Saturday 9 January 2010

Mayhem - Part II

So, fit complete, I headed out to test it. The first test wasn't anywhere near as eventful as I had hoped, but it was still a success. I went into Providence through HED- and moved up to D-G. This was a station system so I spent a while scouting it out and setting up bookmarks. I then settled down outside the station and waited for a target to undock. The very first thing that undocked was a Badger Mk II. A hauler that fell easily to my bomb run. The format for a bomb run is simple: sit cloaked until a viable target appears. Then move directly towards them, uncloak, launch the bomb and warp off. By the time the enemy knows what's going on, your long gone, and the bomb explodes. As you can see this first run was very successful, and this first act of violence towards the locals quickly got their attention. Several rather nasty ships undocked to protect any more undocking vessels and to deter me, scariest of all was a sensor boosted artillery Hurricane which was something that I really didn't want to mess with. A long range, fast locking ship is death incarnate for a ship like the stealth bomber. While the heat from my attack died down I moved into another station system and again set up my various safes and bomb spots. It seemed though that the owners of this station took immediate offense to my presence and a lot of ships undocked including several interceptors, a Dramiel, and some interdictors. Again all very fast, and quite capable if catching me if I attempted a bomb run. A collection of ships that is lethal to any stealth bomber. I backed out of there pretty quick as with that lot floating around I dare not uncloak. I moved back into D-G and set up ready to bomb again, but unfortunately I didn't get any kills. My continued presence though was starting to annoy them, and I received some intelligence telling me that they were forming a coherent gang to try and catch me. Before this could materialise I made my escape and headed home.

I took it out again the next day, still into Providence but a different area this time. The area I took it to was a dead end area where I knew there were several large industrial operations. I would try and bag myself some more kills or at the very least disrupt these operations. So I headed out and almost immediately jumped into a gate camp. No problem though, as soon as I left the protective cloaking field provided by the gate I turned my own on and was gone before they could even get a lock on me. I got to the first system that I had planned on searching for targets in. This too, was a station system, but before I set up shop I mapped out the jump bridges and set up safes and bomb spots. The activity around the JBs was limited at best so I moved into position outside of the station. Again a hapless hauler undocked and my bomb blew his ship apart. As I was warping away I inspected my read outs and realised that his cargo had survived. So I warped back at range to destroy the wreck to prevent them from recovering it. When I landed there was a Devoter sitting outside. I was out of its elongated point range so I uncloaked locked up both the wreck and him. Tracking disruptor on the heavy interdictor, and target painter and torpedoes on the wreck. The TD nicely nullified the Devoters weapons and I blew the wreck apart, denying them the cargo. A hauler undocked at this point, it was no doubt trying to save the cargo before I could destroy it. I targeted that as well and transferred my torps and TP to it before I could land the hit however, it warped off. I transferred my weapons to the Devoter and blasted through the shields and started working on the, sadly, much tougher armour. I didn't dare go into point range for fear of being pointed myself. This was definitely something I didn't want as I knew reinforcements would be on their way. Several of the aforementioned reinforcements landed on grid, including a Rapier and several T1 frigates, so I made a hasty get away.

Back at one of my scanning spots I detected a Cormorant along with a large quantity or wrecks. Assuming it was a salvage ship I scanned for anomalies and quickly located him. I warped in and landed about 50km away from the ship. Annoyingly he was moving around to quickly for me to accurately bomb, so I uncloaked, locked him up and put all my E-war on him. The ships relatively small signature radius protected him from a lot of the damage but even still by volley three he was in deep armour. The moment I appeared though he had signalled his friends and I soon detected a stream of inbound ships. This denied me the destroyers death but it did give me a great deal of intel on the ships that the rest of the pilots were flying. It was a very varied selection which included almost every ship class. I warped to gate and several of them had beaten me there. I had no intention of leaving though, I was having far too much fun messing with these people. Just as these thoughts were passing through my head, a stream of angry abuse came across on the local channel: demands to leave their system, and derogatory terms of abuse. Of course I found this extremely amusing and I told them so. The reaction was so child like I was practically crying with laughter: "Well we don't really care that your here anyway!". For a bunch of people who supposedly didn't care about my presence they sure put a lot of effort into catching me.

