[JTL] Effective Tactical Deployment

[eqsanctum 1,636]

Loadouts:

Pretty standard place to start is in dry dock. Now I follow a pretty standardised method for putting a ship together. I decide on the engine first, then I work on the weaponry, then reactor to run everything sparingly and then finally I start filling everything up as best I can with whats remaining. One thing the TIE Bomber can say has in its favour, is mass. It is roughly 190K mass (mine is 191639 to be exact).

Engine: The engine is a bit of a debate really. As with a lot of ships you have 3 main choices:

- Mark V Crafted:

The best speed you will likely get out of an engine, low PYR rates and a painful RED EO4'd. Roughly 35k Mass. You want the top speed to be above 119.5 dont forget there isnt much difference at all between 0.1 TS, 1.19 Speed units with WO4 so if its in the 120 ball park dont worry too much about it. When running the mark V crafted engine the emphasis is on speed. The TIE-Bomber has a 0.85x speed modifier, which means with 120 TS you will only fly at 1428 at 100% throttle (EO4'd). A 1.00x speed modifier can achieve this with a 102 TS engine and many will be using faster engines than that. So if you are going to out run anything you need a big booster. Mark V Crafted engines are being updated with ChV and will likely become an even better choice for the TIE-Bomber as you will be able to get very respectable speed and PYR out of them for a good mass.

- RE'd Level 10:

Stats depend, of course, on the quality of you're RE. For good results I would suggest to try and get the following pre RE: Drain 1450.0 Mass 44000 Pitch 78 Yaw 78 Roll 78 Top Speed 90 Of course anything you better is no bad thing. This engine will only have an actual speed of roughly 1100 -1200 at 100% throttle (EO4'd). This means that most ships are going to out run you no matter what you do. You can however turn at startling speeds, remember that you cannot change the direction of your turn quickly, instead follow them through to completion.

- RE'd Level 8 QID:

Again stats vary with quality. For a good start RE I would suggest the following pre RE: Drain 1450.0 Mass 25000 Pitch 72 Yaw 72 Roll 72 Top Speed 95 It shouldnt be too tough to get hold of a 95 Top Speed QID, talk to you're friendly neighbourhood starmap farmer and I am sure he/she/it will sell you one cheap. This is sort of a compromise engine between the mark V and the RE'd 10. It can be reasonabley fast, typically between 1200 and 1400 at 100% throttle (EO4'd), It also has respectable PYR values all wrapped up neatly with its relatively low mass

Summary:

Of these choices no-one can really tell you, "you are wrong" to choose it, different people will find different alternatives suit them better. However the strategy behind the engines is slightly different and I will go through the possible strategies that I found were viable later in this report.

Armament:

The TIE-Bomber features two SP gun mounts and two missile mounts. The spread between gun mounts is minimal and actually overlap.

Guns:

There are a great many options for how to best equip the weapon slots of the dupe. The two main Idea's behind the weapons are: Power or Refire. To achieve maximum power you double up with linked guns of the same refire rate, the alternative is to unlink the guns.

-Power:

Here you are linking guns of equal refire to perform a devastating strike on a target. This is a very mass efficient method of destroying a target. Two good RE'd C6 guns will do a similar damage to an RE'd C10 gun, at a fraction of the mass but higher drain. The disadvantage is that it is tough to be accurate in a Tie-Bomber unless your target is straight jousting you.

-Refire:

Here you're guns are unlinked and you fire them in sequence to produce a steady stream of danger in front of the ship. More powerful guns are needed here as you often only hit with one of the guns at a time. I think this gives a bit of psycological advantage aswell as increasing your chances of hitting you're target. Obviously the disadvantage is less power and the awkwardness of producing the steady stream.

I personally go for dual C8 reward guns for the obvious high damage low drain performance in them, I can also switch between the power and refire roles relatively easily. Some people go for a "mismatched pair" e.g being a C7 and C8 combo, because the C7 gun fires faster than the C8 gun when you hold the fire button down during unlinked fire it automatically switches between Refire and power over time. This can be particularly devastating and doesnt require much thought from the pilot.

