Pilk
Axiom Empire
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Posted - 2006.10.27 15:26:00 -
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A Manticore is the single most player-skill-intensive ship in the game. The correct procedure for flying one requires ridiculous levels of perfect timing. It goes something like this:
- Deactivate cloak near the beginning of a cloak-cycle, as we'll need to reactivate quickly.
- Prime weapons and dampeners.
- When cloak deactivates, begin locking target.
- Activate sensor booster.
- Once weapons have fired, hit cloak again.
- Prime dampeners (and, optionally, weapons, if you think you'll need them again).
- Wait for missiles to near target, and computing an appropriate delta for the length of the cloak cycle, decloak just before missiles hit, begin targeting, and activate sensor booster.
This relies on three peculiarities about cloaks, sensor dampners and missile damage while cloaked:
- The cloak reactivation delay is based not on when the cloak shuts off, but when you press the button to shut the cloak off.
- Missiles don't do damage if, at the moment they hit, you're cloaked, but they don't mind if you've been cloaked while they were in flight.
- Sensor dampeners will function for their full cycle, even if you no longer have the target locked.
Now, this is horrifically complex and seems to rely on bizarre interactions between modules that, at first glance, seem pretty absurd. And after all of this, even with a half-dozen friends, you can only BARELY kill a well-tanked t1 cruiser. So, in other words, awesome player skills + 700 million isk = ganking a t1 cruiser, assuming he doesn't just warp off. Compare to an assault frigate, which can also tackle while dealing this kind of DPS, and it's very hard to justify deployment of Manticores in the field.
To top it all off, the warp problem is beyond the pale--a Manticore shouldn't need to fit a cap battery to warp more than 60-odd AU with WDO III and Energy Management IV.
Now, I don't mind going around with a couple friends with 700 million isk worth of ships that we're unlikely to lose if we play all of our cards right, in terms of activating everything at exactly the right time, and bringing an Arazu to tackle, and so on. But given a 25-50% HP boost? Now we're rolling out with a billion isk (remember the Arazu and his covops cloak), and even if we do everything right, we're either not going to kill the enemy's t1 cruiser, or we'll be losing an Arazu in the process.
Summary:
- Stealth bombers are usable, though difficult to use, a pain in the butt to fit, hideously expensive, and unusable in anything but a gang designed for them and against one or two targets.
- Stealth bombers soon WON'T be usable due to HP increase.
- The Manticore (and possibly others; I haven't flown any others) needs a serious kick in the pants regarding warp capabilities.
- The only decent use I've found for a stealth bomber so far (which, sorry, I'm not going to share on the forums, though any dev who's curious is welcome to contact me) doesn't even fit a cloak.
There's my essay for the day; let me know what you think.
--P
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