Originally by: CrestoftheStars

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yer they are gonna draw of agro for around 1-2 volly's and you lost yourself 40mill+ XD
they really need some signature decrease and a speed boost (just around 10-15% in both would do), attacking a bs is garenteed to get them killed just from the drone fire alone within a VERY short amount of time, even 2 or 3 of these will most likely be dead before the bs, just by his drone fire alone.

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Originally by: DNSBLACK

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Originally by: Abrazzar

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Wait.

Cover Jump Portal + Stealth Bombers + Torpedo Damage + Covert Cynos possible in Cyno Jammed Systems =
= A pretty nifty solution to Cyno Jammers.

Now why are you crying again?

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PLease stop with this cyno jamming killing stuff you are killing me

Situation :Alliance A coming to drop caps and attacka cyno jammed system

1. 200 man support fleet comes in and melts cyno jammer in coms caps and has fleet on station to defend caps.

2. no allaince is going to drop caps unless it has a support fleet.

3. This sneaking in the back door and dropping the cyno jammer is non sense and has no practical application.

4. A BO gang killing a cyno as a memeber of a small alliance then drops caps in will only lose there caps.

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Originally by: Talaan Stardrifter

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Stuff

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Originally by: Talaan Stardrifter

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Originally by: place1

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60DPS is right and its because SB are built for alpha. The fact that you doing so little damage is because your shooting at a 80% resisted target 2400 points of your damage are being resisted. Find a target that's not heavy tanked to your damage type and you will have much better numbers.

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Please list a combat situation where my target wont be tanked?

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Originally by: Black VV

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Edited by: Black VV on 22/04/2009 17:10:28
Edited by: Black VV on 22/04/2009 17:04:25
Experience with the new bomber:

Prelude

I have been a pretty big stealth bomber fan from the beginning. The idea of a ship that can infiltrate a large alliance passing through gate camps to hit and run has it's appeal. Prior to this patch the bomber was only useful as a stationary camper for the most part. Roaming was pointless as you could contribute more with just about any ship in the game be it damage or utility. On a gate camp you could provide added volley damage, but many ships did this so much better like the muninn or the zealot. You also had the problem of your missiles never getting there before the target exploded, so you only helped in very small camps or against large ships that jumped in like a battleship or bc and most ships are going to be small coming through a camp. I always felt as though the bomber needed the covert ops cloak to be useful, I never expected to get torps with it though.

The new bomber.

We have used these in a mixed gang to roam 0.0 (we usually use recon/hacs for this). The new bomber is a serious glass cannon, I can't place enough emphasis on this. You do not stand and fight unless you want glorious death en masse. What it excels to the point of hilarity at is melting ratting battleships and bc's or hitting a small gang or early arrivals for backup before you run for the cloaked hills. We have used it with a rapier as tackle with good result. The bomber is your support dps. You tackle then bring them in (as you would with hac's) The bs is gone in 3 volleys or so before anyone can react to your ambush. These things hit very very hard against a battleship or a battlecruiser. This seems to be the role it has now and it fits it very well. The ability to hot drop with the black ops bs is also a role it will excel at. They cost a fraction of what it would cost to use the bs's themselves.

-Use 2-3 of them to melt a bs/bc in less than 30 seconds.
-use a recon to tackle
-you can move through bubble camps pretty easy
-don't stand and fight for long you will die
-pre align always this is you tank, it's called the warp out tank.
-use target painters and damps with scan res

Remember!
-you die in one volley most of the time, if it lock you you die, muninn's and zealots are your worst nightmare.
-only good for larger ships, and some small ones before the reinforcements pile on.

This is a great roaming ship with a recon gang, it hits harder than all the recons against a bs or bc. I like the new changes a bunch. The old bomber sat in a hanger then was eventually sold because it was basically useless. This has a role and a fun one at that. They are not a solo ship, so grab some friends and bring hell to the 0.0 alliances.

I can't speculate on bombs yet.

