Wormholes

Good day fellow wormholers,

I've done the WH thing for almost as long as I've been playing Eve, and have been solo for much of that time. I love flying SB's, Recons and other cloakies and have done a lot of fleeting with BB in the past. However, I'm at a point in my career where I've taken an interest in starting my own corp and have begun to consider the possibilities of applying the tactics I've learned with these outside entities to life in a WH, and it is for that reason that i'm here today - I'd like to discuss the practicality of defensive SB fleets in C1 - C3 holes.

Lets face it - We can't all have 20 mil SP or more dedicated to flying T3's and other common WH PVP ships. Some of us like mining, some of us do research or PI, and sometimes it just isn't feasible to spend months upon months training for a PVP ship you may only use a handful of times, if ever.

Enter the Stealth Bomber. In a little over a month, assuming you haven't already trained your preferred Frig skill to level five, you can fit and fly a decent SB that does relatively high DPS for a ship that has a relatively low training commitment. Whether you're tearing down POCO's to put up your own, camping a hole to blap industrials, ganking site runners or defending your POS against an invading fleet, the answer to all of these questions seems to be a simple "Add Bombers." - In my opinion, they are an extremely well-rounded ship, and as anyone who has flown with Bomber's Bar in the past will tell you, they can be extremely deadly in numbers. Yes, there have been recent changes to them, both good and bad, but with the new Frigate holes and the WH content being released with Rhea, I see a bright future for these ships.

In light of that...Is confronting your enemies with a Bomber fleet a suitable tactic? What can a fleet of bombers actually do to repel a siege in the low-end wormholes? Am I wrong to be extremely tempted to use Bombers as a base line for PVP in any WH corp I might start in the future, or to recommend that new or industrial-based pilots make a strong effort to train for a Bomber as soon as they can?

If you guys can provide insight, I'd very much appreciate it.

Edit: To be clear, I'm referring to fleets of 10-15 bombers.

The T3s are the bread and butter fleet of w-space and they are very resilient against bombs with their small sig radiuses and high EHP.

Bombers are on the other hand very good against battleships and tier 3 bc.

Except you probably won't seige pos's with t3's. Your using bcs, bs's or dreads.

You would need a full wing to make a significant dent (think the number is 7 bombers). Yes t3's have small sigs, but it's also commonplace to leave your mwd running, which balloons that small sig.

Statistically they are good, in practice you are relying on the persons response to a bombing.
You'd need a decent number of bombers for it to be viable.

Bombers can be very effective in some scenarios. They are capable of applying a lot of damage to larger ships mainly battlecruisers on up in either torp or bomb use cases. Against smaller targets they lose some effectiveness and damage application due to the way that signature resolution impacts missile application. Cruisers (including T3) and below will take noticeably less damage because of their smaller signatures except in the cases where they are running the MWD. They are also very "thin" ships in terms of the amount of shield/armor they have and will not stand up to a lot of punishment so hit and run is where they shine.

In groups of 10-15 like you're proposing you'll do a lot of damage to large targets in torp configuration. Equipping those bombers with target painters and/or some other ewar (tracking disruptors or sensor dampeners) would be good. I'd also recommend these be used in conjunction with some long range recon ships to keep targets pointed from range and/or damped/webbed (Arazu, Rapier) as those would be excellent force multipliers for torpedo stealth bombers.

Bombing changes the engagement profile quite a bit as you now have to split your group of 10-15 bombers into at least two groups, perhaps even 3, because over a certain number (it used to be 7 - I think it's lower post Phoebe) bombs will destroy themselves rendering them ineffective. Additionally, in a bomber setup you'll not need/want to use the target painters since you have to be within 30km - 40km of the target area to apply damage from the bombs and that's a dangerous range for a bomber to hang out at for any length of time because if the bomber dies before the bomb explodes the bomb does no damage/disappears. This is also far more difficult to setup properly as pilots need bombing run "start" and "end" (or warp out) perches setup.

As a main defense fleet, I'd recommend against bombers. They just don't have the staying power to brush off a determined attacker. They excel at high-damage guerrilla-style warfare. Get in, shoot/kill, get out.

Thanks for all the great responses so far guys, I think perhaps I've been asking the wrong question all along. Instead of asking about the viability of Bomber fleets, maybe I should have asked for suggestions on fleet composition for T1 POS defense fleets.



I will keep this in mind, thank you. I don't know why I hadn't thought of this Being mostly solo in the past I've never tried flying logi and I guess I always just assumed that T1 Logi wasn't good enough to bother with or couldn't hold up under any real dps. I will definitely keep this in mind for later if the situation calls for it.



So far this seems to be the common opinion, and it's easy to see why. I've always thought that Bombers were pretty mean little ships given their size, cost and training commitment but I definitely wouldn't want to take a fleet of Bombers against a similarly sized fleet of T3's...Or any other ship, for that matter. That would be crazy. First rule to bomber fleets is get as many ******* bombers as you possibly can, and I wouldn't be doing anything without having a clear numbers advantage.

I was also under the assumption that if people couldn't bring BS's or Tier 3 BC's to siege a large POS then they generally wouldn't bother at all, so thanks for clearing that up. Furthermore, when compared to something like a T1 Cruiser fleet with logi, it's easy to see why Bombers would not be anyone's first choice - Both cheaper to field and easier to skill for.



While I totally understand where you're coming from, Ishtars or similar ships are wayyyy more training than most indy or mining toons - especially newer players - are willing to consider training into for defense or the occasional pew fleet. The reason I brought up Bombers in the first place is because Bombers themselves are long-ish range, high alpha ships that offer great "Bang for your buck" in terms of required skill training and Isk - A "one-size-fits-all" ship if you will, that can be used for POS or POCO bashes, Ratting, PVP fleets and even light scanning.

At the end of the day I'll stick with using bombers in their traditional role, but i'm still curious to hear from anybody that may have used Bombers in defense fleets in the past...However rare that might be.

Bombers are good as situational ships and ships when you don't really want to pvp but want to stick around. Worst case - you'll suddenly end up in an interdiction bubble and get killed by drones :).

If you really want to pvp - go with cruisers and battlecruisers with some logi. Unless you have a lot of contacts who have pledged to your plan you will struggle to find enough people join in in the first place. It can end up being more expensive paying for wh living logistics than t1 pvp cruisers :p.

Hope to see you out there.

With all the pirate data & relic sites popping up a good use for a bomber is to fit it with rockets and attack any exploration frigates trying to hack the sites

[Manticore, Rockets ]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II

1MN Afterburner II
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Medium Ancillary Shield Booster, Navy Cap Booster 50

Rocket Launcher II, Scourge Rage Rocket
Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I
Rocket Launcher II, Scourge Rage Rocket
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Rocket Launcher II, Scourge Rage Rocket

Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst I
Small Bay Loading Accelerator I

O/H The rockets & ASB - should make quick work of a heron

No offense, but can I assume then that you've never used a lockbreaker bomb? Because if you had you'd know that their paltry ECM strength is hardly enough to guarantee a break against anything larger. In fact, I've tried to use them in the past, and my experience was that they were worthless.

That said, they could probably use an upgrayedd.

Probably right as you would need to be lucky -
A Guardian sporting 19 radar against the lockbreaker 12.5 its only about a 65% chance - but ECM is just percentages and luck.

Is that the Red Rocket Red Rocket club?