Mithfindel
Khanid Unionist Movement
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Posted - 2009.04.02 09:04:00 -
[1]
A note on survivability, role, and killing targets.
Let us assume that the stealth bomber tank equals the strength of a wet paper bag. Hence, they can't afford to be caught. However, on most cases they can't hope to one-shot targets. If you want to kill something using them, what do you need? A tackler.
Now, assume the target is tackled. It can be assumed that any non-afk targets are now well aware that they are being attacked. Whether or not the stealth bombers are capable of warping in cloaked doesn't matter, since as long as the tackler doesn't pop before the target, the mark dies. For reference, see "force recon ships".
Thus, if we need to consider which one would be desirable, bonus speed while cloaked or ability to warp cloaked, I would call the ability to move fast cloaked superior. If for no other reason then at least for the capability to move through bubbles or gate camps, align to warp, and warp immediately after decloaking. If we have to pit against each other the bonuses of, say, faster re-cloak and warping cloaked, faster re-cloak might still be useful (for example, if the target might be warp scrambled and damped by an Arazu, this might allow you to uncloak-fire-cloak before lock is achieved - any drone autoaggro would be on another tackler, anyway, so drones likely would not matter in the scenario).
In addition, not allowing the cov ops cloak leaves more room for the real cov ops ship to be used in the scouting role, where it needs to move undetected, versus the more combat-oriented bomber's role of staying in the system cloaked until warping to finish off targets tackled by CovOps/Force Recon ships. (Technically, the covert jump bridge might allow even limited "covert hot drop" for the force recons, but since the recons don't tank that well, even the 30 seconds of being still might be a bit too much, if they have not completely paralyzed their marks with EW.)
Hence, the useful tenets here would be:
1. Bombers will be able to move fast while cloaked
2. Bombers will be able to fit and use missiles with high damage (volley or DPS, depending on doctrine - cloaking in between volleys would prefer volley, just slugging it out against targets completely helpless due to EW would favour DPS)
3. In any case, the bombers will likely be best off with a damage bonus to their main weapon system
4. Bombers can use bombs in 0.0
Additional good points would be making bombers (and possibly force recons) very light (= low mass), which would allow more of the little buggers to be bridged at once by a Black Ops ship, making it a Black Ops boost, as well.
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