Warfare & Tactics

Sorry for this - I know what I'm about to ask is probably old news to many forum-goers, but here goes anyway:

I was just reading up on Faction Warfare, having never done it before and curious what it was all about. Then, I stumble on people talking about doing level 4 FW missions in stealth bombers? Apparently, this is due to the fact that mission targets in FW are much less numerous than normal missions, possibly only requiring you to take out 1-3 targets to complete?

My questions are: can anyone tell me whether this is a RELIABLE approach to dealing with FW missions - or is it just a grossly inefficient novelty? And if it is practical, are there circumstances that might blunt this tactic's effectiveness? I've seen that, for example, caldari jamming and light missiles could make short work of a stealth bomber - does this mean it's only possible against certain factions?

Info from anyone who's employed this approach, or seen it employed, would be greatly appreciated.

If you're selective about your missions, yes, a bomber soloing L4 FW missions can work pretty reliably. One way to make it work is to pick a bomber that's built by the faction you're going to fight - that way, you get the bomber's damage bonus shooting into the faction's resistance hole. Nemesis against Gallente, Manticore against Caldari, that sort of thing.

You need to get your speed-to-signature ratio as high as you possibly can, though, and you absolutely need to fly manually to keep high transversal to slip the NPC guns. Rule of thumb says you want to top 1,000 meters per second on afterburner; in my experience, in a Nemesis, that usually takes two overdrives in the lows and a deadspace afterburner (expensive, but it earns out quickly).

NPC electronic warfare can also make these missions a cast iron [beep]. Gallente will throw enough tracking disruptors at you that you'll have to get within 15,000 meters to lock up your target, which means coming terrifyingly close to about 378.6 metric f[beep]tons of battleship guns. Minmatar will target-paint you, throwing your speed-to-signature ratio into the toilet and letting their missiles cream you. Caldari will jam you out completely. Amarr ... will use tracking disruptors, which mean [beep]-all against a stealth bomber.

And I've got a bad feeling that somewhere along the way, CCP buffed some of the elite NPC's in those missions with Sleeper AI and forgot to tell the players. I was tag-teaming a mission with a buddy, assigned to destroy a stargate, and was kiting all the hostiles a couple of hundred km away from him, when one elite battleship reversed course, charged in on him at a kilometer a second, and started neuting him - while it still had me red-boxed.

But on the other hand, running Level 3's and Level 4's (three L3 missions will get you as much LP as one L4, and more cash besides) got me enough LP to be effective in one of the recent LP dumps.

Missions in FW used to be the only way to make LP and turn a profit. Now they are redundant and serve no useful purpise except as an exploit. They should be removed. Period.

Come winter the winning side will get quite a bit of LP off of defensive plexing. You get paid for fighting and advancing your faction. Where does mission running fall in with that? Is it in only enemy occupied systems? No. Is the AI advanced and challenging? You do it in a stealth bomber, so no. Can the enemy enter the plex and push a button to end it in failure for you? Again, no.

I think the really bad part is that come winter, you will be able to pull in around 500k in LP an hour at Tier V. To degrade a level V system with 300k LP takes 30 hours. Even at the highest maintenance fee, two and a half hours of mission running are all you need to move a system to Tier V. It's just really bad balance.

That's assuming agents are going to be affected by the new payout system, which I doubt they will be.

If they don't get the lp bonus from high tiers, missions will get a relative nerf. For example, a Major plex under tier 5 in the new system would get 30k x 300% = 90k and takes 20min to complete, so times 3 again for hourly lp = 270k lp/h theoretical max (have to take travel time into account, so real would be less). It takes me about 2 hours, from accepting first mission to turning in last mission, to run 7 missions depending on which missions I get, so average payout per mission is about 30k x 7 = 210k. So about 105k lp/h.

So, assuming agents won't be included in the tier bonuses, offensive plexing will by far be the better option for generating lp. If they are, I'd get about 315k lp/h under tier 5.

Stealth Bombers are ok for missions. People use them due to cov-ops cloak but there are many too weaknesses that are too often overlooked.

HAM Drake is better if you use Cloaky Mwd trick for travel.

Drake tanks everything + Damps wont matter once you're in HAM range.
With stealth bombers you sometimes need to do multiple warp in/outs just to kill all objectives. Drake does not have this problem - making it much faster overall for FW missions.