Ordanance:

Missiles are strongly encouraged in PvP, they will often give a pilot the slight edge over a non-missile user and are, of course, an integral part of the bombers role. Chaff is the only worthwhile countermeasure against missiles and most people are limited to carrying 15 chaff per launch (16 is the 100% experimentation). One chaff launch will stop one incoming missile, if launched early enough. The aim is to make every missile count which means first of all selecting the correct missiles. There are 3 main types of missiles used in PvP:

-Image-Rec missiles:

This is the fastest locking missile. Mark II's are the possibley the most common missile used in PvP. The advantage of them is the ease of sending a missile off in a turn fight, disadvantages are that they are light in damage and do not have many charges per pack.

Mark II: Min damage 2000+ Max damage 6000+ Ammo 7+

WO4'd PvP Damage: Approx 2600 damage per missile hit.

-Proton missiles:

This is a "Medium" locking missile; about a second longer to lock than an Image-Rec and has a slower refire rate. It makes up for this with its larger ammo capacity and damage ranges. Mark III's and Mark IV's are the common missiles in PvP. A mark III will have around 15 rounds to a pack so is perfect for events but it can be a struggle to get off a shot in a turn fight.

Mark III: Min damage 2900+ Max damage 7500+/7000+ Ammo 14+/15+

WO4'd PvP Damage: Approx 4200 damage per missile hit.

Mark IV: Min damage 4200+ Max damage 11000+ Ammo 12+

WO4'd PvP Damage: Approx 5000 damage per missile hit.

-Concussion missiles:

This is another "Medium" locking missile type. Concussion missiles are very similar to their cousin; the proton missile. The main difference is that a concussion missile will do no damage to armour but massive damage to shields. This missile is a POB's / adjusted reward shield ships worst nightmare. Mark III: Min damage 3200+ Max damage 9500+ Ammo 15+ WO4'd PvP Damage: Approx 10000 damage per missile hit to shields ONLY.

One thing you must remember when selecting your missile of choice, is that they must have similar locking times if you want to link them.

Defence:

The TIE-Bomber requires a large defencive capacity and the mass allows for this. You can comfortabley fit in a C8 reward shield and two C8 fibertech RE's. I suggest aiming to replace at least the front plate with a high HP C10 plate sometime in the future, if you can get one to fit. An alternative to the C8 reward shield is of course a C7 protectonet if you need more mass for elsewhere or a C10 RE if you have a lot of mass free. Remember you are a big target so defence is paramount.

Capacitor:

Technically any capacitor is feasible, I suggest an even level RE'd capacitor at least, C6 capacitors being a smart choice, maybe higher if you can afford the mass and depending on what guns you are using. Dual C8 guns will run perfectly on a C6 cap though.

Pre RE:

Cap Level 2 4 6 8 10

Mass x 3000 8000 24000 40000

Energy 950 1100 1250 1350 1500

Recharge 38 43 48 57 60

Reactor:

To make all this work you are going to need a mid to high Reactor generation rate. With an RE'd Engine you can probably get away with a 24k+ RGR reactor. With a crafted engine you will need a 30k RGR if you want a hope of using EO4 and WO4.

Look for:

Slayn and Korpil mark III Vortex Reactors (C7) and Kuat Systems Engineering RCT-Z Reactors (CSMILEY

These can have high RGR's.

Countermeasures:

Standard crafted chaff launcher is all you want and need. 850 is the lowest the Mass or RED will go so you need to decide which ones you want experimented on and how much. As for the chaff packs itself 15 Chaff is standard and 16 chaff is the ultra rare 100% experimentation stuff that can be useful in a missile rich environment. However from experience missiles arent much of a worry unless in a 1 on 1 duel with another bomber, Bombers arent priority targets for other bombers and not many people would waste a missile on one.

