On making the best use of a bomber

Fying around w-space on my own or in a pair, the stealth bomber makes for an excellent ambushing ship. And, being Caldari, my stealth bomber of choice is the Manticore. Because of the types of ship that are needed to engage Sleepers, I am generally restricted to ambushing miners and salvagers in the Manticore, which affects how the ship is fitted. My current fit is as follows:

The high slots should be obvious, they’re for the pew. The choice of afterburner instead of MWD in the mid is because I am generally cloaked and cannot use an active propulsion module, and don’t want the sig radius bloom or need the speed to keep up with my target. Maybe the extra speed could help me escape when necessary, but the ship is so fragile it may not really matter. The target painter is to make the bombs and torpedoes hit harder against the non-battleship targets. And the sebo, loaded with a scan resolution script, is to help me catch pods. The BCS in the lows give my torpedoes more punch.

The fitting is situational, the one above being mostly for solo runs against salvagers and miners. A second Manticore in the same bombing run needn’t have the point or sebo, and can be adapted to complement the first. A good second fitting, which Fin uses, has remote sensor dampers, which can be used against combat ships to prevent reciprocal locking, either to stop the target from shooting back or damping a combat ship that is guarding the target. A damper can also be used to break a lock and shake off a point, to help you escape.

Most of the modules are Tech II, except for the siege launchers and target painter. The meta 4 target painter, the PWNAGE, is as effective as its Tech II equivalent but requires less CPU, helping the fit. Tech II siege launchers, even with advanced weapon upgrades V, simply don’t fit. At least, not with two BCS in the lows, which is the topic of debate amongst Fin and myself at the moment.

I have the meta 4 launchers and considered the extra rate-of-fire of the T2 launchers to be less desirable than the boost to damage the extra BCS gives. This was purely based on assumption, though. Fin ran some numbers, meta 4 launchers against T2, with no BCS, one BCS, and two BCS, the latter option only available to the meta 4 launchers because of the tight fitting restriction. It turns out that T2 launchers with one BCS would give a minor, albeit real, increase in DPS over the meta 4 launchers with two BCS. I think that surprised us both.

Of course, I tried to justify my position, but not merely out of pride. My first argument that flying a fully T2 ship would be too expensive is rather silly when my alternative is to fit meta 4 items, which generally tend to be more expensive than their higher-tech equivalents. However, my other argument concerns how much use we get out of the launchers in the first place. There are few times when our bombers are engaged in a sustained attack on a target, and if we are then time is not really a concern. Normally, we only have the opportunity to fire one or two volleys of torpedoes, if any at all, before needing to warp away or cloak.

If we only get to launch a single volley of torpedoes then damage-per-second is not a useful metric. What we need to know is the alpha strike, the single volley damage of the launchers. And as the T2 launchers don’t add to the damage directly, just the rate-of-fire, the volley damage should be higher with a second BCS, which can only be fitted with the meta 4 launchers. If we only get one shot, we need to make sure it counts. But after spending so long training AWU V and advanced torpedo specialisation to get the snazzy T2 launchers fitted there must be some advantage to fitting them, and the advantage is that the extra damage of T2 missiles, only usable in T2 launchers, offsets the missing BCS.

Naturally, T2 ammo is expensive, but over the average life of one of my Manticores in w-space it will probably work out cheaper to fit T2 than meta 4. So it seems like the best option is to fit T2 launchers and sacrifice a BCS. The damage will still be equivalent, or better, as will the cost, whilst freeing up a low slot. Unless a mid slot fitting is reduced to a T1 module, the spare low slot will need to have a co-processor fitted. But making the switch allows for the low slot to be used for a nanofibre modification, to improve agility for fleeing, or an overdrive to increase cloaked velocity, both options appealing to the covert ambusher.

But there is another option, which Fin cleverly realises. Keeping the co-processor in the low slot allows for rigs to be fitted, covering the penalty of higher CPU requirements for the launchers. Specifically, warhead calefaction catalyst rigs can be fitted, which are effectively each a direct replacement for a BCS, at least for the damage bonus. With two rigs and a single BCS in the low slot, the Manticore has the equivalent of three BCS fitted, all with the added benefit of T2 missiles. As Fin calculates, ‘for maximum alpha, an SB pilot could fit two rigs pushing its alpha another 700 damage higher to outpace the Meta 4 setup by 793! The total is about 5255 [with all skills at V], which is almost like hitting them with another 2/3rds of a bomb!’ A test firing with the new configuration confirms this, the only relevant skill I’m missing being warhead upgrades V. So my new fitting is:

And that packs one hell of a punch.