Vs the traditional choice of a HAC or a Recon.

These put serious firepower on the target, with from 1-4k per volley every 10 seconds on target, that takes into account resistances. One dominix went from 100% to 10% armor in one volley from 3 bombers. A drake went from low shield to pop without even seeing armor or structure. This is balanced by the fact that a few cepters show up and you start to die in droves. They basically hit like arty tempest (without the lol tracking)

Hac's can engage all the cepters/dictors and light stuff much much better. Hacs can't cloak or escape a bubble anywhere near as well as a bomber, these go through bubbles like the cov ops frig or the transport ships. And everyone knows how difficult those are to catch. This lets you keep roaming in 0.0 vs get locked up by the blob. That and you can hot drop and cyno out with these and recons, you can't with a hac. Remember kids, hit your target and run. Hope this provides some use to some of you.

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Originally by: Mirana Niranne

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Originally by: Goberth Ludwig

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Gesus... ever heard of WEBS?

- Gob

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I've heard of them. Getting close enough to use a web on anything with a SB isn't going to do anything for you but get you killed in a hurry. In fact, you'll likely be dead before your first torp hits.

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Originally by: OilSlick Rick

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It isn't that is it 'useless', but that it is used-less.

I honestly can't see why you should require 2-3 target painters on a BATTLESHIP in order to regain max damage.

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Originally by: Onizuka GTO

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Originally by: place1

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If you look at my numbers the only time you actually need any TP is if that ship is using a AB anything else and you do full damage and yes I feel that is how it should be AB are great for reducing missile damage and to be able to counter an AB with 2-3 painters is not very hard to do. Most bombers can easily fit 2 painters them self's if they chose to.

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Full damage?!

It seems that you haven't checked your numbers correctly.

There is absolutely no chance of torpedoes doing full damage on a Battleship, at all.

The torpedoes are so crippled it can only do a maximum damage 77% when the target is moving, regardless of afterburners or mwding.

its all due to it's explosive signature radius, its so big, it's impossible.

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Originally by: Mad0ne

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Originally by: Murina

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Originally by: Drahomi'r Bozi'dar

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Oh and the friggin cloak delay needs to be 10 seconds or less.
If CCP refuses to increase range, then they need to decrease the cloak time to no more then 10 seconds if not shorter. These ships are dying faster than before.

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NO.

Under 10 seconds would mean it could uncloak/lock/fire/cloak/uncloak/lock/fire/recloak and all before a BS and proly BC could lock it back.

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Get a clue already!

You do know that IF YOU CLOAK then torps wont do any damage?

Thank CCP for that!

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Originally by: Onizuka GTO

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Originally by: Dibsi Dei

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I dunno, in null sec it is possible with dropping a bomb and warping off.

Seriously though stop whining about stealth bombers. We wtfbbq ships of all kind with stealth bomber support in our every op.

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But why do a pointless and suicidal action as to attack a blob of such size that would do nothing but annoy them?

seriously stop defending about stealth bombers.

Just because you have a success in using the bomber in one kind of situation where any type of ship can also perform just as well doesn't mean it is justified to change an established ship type with an a completely difference weapon system and attributes without prior testing.

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Originally by: Drahomi'r Bozi'dar

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The battleships arent the issue, at that range its the inty's that can run ya down before you can ever cloak even a Vagabond is death. Now take into the account of smaller ships with longer range guns. A Cerb with heavy missile launchers can lock ya quick and hit you from over 100km away.. Anything under 70 is drone bait which War 2's have shown to drop SB's within seconds. Most every fight ive been in if the enemy brings a SB in, he almost always goes home in a pod. Which is why i sold all of my Bombers.

As for a person above, yes the manticore does suck, larger sig radius, slower speed, slower locking time and even less damage dps wise and volley compared to all the other SB's not to mention even less hp's. Its a craptastic ship.

