what follows is a short AAR about the bombing practice held on SiSi. Due to FC being stupid, I've put the event on the calendar under "personal" instead of "corporation", so the turnout was low. We had about 8 bombers logged on SiSi. Some couldn't get in, because it takes CCP hours to send a verification e-mail when logging on for the first time. Disclaimer: I am by far no bombing/black opsing expert and I learn as I teach, the blind leading the blind
, so if you encounter an oversight, please let me know.The practical consisted of 7 parts:
- How to get on Singularity test server (SiSi)
- Theory of bombing
- One team bombing run
- Two team simultaneous bombing run
- Launching void bombs
- Attacking a PvP fit carrier
- Why activating MWD is a bad idea
Figure 1: tactical bookmarks around the target.
The target was a PvP fit Thanatos carrier. In the beginning of the fleet, the bookmarks were shared by fleet warps (due to some being in different corp on SiSi for tournament practice), with one perch bookmark 600km above the target. Disclaimer: don't use damage bombs against carriers, use torpedoes. 1. One team bombing run.
A bomb is a dumb-fire weapon, meaning you need to aim it yourself. A bomb travels for 12 seconds at 2.500 m/s wherever your ship is aligned to, reaching 30km, where it explodes, dealing >6400 raw damage in a sphere with 15km radius. The fleet warped from the perch bookmark to a tactical 30km off the target. Using strategic overlay, it is easy to see where your bomb will explode, making it easy to aim [IMAGE NEEDED]. The fleet was told to approach carrier, hover over the bomb launcher with the mouse, the moment carrier was in area of effect, the bombers were to drop cloak, launch bombs and warp out to the bookmark 200 km off the carrier (gray). The fleet did this perfectly.
Figure 2: *placeholder* the strategic overview and bomb area of effect.
2. Two team bombing run.Since a bomb is a physical entity, it has HP and associated resist. A bomb has 99.6% resists towards the damage type it deals. If you do the math, one bomb can "tank" 7 other bombs of the same type. This has two consequences: your fleet will always use the same type of bomb (in our case, Shrapnel), regardless of hull bonuses, and the need to organize your fleet in squadrons of maximum 8 bombers.
The fleet was split into Red team and a Blue team. As you can see, the red and the blue bookmarks are 40km apart. If you remember, bombs explode after 30km, with a radius of 15km. By launching them in this way, the bomb damage only overlaps the target, but not the bombs of the other team (see figure 3).
Figure 3: bombing set up with multiple teams.
Both teams got on their respective bookmarks and started their simultaneous bombing run. No bombs were taken out, carrier got full damage. I wanted the fleet to quickly turn around for another run, but forgot myself that bomb launchers have a hefty reactivation delay: Tech I launcher has a base ROF of 160s, tech II has a ROF of 135s. Bomb deployment skill reduces the reactivation delay by 5% per skill level. Plenty of time to bomb, warp out, drink a cup of covfefe and come back. Also, Tech I bomb launcher holds 2 bombs, tech II 3.3. Launching FVB's and attacking a carrier.
In this exercise we engaged a PvP active armour fit Thanatos. Capital ships can sustain their tank with amazing repping power, as long as they can provide capacitor (unless fitted with ancillary modules). Virtually all active tanked, non ancillary fitted capitals use cap injectors and feed it with Cap Booster 3200's. In order to suppress the repping power of capitals, one needs to put cap pressure. This can be done with Focused Void Bombs (FVB). These bombs have subtle differences: they fly faster (4.000 m/s), neutralize 15.000 GJ of capacitor and have an area of effect of ... 1 meter. This makes them only useful only against ships with a big hitbox, such as capitals. There are two ways to aim them:
- Fly to 35km of the target, align towards the target. The moment the distance ticks from 30km to 29km, launch your bomb.
- Approach as in A, but using the strategic overlay, find the tiny red dot, look at the enemy ship, the moment the dot coincides with the target, fire away.
Now, to kill a carrier. The main damage output of carriers are fighters. Fighters can be jammed like normal ships. Therefore, a Falcon is necessary when engaging a carrier with a black ops fleet. Kora K was field FC in the Falcon and I piloted the carrier. The bombers were ordered to fight aligned, i.e. align to a close by celestial, enabling them to warp off if taking damage. The Falcon was sitting at 40km, his optimal, while the bombers fought aligned at >30 km, occasionally coming closer to point.
FVB:
We learned that it is best to spread out the FVB barrage, with at least 10-20s between launches. The carriers cap had a total capacity of 68000 GJ, combined with active repper, I had to play cap management online™ and thus raising the piloting load. The carrier was capped out, but had plenty of charges left. With realistic numbers, I would be toast before the cap booster could reload.
Avoiding carrier damage:
The bombers would warp off when locked. This means less DPS on grid. Other tactic is to launch two volleys, cloak up to drop lock attempts, decloak and start over. This is useful without friendly ECM on grid. The Falcon was able to perma-jam the fighters. My counter as carrier pilot was to recall the fighters, refuel them and then quickly launch, activate fighters MWD and weapons and primary the Falcon. After 3-4 repetitions, the Falcon pulled range, meaning he had more time to lock the fighters. However the jam strength dropped due to ECM fall-off, and I could often engage bombers. In a realistic setting, the carrier wouldn't stay on grid long enough to relaunch fighters 5+ times. We tested the possibility of defanging a carrier, but given high speed of fighters and low sig, the DPS is better spent on the carrier itself.
In all, very useful exercise we learned a lot from.
4. Bombs and MWD
The damage application of a bomb is only proportional to the signature radius of the target. Frigates and destroyers can survive one bomb if they are not running MWD. After the carrier kill, we all tried to see what happens if a bomber activates its MWD during a bombing run.
- You boost your sig radius by 500%.
- You'll be traveling roughly the same speed as your bomb with reduced agility, flying right into your own bomb area of effect.
- Your killmail will be posted on reddit and laughed about.
All in all a very informative session I want to run again, this time with proper calendar entry. If you have any feedback, please leave it here.
