comfortable attacking then ignore the miner long enough for you to get ready. Otherwise load missiles and get ready.

Utility cannons are awesome against miner and constructor hull, but suck against shield. For this reason you should use hunters to take down their shields. Therefore you should avoid being eyed until you have loaded your missiles and gotten a good lock. Use your backthrust key to slow down and hang around 1800m from the miner until your missiles are ready, then begin closing in.

Once your hunters have taken down the shields below 10% uncloak and open fire to finish the miner off.

Tip: Shields do not protect any ship if they are below 10%.

Spiking the miner

Example of a missile hitting a (stationary) target, even though it was fired while the ship was still out of range

This is the normal way to kill a miner. If it is defended you can collaborate with other sf pilots to spike it together, overwhelming the defence.

1. Set-up about 3.5k from the rock that the miner will mine next and uncloak to recharge energy.
   • Make sure the rock isn't between you and where the miner will stop.
2. Once the miner reaches the rock engage full thrust and cloak.
3. Once you are fully cloaked mount missiles.
4. Once you are about 2.5k out, fire the missile.
   • Your missiles gain your ship's momentum, meaning they can have "extra range" if you fire them when moving quickly.
   • The lifespan of a hunter is 7s, so it's "extra range" is 7 times your current speed.
   • If you're moving 100mps, this is an extra 700m. Hunter2 has a range of about 1800m, so your "maximum range" is now 2500m.
   • If you're moving 150mps, this is an extra 1050m, giving a "maximum range" of 2850m with hunter2.

Note This only works effectively against stationary targets, because even a small dodge will throw off a fast-moving missile that has been launched with no lock.

5. The miner will start moving once it gets damaged. This means your third and fourth missiles may need a bit of lock - not much, as the miner will still be slow and even a little lock will let the missile hit it.
6. Once you're eyed uncloak and use your util cannons to finish it off.

Tip: You may want to use backthrust at the same time you decloak, so you can slow down and don't shoot past the miner.

Taking down the defence

If the miner you found has light D like a scout, apply combat maneuvers and pod the defense first, then immediately engage the miner, no point in being stealthy anymore since enemy team already saw you making a try for their miner and they are probably coming to pod you.

If the enemy has about 2 or 3 ships on it, you're solo and don't have huge tech advantage like advanced SF with lrm3, sig3 vs counter 1, don't even try, if you know more people is coming to help you, wait for them to get there and shoot scouts first, then go for the miner. If you know no one is coming to help, at least delay their mining, shoot the scouts guarding the miner, hoping they pull the miner to their base, or anything that delays their mining, if the miner has huge D, 2-3 ints/figs plus scouts, the best plan is to call more people. There's obviously cases where you can solo a miner even with huge D but that takes a lot of planning, experience and skill and you're in cadet, so don't try hero stuff, wait for the cavalry to arrive to help you in those cases.

Constructors are pretty much the same thing, the only difference is that if you see one solo about to build you should kill it as fast as you can or even ram it, because if it lines up and goes into the rock… well you can't kill it anymore =/.

Defending vs. Bombers and Htts

When you get a Tac the first thing an enemy commander will probably do is either push a con next to the sector your Tac is and bomb it or put some people on miner D so they can buy bombers. Bottom line is you will get bombed at some point in the game and you need to know how to D against them in a SF.

The best defense against bombers/tranports is probes, if you get bombed "un eyed" being Tac, you will most likely lose that base. So first of all you should probe around your Tac or sectors they own besides your own sectors.

Ok so we eyed the bomber coming for our Tac/Outpost/Tp you name it… what now? The first thing to do is get a proper load out, get snipers if you have them, and fill your cargo with missiles, you can even launch with missiles loaded, next thing to do is camp the aleph the enemy is coming from, stay just in range of your missiles, if your missile range is 1700 stay at 1550 or so, you get the idea, first target is NANS, shoot the damn scouts first… when scouts die shoot the bomber.

Another very important thing lot of newbies do NOT do is staying away from the bomber's path, do not stand in front of the bomber shooting at it, it will close you down quickly and the turrets will kill you just as fast. You need to stay to the side of the bomber and shoot it from there, stay away as far as you can OFF the bomber path. Imagine the route the bomber has to take and stay to the side of that route.