Also no SB can uncloak,lock fire rinse and repeat over and over, you have to allow travel time. Torps are slower than cruise missiles so there for even more time. 10 secs allows to hopefully get a shot off and have it land before you get blown up. When we had cruise missiles on this, we had a quicker cloak time and the missiles traveled faster. Omg so unfair !! Its just putting them back to what was right. Atleast with cruise missiles you can hit every type of ship. Torps you cant, so with a closer range and even an easier time for the enemy to kill you, why not give them a buff??

Surely warping in, firing a volley and having to warp out right after and praying your not gonna get killed which now most are is sooooo effective when trying to maintain decent damage on a BS. The new version has flaws that need to be fixed. Less we forget the final product came to us without the game population being able to test it, and magically it was internally tested for umm a day before release. Now they are still making changes because even a blind man can see it wasnt ready to go live The devs know that but wont admit to it.

So yes i am ranting, but when you screw up the only reason i ever considered playing this game for, you best believe i wont stop till those changes are satisfactory.

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Originally by: Murashu

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Edited by: Murashu on 06/05/2009 20:09:31
I guess I need a class in how target painters interact with missiles cause during all the testing I have done I am seeing no gain from using a TP.

I'm a faction warfare pilot therefore I will never get to use bombs so once again I find myself trying to make a meaningful impact with my Hound. I fit a Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron for the 30% sig radius bonus and used my friends caracal alt for target practice. I just got Torp 4 and was still using 3 'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launchers and Caldari Navy Bane Torpedos. We started out with the caracal sitting still outside the station and my first volley hit for 573 with no target painter. I thought ok this isn't so bad so I turned on the TP and expected to see something change but the next volley hit for 573 as well. I docked up, put on another TP and shot him with both TPs on for...573. So I assume 573 is the max I can hit that cruiser with that setup and my current skills.

If that is the case, what is the point of having a target painter and ensuring the target is webbed? From further testing it appears that my TP only benefits me if the target is moving. Since the new intended target of the SB is Battleships or larger, all it takes is one person webbing an already slow moving BS to make the TP useless.

I'm still waiting for the day that CCP admits they should have made a new ship for the new role and left my beloved SB alone. Everytime I fly the new SB in FW it just makes me miss the old one more and more.

In the last 2 months of FW I have only shot at one BC (in my frigate) and zero BS so the new SB just doesn't see any action.

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Originally by: Terrakas

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This is indeed a rather useless comparison, but not for those reasons Charlie. Let us assume that all ships have 0% resistance (for the sake of simplicity, and also because it just depends on what mods you fit on your ship, and what damage types, and is the same whether you're in a bomber or a taranis). Even at 0% resistance, a bomber might not quite do full damage on a BS, due to some being smaller than the torp size . Since 500 DPS on a bomber requires a max skilled pilot in a full gank fit, let's compare it with the 300 DPS that a max skilled taranis pilot in a full gank fit will get.

Let's take a stationary cruiser sized vessel as middle ground (ie. T1, HACs, Recons, Strategic Cruisers, HICs, Command Ships, Logistics). The taranis does not have a sig radius penalty, and does 300 DPS. The bomber does roughly *gasp* (500 * 150/450=)166 DPS. Taranis wins this contest, by almost double.

Now, all you bomber haters might say "Wait a minute, though cruisers are so common, they are smaller than BCs, and we want to slant the results in our favor, so let's compare again using the BC as the average ship size". Against a BC, the taranis does 300 DPS. The bomber however does (500 * 240/450=)266 DPS. Wowza! Taranis wins again! The bomber figures will be further reduced by the speed of the target, while the Taranis figures will not. So NO, Charlie.

We must conclude that bombers do less damage than your precious Taranis in the average (or most?) cases.

P.S. Against frigates, even a rocket fitted frigate will outdamage a stealth bomber by a good margin, and we all know how much rockets are broken and suck.

