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Stealth Bomber Reviews

The four stealth bomber types and their noteworthy characteristics are as follows:

Hound: The Minmatar bomber uses shrapnel bombs and bane torpedoes that deal explosive damage. It is a good middle of the road bomber, especially against armor-tankers, but I wouldn't bother trying to bomb drakes with them.

Manticore: The Caldari bomber uses concussion bombs and juggernaut torpedoes that deal kinetic damage. The fourth mid-slot and high CPU for fitting allow the manticore a lot of leeway, making it in many ways the most versatile bomber. It can use various missile-related rigs to improve its torpedo damage. It can use remote sensor dampeners for solo ganking, to get off extra volleys before a solitary target can lock you in return. It can fit a small shield extender in order to have more hit points.

Nemesis: The Gallente bomber uses scorch bombs and inferno torpedoes that deal thermal damage. Thermal damage is generally the hardest kind of damage to tank against, so this is a pretty good all-around choice. Additionally, its fourth mid-slot gives it some flexibility in fitting, similar to the manticore above.

Purifier: The Amarr bomber uses electron bombs and mjolnir torpedoes that deal EM damage. While EM damage is quite good against Caldari targets, Minmatar targets have such absurdly high EM resists that bombing or torpedoing them is often quite futile. Because of the great prevalence of Minmatar ships in PVP, this is sometimes a problem.

Note that the bomb and missile types listed are the variety that the ship gets a damage bonus for, but that the ship may load bombs or torpedoes of any type.

Torpedoes

Torpedoes do a ton of damage to battleships and larger, but not much to smaller targets. This means that they are not especially good at fighting other frigates or even cruisers, but that they excel at pouring damage on to a soft target like an industrial-class vessel, or a battleship that is too distracted to blow it up.

Good missile skills are necessary if you plan on using torpedoes in PVP. Skills like Missile Launcher Operation V, Heavy Missiles III, Torpedoes IV, Missile Bombardment IV, Missile Projection IV, Target Navigation Prediction IV, and Warhead Upgrades IV.

Though it may be better to use named siege launchers to fire torpedoes rather than the tech two versions, if you opt for the t2 version you will need to train Torpedoes V.

Another good idea is using a Target Painter. Though often ridiculed, a single target painter will drastically improve torpedo damage.

Also, note that using small-sized rigs can be relatively cost-effective these days, if you can squeeze it on. The Bay Loading Accelerator I rig will boost your rate of fire, which is very nice for getting off that second volley against industrials and so forth. Unfortunately, there are no rigs that affect bombs or bomb launchers at this time, and many of the other rig options do not affect torpedoes.

Also, if you're really going for high-end, you could pack some Crash (a kind of combat booster).

Cooperative Bomb Usage

Getting set up to drop multiple bombs on a single fleet requires a bit of coordination, but the rewards are great. With enough bombs, it can be like a localized version of titan doomsdays (the old, grid-slaughtering version of doomsdays).

The biggest obstacle to using bombs with friends is that bombs damage each other, and only have resistance against the type of damage that they inflict. Bombs don't have many hit points. Thus, if two electron bombs are launched in sequence, then a scorch bomb is launched, the first electron bomb will detonate and destroy the scorch bomb before it explodes and injure but not destroy the second electron bomb.

This means that in order to bomb a single area multiple times without giving targets time to react, you need to make sure all your bombers are using the same bomb type. When using the wrong bomb type in a bomber you give up a +20% damage bonus, but it's worth it to get the layered damage.

Another problem is making sure that all the bombs are aligned on the same target at the same time. This is best accomplished through practice with flying bombers, and moving around the battlefield without being de-cloaked.

Note that the non-damage bombs inflict minute amounts of damage, so that there is a hard limit to the amount of simultaneous detonations possible, even though the bombs are not associated with causing damage.

Sample Manticore Fitting

High-Slots

• x1 Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
  
• x1 Bomb Launcher I (Concussion Bomb)
  
• x3 'Malkuth' Siege Missile Launcher I (Juggernaut Torpedo)

Mid-Slots

• x2 Sensor Booster II (Scan Resolution Script)
  
• x1 Warp Disruptor II
  
• x1 Target Painter II

Low-Slots

• x1 Nanofiber Internal Structure II
  
• x1 Ballistic Control Systems II

Assuming you're hot on the keys, this will let you lock a target of opportunity very quickly after de-cloaking, thus letting you put your warp disruptor and target painter on a target almost immediately. You may then pound him with your torpedoes at your leisure. Alternatively, you can launch bombs to harass fleets.

Fun Bomb Facts And Advice

Just some general tips:

• Bomb detonations will damage cloaked ships but not de-cloak them.
• Any target that a single bomber can destroy via torpedoes will almost certainly require at least two volleys. I recommend fitting a warp disruptor on any bomber that is going to engage with torpedoes.
• Though a single bomb usually won't destroy a frigate, it will kill most drones. It may be worthwhile to strafe groups that have a lot of drones out.
• Corpses, wrecks, and jetcans will not de-cloak an already cloaked ship, but will prevent them from re-cloaking.
• Stealth bombers are in many ways just as serviceable as covert ops ships. They are just as good at smuggling small items, scouting for a fleets, or looking for cosmic anomalies (or other easily found exploration sites).

Have Fun!

That's it for now, good luck.