Booster:

Finally the booster. Now this is a bit of a judgement call, in many situations you hit the booster and you die. You will fly dead straight for a fair ammount of time and unless you have a Mark V engine and massive booster you wont even be moving that fast. As for choice, Crafted boosters tend to be high speed for 10 second burn times, RE'd boosters you can get some longer burn times for lower speeds. The main two RE'd boosters utalised are the C4 and C8. If you want to use a crafted reactor I reccomend an overdriven booster with speed and consumption experimentation. A lot of people go for Energy and speed, but the fact of the matter is you get the same burn time but longer recharge time if you experiment in Energy!

A few example loadouts:

My dupe

A crafted dupe:

Modified Mark V Reactor

Mark V engine

Mark IV shield

Mark IV Armour

Mark IV Armour

Mark IV Capacitor

Mark I Booster

Mark III Droid Interface

Experimental Green Blaster

Experimental Green Blaster

Image-Rec mark II launcher

Image-Rec mark II launcher

Chaff Launcher

Programs will be tough and restrict the effectiveness of this ship. RO4, CO4 and CTSS are musts. Probably limited to EO3 and WO2/3 though till you improve the reactor or the weaponry. The fact you cant use WO4 also means you may want to substitute the image-rec's for mark III protons.

Hopefully that wasnt too long winded or vague and helped you understand the kind of parts you are going to need for your bomber. Understanding which of the choices you want to make will come from the next section, which is flying the dupe.

[eqsanctum 1,636]

Tactics and Deployment:

Before entering combat there are a couple of things you have to come to grips with:

1) You are going to die, a lot.

2) Almost every ship you fight out classes your's.

So how can you be effective and minimise 1)?

Be prepared and control the situation.

By this time I am sure you are glad you aren't paying me for my advice , but it is as simple as that.

We have already sorted out the ship load out, so are half prepared. The other half comes by knowing the situation. You need to know how many ships you are likely to be up against, what variants of ship, where they are, what they are doing, how many slices of toast they had in the morning etc. You then need to weigh up what the best setup to use for that situation would be (this part will likely mean revisting you're load out) a bomber pilot needs to be flexible.

Boosting at the wrong time will kill you:

When boosted or at high % throttle settings you will have near to no evasive maneuverability at all, calling it sluggish would be an insult to Jabba the Hutt.

A lot of boosters will also cause the booster bug and when the energy of the booster has been expended the ships controls reverse, left turns right, right turns left.

You can't return to a turn speed quickly due to the low deceleration mods of the bomber, this means that if someone is behind you and you boosted away, its unlikely you will decelerate to a turning speed and do a 180 before he catches up to you.

Missile tactics:

A lot of people just hold the missile fire button down fly around and launch there payload quickly and un necesarily. 9 times out of 10 the initial lock is not the right time to fire the missile. If you fire too early your missile will be chaffed and chaff costs a hell of a lot less than missiles SMILEY. Your ship will be capable of a lock at around 600m, but your missile will take a few seconds to cross this distance, which means that there was no point in firing. If you wait untill the ships are under 100m apart your missile will be near unchaffable! and the pilot will more than likely have hit the chaff launch button a split second too late, so he will have taken the hit AND used up a precious chaff launch.

The Perfect missile:

This is where the launch is so perfectly timed it hits your oponent in the rear. If in a head to head the oponent is near ontop of you and you launch the missiles will do a 1000 G 180 degree loop in a split second and strike your oponents rear shields. Since a lot of people (excluding certain heavy/bomber pilots) use front adjust droid programs this is a fatal hit most of the time. Another instance where you can score a perfect missile is in a turn fight, if you or your oponent has changed vectors then your paths can cross and you will get a quick flash of their arse.

The h4xed missile :

You need to be flying a multiple tubed ship (works best with tripple tubes) and You need to have at least 2 groups of missiles. One group fires 1 missile the other group fires the remaining missile(s). You fly as normal attempting to aquire your lock, as soon as you get it you launch the first missile, (The person you are launching against has no way of knowing how many missiles are coming at him so if he knows you are about he will dump the max necesary chaff for all your missiles). You then need to count a couple of seconds trying to keep a lock on your target, when you have finished your count fire off the remaining missile group. This will send your missiles at the target who is expecting to have already chaffed them. If you time it right he wont dump anymore missiles because he will think he already has. If you hear someone saying "But I dumped a million chaff!" this is why they still died. An incredibley difficult and dangerous strategy to use as even if you dont hit with any of your missiles your opponent will have launched at least 5 chaff, probably more, which will leave him closer to that no chaff danger zone.