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Originally by: Terrakas
Thank you very much for those numbers. However, due to the low slot layout, only minmatar and amarr bombers can get close to 600 DPS, while caldari and gallente bombers get closer to 500 DPS! Unfortunately, it's impossible to fit anything else in addition to t2 launchers, 3x BCU II, and cloak on the minmatar 580 DPS bomber due to CPU, meaning no target painters.
I compared it against a max skilled T2 fitted Taranis (3x MFS II lows, no rigs, T2 or faction ammo) which came out to almost 300 DPS.
To get a 600 DPS bomber with multiple target painters, I'm assuming you would need faction modules, or expensive implants, rigs, and overheating, or a combination of those? It would be unfair to not apply similar modifications to the Taranis as well.

With 3x BCU II, 3x Launchers II, cloak, empty mids, 1 empty high, 2x WCC rigs on a hound it comes out to about 600 DPS but you're 3% over on CPU, so you definitely can't fit painters... or dampers, or anything else useful for that matter[:oops:

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I agree that TP being mandatory isn't great either, as you probably need to use those mid slots for something that will help you survive, paper tank and all. The old bomber had an innate bonus with TP like effects (works on stationary targets as well), and worked out quite well indeed. I think that the torp adjustment should be on the bomber side, like in the old bomber. However, you do have a point in that ACs can track small targets better than Artillery, but torps affect small targets worse than cruises. Having the old cruise bonuses back in addition to the current ones would be nice as well, and since they can't be both active at once, won't really break anything.

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Originally by: Terrakas

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It seems that numbers is king (blob = win) in EVE. Which is why I'm advocating comparisons between equal numbers of equally skilled pilots, for meaningful results. A group of any other 5 T2 ships still strikes me that it would win over a group of 5 bombers though. The old cruise bomber might be good at taking out t1 frigates and to a lesser extent cruisers, but you'd still be hard pressed to defeat an inty, or any ship more substantial. In an engagement with equal numbers, you might be able to pop one if well coordinated against a weaker target, but the others will probably make sure at least some if not all the bombers leave in a pod..

Anyhow, the old bomber was good at taking out stationary or slow moving frigates. And we all know how precious few of those there are in a real fight against competent frigate pilots

The old bomber also made bomber vs bomber fights hair raising and entertaining. Now it's more of a yawn fest.

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Originally by: Scurvy Pestilential

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The new SB is utterly useless. The supposed new role for it can be filled by considerably more appropriate ships.

Not only that, the skills I previously had for running a good SB are now largely useless. You need many maxed missiles skills to be even slightly effective and not get killed with the new SB. Anyone who previously flew an SB will find little of use in this new version. It needed tweaking, not ruining.

This is just one of several reasons why I can no longer be bothered to play eve. You've made the SB a joyless, and largely pointless ship to fly.

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Originally by: Reisenkaze

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Honestly, I believe they realized how good the SB's were in comparison to a lot of other ships out there. The choice comes down to making other ships better or just destroy this one so that it has the same horrific flaws in quality. Those that say it's good now, haven't really gone in PVP with it, because the numbers won't work. Any BS pilot will fill their drone bays and at the point, a single BS can fight against SB's, between the tanking, drones sent out, etc, and win. Saying that the SB's has 500+ damage output because of the stats is meaningless because that's not what you'll get when in combat, not even against NPC's. I largely agree with you, however. There's no rational reason I can think of for the change, mainly because it leads to the SB's being put into suicide missions; a greatly distasteful prospect for such an expensive ship. Even with all the numbers people have been throwing out there, it just seems like quite a majority are talking through their rear end, including the Dev Team, when this is a very simple and straight forward issue. If you want a glass cannon, allow it to do it's job, not hinder it. There's far more people who don't run into BS's, unless it's a mission, than those who do. The role type for anti-BS shouldn't be a primary one, but more of a supplementary to a fleet hunting BS's. Allowing both Cruise Missiles and Torpedoes as well as the use of the Covert Ops cloak and Bomb Launcher is the only way this can make sense and still be combat effective. There will still be a fair amount of weaknesses, mainly the low hp and inability to reactivate the cloak after the target has you locked, but at least the SB would have practicality rather than a loose assumption that a largely untested and unwanted role could be useful to those of us who fly SB's.