They set up several ill conceived and obvious traps. I sprung every single one and tried to catch several of them off guard. One of the worst traps was a slow aligning mining barge on one of the gates, guarded by a Brutix. I deduced that the moment I uncloaked to launch a bomb the barge would insta-warp and the Brutix would try and hold me there for the backup to arrive. I decided to go for the Brutix, from a basic inspection of the ship it looked as though it were fitted with T1 guns. I hoped the rest of the ship was as shoddily fit. I decloaked and launched by bomb. As I suspected the mining barge warped off, and the Brutix started targeting me. I responded in kind and launched torpedoes, and suppressed it's weapons with my tracking disruptor. My bomb had dealt it a serious blow; it's shields had been totally obliterated and a good chunk of its armour had been taken out. I hoped I could finish it before his friends arrived. The so far impotent Brutix didn't do anything to dispel this notion as it deployed T1 drones. Still nothing to fear from this ship. My torps were knocking chucks out of its armour and I reaching structure. I kept an eagle eye on my scanners and unfortunately a large number of ships showed up and were approaching at high warp. I stayed until they landed on grid, trying to finish off the battlecruiser, but it was not to be. I bailed before any ships could get a lock on me. I triggered several other "traps", but I didn't get any kills. More people piled into local, raising it to around forty. At this point I jumped through the gate into a massive gate camp. It consisted of at least thirty ships, but they couldn't catch me, ooooh no! "better luck next time guys!", I taunted in local. At which point I jumped into another gate camp and was promptly blown to smithereens, pod and all.

While the trip had a rather unsatisfactory ending, I felt that, as a whole, it was a success. The fit had faired very well and had foxed many an opponent. With it I had caused so much trouble I had pulled over one hundred pilots away from their regular duties in order to catch me. I had also significantly disrupted the industrial operations in the area, and I had gathered a lot of intel on the area. I had also mapped out many areas of interest such as POSs, jump bridges, and stations. I had set up many bomb spots and observation points. In actual combat this fit worked admirably and on more than one occasion I had been able to suppress one target with the TD, while attacking another. Bar a few scratches from some drones I had taken virtually no damage despite several small skirmishes. Seeing as I had mapped this area so thoroughly and the fit had been such a success I would definitely return, to harass the locals some more.

Friday 8 January 2010

Mayhem - Part I

I'm taking a quick brake from the tale of my journey to Phaze-9, to talk about one of my more recent adventures. If I don't, I will forget some of the details and the retelling will not be anything as entertaining, as when it was fresh in my mind.

I have been flying a lot of direct combat ships recently and decided I wanted a change of pace. So away went the battlecruisers and frigates, and out comes the stealth bomber. I fly the Gallente interpretation of the this ship class: the Nemesis. Based on the successful Tristan hull, this ship could pack quite a punch. For those that don't know, stealth bombers are frigate sized ships that that can use the extremely useful Covert Ops Cloak. Unlike other cloaking devices this highly sophisticated piece of technology has none of the setbacks that the other, cruder, forms suffer from. When cloaked there is no speed penalty, there is a greatly decreased lock delay after uncloaking, and most significantly you can warp cloaked. The last point in particular is a frighteningly powerful ability. It allows almost total freedom of movement around a system, even if it is crawling with hostiles. Other notable advantages this ship possesses, is the ability to fire torpedoes (huge missiles which are usually the purview of Battleships) and the unique ability to use bombs. Again the last point is of note. Bombs are an unguided explosive charge that can only be fired from a stealth bomber. They do not require target locks, but fly in the direction launched for a set amount of time before violently exploding. The damage they dish is surprisingly large and is distributed over a wide area. For all the destructive power these little ships have they are however, rather flimsy. All these traits, when combined, make this ship ideal for a hit and run, guerrilla style of warfare.

The version I fly, the Nemesis, seems to be particularly underused with the Caldari and Mitari versions being the favoured; the Manticore and the Hound respectively. The Nemesis seems to be a very poorly treated and fitted bomber. You quite often see horrible fits with shield extenders, and only one sensor dampener. First of all I see no point in wasting a slot by putting a shield extender on there. The ship, like all stealth bombers, has the structural integrity of a wet paper bag. Putting a shield extender on there is like putting the wet paper bag that is the Nemesis into another wet paper bag. In short it doesn't make enough difference to warrant losing a slot. In principle the Sensor dampener is a very good idea however, one of them is not going to make enough difference unless you are working at long ranges. At these ranges it is impossible to keep the tackle on your target and you become reliant on other pilots to hold them there for you. This doesn't seem to occur to many people though as I frequently see fits with both sensor dampener and a warp disruptor. At ranges where you can tackle with the disruptor the SD will make no tangible difference so you might as well have an empty slot. On second thought an empty slot is probably better as it doesn't drain your capacitor. Below I will detail my journey to a useful and functional fit and how the fit performed on its first outings.

