Cadet II/Stealth fighter

Stealth fighter

Refresher The academy entry for stealth fighters.

The stealth fighter is designed for stealth assaults on the enemy's economy, although it can be upgraded to fight enemy combatants. Its stealth comes from a low base sig, a cloaking device, and weapons with low sigs.

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

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

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

Remember, the stealth fighters are designed to kill miners and constructors. Usually the only pilots you should attack are their nanites.

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 2400), they often have gunnners which can easily shoot you down. (check f6 to see if they have gunners.)

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

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 only shoot what you had targeted when you dropped them.
• This means you need to target they guy you want to die.
• They are deployed like a mini-tower.
• 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 with a rix sf is to figure out where the enemy is heading, cut it off, and drop CD alongside its path. When you are fighting other pilots you have an advantage that you can drop drones as you fly along; little "surprises" which attack and distract them, then when they are damaged swoop in from a different direction than your drones to finish them off.

Rix sf can also carry probes and prox mines due to the way the Allegiance game engine is set up. This makes the sf good for probing enemy sectors unnoticed, or dropping stealthily dropping prox in a bomb runs 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, until you start thinking 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 around if you try to hit with all your weapons, so 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.