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Originally by: Reisenkaze

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This is where I have to draw the line; I am not just talking out my end. The members of my corp and I have dueled against each other with SB's vs BS's and couldn't pull it off. Each pilot flying between a year and a half and three years. The range of Torps does put you outside drone range, however, not always. Drone Link Augmentors put you in drone range. And for the record, I don't want to see numbers, I want actual experience and events because that data is the only relevant one. Granted no frigate can do that damage, but it can't deliver it effectively. That's all it comes down to.

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Originally by: Reisenkaze

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It was not blindly. I've taken the time to go through all these pages and read the posts and digest people's opinions. However, it's just come down to speculation and 'it should do this' comments.

It was 4 SB's in our encounter vs a Scorpion. The problem we found is that the SB is too specialized, more so than other T2's. It does it's role only in conjunction with another specialized ship. That then is not a ship with a role, that is a ship with a condition.

The majority I spoke of talking without qualification didn't need to apply to yourself, but you put it on yourself. I really don't care if you like or dislike the new layout or old one, it's whether or not it's players can use it so that it does what it's supposed to. The moment you start needing qualifiers in order to do it, you've lost practicality and the whole point of the design.

It will not be often when a BS is flying solo or with another for what you have described to occur vs one with an escort of smaller ships. It's not just the function of the ship that is the only specialized part, it's the opportunity to be effective. The high sec players won't have much a use for it, that's a given. Unless it's specialized to hit from long range, and not just specialized to attack BS's then I can see more players coming to fly the SB.

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Originally by: Reisenkaze

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It wasn't just the tanking, but it was the ECM. That entire BS was T2 equipment, although I need to post what the fitting was.

The issue I'm seeing is that in order to be truly effective, this ship has to be large numbers. Unless you're in a megacorp or have members of 100+ there won't be 15 SB's flying around together. At most I've seen so far in high sec was 6, although I'd like to see what people have been able to do. The way you put it is this ship is designed for low to null sec groups, because 15 ships together in a fleet isn't all too common in high sec unless it's a war. There's now the need for numbers which slightly bothers me because you're reducing the quality of the ship and saying that quantity has a quality all it's own. I don't advocate a solo ship, but one that doesn't need to be along side more than 2 or 3 others of it's own kind to complete it's designed role, especially for a T2 ship.

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Originally by: Onizuka GTO

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This i agree with, not many PvP Battleships will be fitted with such high resist, however you forget that during recon situations the only other time you are likely to encounter a lone battleships in Low Sec, are Mission Crawling Battleships, who unfortunately are capable of high resistance.

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Originally by: Sergeant Marcus

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Edited by: Sergeant Marcus on 18/05/2009 14:12:06
I like the new price of the bombs, got many kills with them, but the old way of the bomber is dead, over 20% my kills i got on frigs with cruise missiles, it was the best ship to secure a mining op in highsec,
the best to show these thefts that they cant reach anything to an "old bomber" secured belt.

the new role is intresting, but its only a 0.0 ship now for me.

my suggestion for bonuschanges:


only 3x Highslots
only 1x Launcher Slot with 300% damagebonus to Cruise Missile and Torpedo damage
99,3% Grid bonus to Torps or Cruise missiles
Bonus to CovOps Cloaking

full 30 Sec Recloaking delay

Role Bonus: 200% Speed while Cloaked

So a bomber can do only one attack and the pilot have to think more before he decloakes. and you can swich to the role you want, as a istand-frig-killer or a nightmare for BS's.

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Originally by: CCP Chronotis

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....

1. cloaked gangs decloaking each other during gang warps or in proximity whilst orbiting a location.