The Trick shot:

Now this one I had the pleasure of learning from experience in being on the receiving end of and is truely a masterful missile launch, as it requires a number of skillfull maneuvers, more likely to happen through luck than anything else. This is where you launch a missile directly after you score a hit on someone with lasers in a turn fight. The timing has to be perfect, when you have just done damage, if you time it right your opponent will be very slightly shaken up by the hit and going for his shield shunt and thinking about his next move defensive or offensive. For a few critical seconds they will be vulnerable both mentally and physically. If your missile hits it will be adding to damage already done by your blasters. Because your opponent is slightly shaken up by the hit and thinking about what he is going to do next he will probably not react as fast as he usually would giving you a few split seconds of a window to execute the 2nd wave of this assault. Then if you hit with the missile, if the damage doesnt disable him he will be very shaken up by this time and you may get in another blaster shot to finish the job.

The lazy missile:

This is very effective for slow optimum speed ships and ships using Slower locking missiles like the proton III. You lie in wait letting the other ship come to you, either be stationary or at very low throttle 10%. Spray fire in your opponents direction then when the timing is right launch missiles and move to your optimum turn speed or boost.

Some tactics I use in different situations:

1 on 1:

I find the optimal loadout for me here is a C10 engine and dual mark III protons. I run Front adjust extreme and move at 0-30% power towards the opposition. When they enter around 700m I open up with guns tracing fire towards them, this is as much to do damage as to discourage them from head on jousting. I then wait for the lock and launch missiles at the last moment. If they unfortunately get past you then things become very tricky and you are going to need to try and get them with guns in the turn (You are unlikely to get a missile lock on a fast target in the turn). This is a bit of a hit and miss technique it either works or you die.

An alternative is to use IR-2's instead of the protons. Follow a similar routine but try for a missile lock in the turn fight. I personally dont use IR-2's very often and found myself either launching too early or not doing enough damage to kill.

Against other bombers this technique is usually MAD, this can also be the case against multi gun ships like the X-Wing.

Odds even/Odds for:

In this situation a Mark V engine can work wonders. You want to get all the air superiority fighters tied up in their twisty, turny battles, then pick out a target and swoop in for the kill. Before they know what has happened you need to be out the other side and picking your next target. A wingman can be helpful here aswell in that they can pick and targets that are situationally aware and coming after you. The trick is not to be seen at the start or they will come for you immediately. Missile wise, I tend to run mark III's again here, for the damage.

Odds against:

Unfortunately when the odds are against you, the heat is on. It is likely that someone will notice you and engage you straight off which means you have to make things count from the word go. I feel that a C8 engine can be pretty nice in these situations and IR-2's are a definate winner. Just try and bring the odds down as fast as possible. Accept that you are dead already and try and tip the balance for you're team/squadron mates. For the Empire!

Typical anti-bomber tactics:

Tactic:

Pace the bombeer by 500-600m wait for them to get impatient and launch their missiles. Then close the gap and do damage before they can reaquire a lock and reload their missile tubes.

Counter-Tactics:

Attempt to use the h4xed missile technique above.

Slow you're speed deceptively so, then line them up aquire the lock and boost keep the lock and attempt to close the gap before they respond to the maneuver. This can be very risky and is best used with mark V engines and very fast boosters. Its also tough to keep that lock when you cant maneuver.

Be patient and wait for them to come to you.

Tactic:

Boost towards the bomber and attempt to beat the lock. Risky maneuver best not attempted against ships with IR-2's.

Counter-Tactics:

Slow to a full stop and spray fire in their direction, if they pull out from a near direct course then you can get the lock in the nick of time.

Work hard on getting those hits with guns.

Message edited by SyphusDeacon on 02/14/2007 19:28:59.