I have been flying bombers for a while now and as I have gained experience and the learned to use new pieces of equipment my fit has evolved. It has gone through three distinct stages. This first stage, was after I had only just learnt to use the ships and their basic equipment. At this point in time I couldn't use bombs so the fit looked like this:

[Nemesis, Stage 1]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II

1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution

'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo
'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo
'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
[empty high slot]

[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

This setup is in no way suited to solo flying and must operate as part of a group. It has no real way of defending itself and can't hold anyone down. The lack of a bomb launcher also means it isn't very viable for any of the guerrilla tactics normally associated with this ship. It served me well for a while but I soon learned how to operate the bomb weapon system so I upgraded to this:

[Nemesis, Stage 2]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II

1MN Afterburner II
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Sensor Booster II

'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo
'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo
'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo
Bomb Launcher I, Scorch Bomb
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

As you can see the major changes are the addition of a bomb launcher and the replacement of the MWD with an AB. The fitting was rather tight so I had to downgrade the MWD. This was still very much a gang ship, as it suffers from the same limitations as the previous version, bar the bomb launcher. With the addition of the aforementioned launcher I could now start practicing with them. I had a few initial runs that didn't actually result in any kills but did provide me with the skills for setting up bomb points and escaping quickly. Between this stage and the next there was a minor change in the fit:

[Nemesis, Stage 2.5]
Ballistic Control System II
Beta Reactor Control: Reaction Control I

1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Sensor Booster II

'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo
'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo
'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo
Bomb Launcher I, Scorch Bomb
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

Back in came the MWD and out went a BCU to provide room for a fitting mod allowing me to fit the MWD. This change came after my Nemesis was caught and destroyed in a gate that I could have escaped had I an MWD rather than the AB. The small loss in damage I felt was a price worth paying for additional survivability. These ships aren't cheap you know. The next change was definitely the most sweeping change yet. The others had merely been modifications and alterations, but this heralded a fundamental change in the way I would use and pilot the ship:

[Nemesis, Final Stage]
Local Power Plant Manager: Capacity Power Relay I
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Warp Disruptor II
1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I, Optimal Range Disruption
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron

'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo
'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo
'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo
Bomb Launcher I, Scorch Bomb
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Small Semiconductor Memory Cell I
Small Semiconductor Memory Cell I

This setup is far more offensive in nature than the previous incarnations. I have thought about this setup in great detail and tried to make sure that every module serves a specific and useful purpose. The High slots need no explanation and they are the only element of the fit that remained virtually unchanged throughout this whole process.

The Med slots are where most of the thought has gone and where you see, in my opinion at least, most of the mistakes.

First off is the tackle, in this case it is a Warp Disruptor II. It has a base range of 24km and an overheated range of 28.8km. This is an essential module for keeping my prey in place so I can deal them a fatal blow. The longer range over a scrambler allows me to keep my valuable and fragile ship out of harms way. If I had some spare money I would substitute this for a faction point that has a higher base range, and consequently a higher overheat range. This would allow me to keep at an even safer range.

Next is the MWD. This module allows me reach great speeds, to keep me away from my target and get me safely out of camps.

The next module is my only form of defence on the ship, other than its speed. A tracking disruptor interferes with the targets turret tracking and range finding abilities. I have the choice of two different scripts to load into it to effect different parts of the turrets. The first script, and the one I most commonly use, is the optimal range script. This drastically decreases the range the turrets can effectively hit out to. With this module active ships can shoot as much as they like and I will take only a minimal amount of damage or maybe even none at all depending on the weapon fitted to the ship.

Finally in the last med slot is Phased Weapon Navigation Array. This is a type of target painter. It increases the signature radius of the target which means my torpedoes have an easier time hitting them. Effectively it means I can do more damage.

The Lows are simple. First off is the Nanofibre Internal structure II, this lightens the ship improving speed and manoeuvrability. Both of these are vital for me to keep out of hard tackle range (e.g. webs and scramblers) and to escape if things get a little hot.

The power relay when combined with the rigs allow me to run all of my E-war and be cap stable, which I believe to be very important, especially when dealing with large targets that take a while to go down. The last thing you want is for them to escape at the last moment because you ran out of cap. This has, rather embarrassingly, actually happened to me before. Also if the only thing keeping you alive is the TD, the last thing you want is for that to shut down due to lack of power. That could be a very expensive mistake.