Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Null security combat is ruled by a handful of ever present threats. You are at constant risk of being hot-dropped, pounced by a larger force at the other end of a stargate, and, prominently, of having your entire fleet annihilated by a bombing run at an inopportune moment.

It is the prospect of being destroyed by an invisible hoard of highly maneuverable, and most of the time, effectively indestructible frigates that leads me to believe that bombers have become too powerful for the game's own good. Operations in nullsec are consistently operating under the imminent prospect of getting bombed, and must seek to mitigate the situation accordingly - a tactical reality that I don't find to be healthy.

I believe that bombers could be made a little less overwhelming by reducing their maneuvering capabilities. It is the ability to position the stealth bomber in system with impunity (especially now that cloaked ships can't decloak each other) that really makes the opportunistic bombing run such a threatening prospect. When the only recourse another fleet has is to narrow their options just to reduce the threat posed by bombers, the depth of the strategic landscape suffers, and other, less savory strategies, such as massing capital ships, come into greater prominence.

To alleviate the tension that bombers have created, the bomber should have to warp without the protection of a cloaking device. A window of exposure forces more consideration in their deployment - offering their victims a better opportunity to react twithout eliminating their flavor of gameplay altogether. However, to compensate, the bombers would need a significant cloaked velocity bonus, comparable to the Black Ops Battleship.

I believe that this change would broaden the strategic tapestry of nullsec, and would ultimately be a net benefit to the game.

Come on, even I do think that bombers are fine..

Make them exposed to enemy fire before they can launch their bombs would defeat their purpose eintirely.

Remove the stealth from stealth bombers you mean?

Remove literally the only protection they have? Make them entirely unable to do their job, that is, hit and run attacks on fleets of larger ships?

Lest we forget, Stealth Bombers originally could not use covert ops cloaking devices.

The only thing the stealth bomber would lose is the ability to arrive and depart in secret. I do not believe this capability is fundamentally necessary for the stealth bomber to successfully perform its mission.

If the stealth bomber can move faster while cloaked, has a small re-cloaking and re-targeting delay, and keeps its other capabilities, it will remain a powerful weapons platform.

You mean what the opposing force does as soon as the bombs go out, assuming its in their power to do so? It's not the most dramatic change from the status quo. What it does afford is a reaction window, while creating moments of opportunity for reaction that don't involve an immediately encroaching bunch of bombs.

The bomber can also be insta locked and unable to cloak. Effectively making the bomber useless. Stealth ships are meant to make you afraid. Death that you can't even see. It also helps that you need a small fleet of them to actually screw something over.

Hint, if theres a neut in system, you are never safe. Welcome to New Eden.

They also, if I remember rightly, could use cruise missiles to smash things from 150KM out.


A bunch of bombers land on grid, they can't cloak because they're too close to one another, they die to the fleet's instacanes/interceptors. I assume that's your vision of where bombers should be?

No. Stealth bombers are currently effective and fun for many people. This change would eviscerate them.

And titans had AOE DD's, railguns sucked, Jamming was even more powerful and nano'd ships could do 13k/s+

Ah the good old days. We've moved forward and ships are now much better defined in their roles, much more able to play their roles and the SB is one of the best examples. Has to get in close, be sneaky, align, uncloak drop bomb, and attempt to get away.

The tank is possibly the lightest in the game, and if the targets have a sebo'd craft smaller than a BS, chances are your SB or a teammate's is going down that round.

Stealth really is the only defense that stealth bombers have. And if you know they're there, they're not really stealthed are they?

the way you want it, they have to warp into the start point, then cloak while the enemy pretends it didn't see the red on overview, and powers up all the sensor boosters and ready guns. SB won't get a bomb off, it will uncloak and die.

Bombs are a terrible game mechanic.

They are not a threat until they are, their actual window of opportunity is seconds long, and the only thing people can do in response to them is disengage or get hammered. Game mechanics should encourage people to get in fights and stick with them as long as they believe they can get something done, not leave people with the immediate choice to abandon the fight or die.

By design, stealth bombers only leave the players in the target area the option to bail. Anyone around them with a fast locking time can point them and shoot their ship out from under them, sure, but the stealth bomber remains a relatively small loss. Meanwhile, the damage they can do to opposing fleets have made many doctrines untenable, and driven the current metagame towards skirmish fleets with small signature radius, and brick fleets.

Ever wonder why N3 has moved to capital ship doctrines? When they try other things, they die in a fire; they don't have the numbers to back up any gained experience. Jump drives, huge buffer tanks, flexibility in combat, and effective immunity to bombing runs has driven just about everyone who can't push a numbers advantage in a nullsec fight into capitals; they have no other choice, as sub-capitals don't have the staying power to last against, or out-maneuver, a numerically superior force. Bombs contribute heavily to this problem, which, by design, immediately destroy any opportunity an opposing fleet has to have "fun" - they immediately lose their power to shoot back. Bombs have no utility value except in immediately destroying significant portions of an opposing fleet. It's a strategically valuable capability, but mass destruction without recourse is a dis-empowering design.

Fundamentally, a bombing run is no fun for the same reason the AOE doomsday is no fun. Between fight or flight, barring a few choices that are the subject of much ire, the only choice is flight - and that's bad.