Defending versus HTT or TT/Bomber combo is the same thing, shoot nans first then HTT/bomber, it's really that easy.

Another more advanced thing I like to do if I have a decent KB is, if you see the bomber/HTT getting too close to your base I start flying towards the nans and shoot them with snipers as well, no point in staying away and safe while your base dies, you are expendable and free (YES YOU ARE FREE!) your base isn't, it's price was valuable credits your team should try to conserve.

Finally… if they are "force bombing" as in scouts plus interceptors or fighters, the ints/figs will close you down, if they do that apply the same combat maneuver as always… unload all your sig raising stuff, cloak and fly away, this way the int lost his time while the rest of your team defending (hopefully) shot the nans. When he goes away load missiles and start shooting nans again.

In conclusion the most important while defending against HTT/Bombers:

Stay AWAY from the bomber/HTT path. Shoot NANS first. If an Int/fig closes you down, cloak and wait, or fly away and re-engage.

Defending vs. Capital Ships

Defending versus cap ships is the same thing that defending versus bombers/HTT, the only difference is that you need LRM killers to take down a cap with stealth fighters. Using LRM hunter against a cap is close to useless.

Also you need to launch the missiles as straight as you can, they don't have the tracking of the LRM hunter. Against frigates/cruisers with nans shoot the frigate/cruiser first with killers.

Against carrier bombing (Attack carrier + nans + bomber following behind carrier), your best best is to shoot nans first as well, since attack carrier is just a big gunship, it doesn't have base killing missiles like a frigate or cruiser.

Rixian SFs

So Rix doesn't have missiles. Technoflux gets away with this by using "Short Range Projectile: Killer" which is kind of a copout, but the Rixian Unity doesn't need your tracking crap or dumbfiring crap: they have something that is equally much more devastating and much more difficult to use: the combat drone. They also can load up probes and prox, which is very important: when Rix has SFs up, you are probably better off proxing and probing in an SF.

As for their combat drones, you have to take into account a few things: first, you must target someone for the drone to begin firing. When I was in cadet there wasn't really a definitive voice on the matter and I remember being very confused for a while... but eventually I learned the first rotten truth of Rix CDs: you must target the guy you want to die. The second rotten truth is that CDs don't have a range from where you are, but rather where you drop them. This one is pretty obvious but it does mean that your range on the target doesn't help you all that much because it doesn't tell you where your drone is in relation to the target. Finally, and this is a truth of all probes (and CDs are "probes," just as "towers" are "probes" and "teleport probes" are "probes"), it can only see what it sees.

That means that if you have a CD with a scanrange of 800m, it doesn't matter if its real range is 500000m, it won't shoot that 50% sig scout that's 600m from it. This isn't usually a huge deal since the scanrange is approximately that of the weapon's range, but it does mean that in an SF battle, their hunters will track you even after you cloak and lose eye, but your CD may not shoot at them even if they are still eyed.

The best part of allegiance is that not all the ships are the same for the different factions, bios for example can carry cloak in all their ships, most belters ship can carry boosters, etcetera. So SFs are no different, I won't go into full detail here as this would get too long but I'm just going to point out the 2 most different SF's, the rixian and technoflux SF, all the other SF are pretty much the same, 2 main guns… either utl or sniper and a missile mount, they are not exactly the same though, the faction global attributes apply to them as well as other perks like the belter's booster and such. The main difference with these 2 SF's is that they do NOT carry missiles.

The rixian SF has combat pods which are like little turrets you drop and attack the target you had BEFORE you dropped the pod, it won't change targets and won't chase it either, you should pick a target and when he's in range of the pod, you drop the pod and it shoots your target. This SF can also carry proximity mines and probes to help with the lack of missiles. Not very newbie friendly.

The technoflux SF is probably the hardest to fly since it doesn't have missiles or combat pods, instead of that it has an extra gun mount, so you can mount 3 utl or 3 snipers, hardest path to go while playing TF… but that is for another guide to discuss, just pointing out the difference here ;).

Conclusion

I hope this was useful and gave you a better grasp of how to fly stealth fighters. In my opinion a good stealth fighter pilot can make all the difference in a game, killing 1-2 miner or cons (specially miners) has a huge impact in the game. There's much more to be said about stealth fighters but it would be too long to read, so go out there and get some experience of your own, try to apply a thing or two that you read here and good luck!