We are looking into fixing this so cloaked ships will not decloak other cloaked ships as the whole point of the covert ops cloak was to allow the element of surprise and this is not possible when in a gang with other cloaked ships or some alternative solution to better allow for this without spoiling the surprise factor.

.....

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Originally by: CCP Chronotis

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Originally by: place1

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Originally by: CCP Chronotis

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....

1. cloaked gangs decloaking each other during gang warps or in proximity whilst orbiting a location.

We are looking into fixing this so cloaked ships will not decloak other cloaked ships as the whole point of the covert ops cloak was to allow the element of surprise and this is not possible when in a gang with other cloaked ships or some alternative solution to better allow for this without spoiling the surprise factor.

.....

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I am wondering if we could get a update on this progress.

Maybe should have been in a different thread but seeing the question what raised here I am asking here.

Admit have have not tested to see if its in game for a while but I didn't see anything in patch notes about it so assuming its not in game yet.

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it is a known issue for us, but the fix is rather complex so will take some time to deliver so no ETA sorry .

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Originally by: Drahomi'r Bozi'dar

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By used right, you mean be in an absurdly specialized fleet. If a ship could do it's job, it wouldn't need other types along for the ride and at most be used in groups of the same craft. This whole Apocrypha switching things around just looks sloppy in all honestly...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I agree. I think cruise missile bonuses could be changed a bit to do more vs battleships and such but do around the same for smaller ships. Torps are unguided which i think is just plain dumb, which is why a ship is moving at a decent speed the torp damage just drops horridly. If asks, about decent speed, then anything over 250 m/s.
Tested a BS with an after burner on and at 300 m/s it dropped torp damage more than half of what it was hitting for. Now a BC or a cruiser will have the go juice and torps already suffer from the size penalty of the ship so its even worse for them.
There needs to be a change to not have it lose so much damage when a ships moving.
Dont say a TP, cause it doesnt help that much.

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Originally by: place1

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Edited by: place1 on 02/05/2009 15:50:06
To all that think the new SB is useless here are some numbers off sisi

Pilot Skill
Missile Bombardment 4
Missile Projection 3
Torpedoes 1
Warhead Upgrades 3
Covert ops 4
1 Ballistic Control T2
Hydraulic Bay Thruster I
Rocket Fuel Cach Partition I
T1 Torp's
Torp Rang 64987M
Max Flight Time 14.49s

Lots of room for improvment here.


Ship Maelstrom
0% Resistance
Speed.............................0TP..............................1TP..............................2TP..............................3TP
0....................................2644.5..........................2644.5..........................2644.5..........................2644.5
Norm 117........................2644.5..........................2644.5..........................2644.5..........................2644.5
AB 285............................1265.6..........................1620.2..........................2008.8..........................2338.5
MWD 715.........................2644.5..........................2644.5..........................2644.5..........................2644.5

56% Resistance
0....................................1190.0..........................1190.0..........................1190.0..........................1190.0
AB 285.............................568.7..........................728.4............................906.5............................1052.3

77% Resistance
0....................................621.2...........................621.2...........................621.2...........................621.2
AB 285.............................296.9..........................380.3............................473.4............................549.2

84% Resistance
0....................................426.2...........................426.2...........................426.2...........................426.2
AB 285.............................203.9..........................261.0............................324.8............................375.6



As you can see damage is good as long as the resistance is not very high and the only way to reduice the damage taken by the battle ship is with a AB and even then 2-3 Target Painters will bring the damage back close to max.
The use of a MWD (because of sig bloom) will cause you to take full damage as if you were not even moveing regardless of TP or not.
With better skills the damage will increase even more as will range.

Edit
It is posible with max skills to fit a Purifier for range using T1 Torps of 69KM with a volley damage of 4105 at 0% resistance, Cal Navy Torps a volley of 4717 damage. T2 rage can get a range of 62KM with a volley of 5255 all at 0% resistance.
Very high damage output for a Frig.

This ship is far from useless.

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