EVE General Discussion

There is nothing wrong with the cloaking mechanics for bombers. The problem is not bombers, covert cloaks, or even ISBoxer (in this case). The number of bombers that can be ISBoxed successfully is limited by the number of bombs that can be simultaneously launched before they start destroying each other. That number is exactly 8. If your fleet was destroyed by a single squad of bombers, it was because you don't know how bombs work, how to mitigate their damage, or how to craft a fleet that can survive it. This is why shield doctrines are so rare in nulsec these days.


https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Concussion_Bomb

FACT: Each bomb has a 99.5% armor resistance to its own damage type an nothing to other damage types.
FACT: Each bomb has 240 armor HP and 50 structure HP. No shields.
FACT: Each bomb does between 6400 and 8000 damage based on skills and whether it is loaded in its matching racial bomber.
FACT: Each Stealth Bomber has a +5% damage bonus to bombs of its racial damage type per Covert Ops skill level.
FACT: Every bomb has an explosion radius of 400 meters. (This is not the same as its AoE, which is 15km.)
FACT: Every bomb has a signature radius of 400 meters.

This means with the minimum skills required (covops 1) a bomb will do 6400 damage to bombs of other types (instantly annihilating every other type of bomb within 15km), and exactly 6400*(1-.995)=32 damage to its own type. So it will take 240/32=7.5 (rounded to 8) bombs to destroy another bomb of the same type. If there are enough bonused bombs, that number will be reduced to 7.

Therefore, only as many as 8 bombs can be launched in the same direction from the same location at once before they start destroying each other, which means that an ISBoxed bomber fleet is limited to 8 bombers. If your fleet can't take 8 bombs, you're doing it wrong.

Since armor doctrines tend to have much smaller signature radii than shield doctrines (400 being the magic number), they are now the dominant tanking type in nulsec due to reduced bomb damage. Hence, baltec fleet, AHACs, etc.


There are a number of defenses to bombs.

• If you kill the bomber that launched the bomb before it detonates, the bomb will not detonate.
• If you destroy the bomb before it detonates... duh. They have a 400sigRad and very few HP. Zap them.
• If your dictors surround your fleet with bubbles, bombers will have a very hard time engaging you because they won't be able to warp at the proper ranges, and/or they may get caught and die.
• For God's sake turn off your microwarp drive. They increase your signature radius by a huge amount.
• Don't try to MJD out. It also increases your sigrad. By the time you see the bombs and activate it, its too late. (Server ticks OP.)

In short, bombs are powerful but only when used properly. Both bombs and bombers are fragile and easily destroyed. They have multiple counters. The only issue I see is how bombs have pushed shield doctrines out despite the obvious counters. I believe this is more a problem with the penalties given to shield extenders and shield rigs in relation to the damage application formula.

For example, a typical Rokh with 3x CDFEs and 1 LSE will have a 592m signature radius before links. A max-skilled and mindlinked Claymore can reduce this to 388 meters. A Baltec Megathron will have a base sigRad of 380 meters. Holy crap, that a big difference. Now add in the armor equivalent Eos-links and that gets further reduced to 249 meters. The Rokh gets almost no reduction to bomb damage. Yet the Mega gets a ~37.5% reduction.

Armor tanks have skills that reduce their penalties. Why do shields not have skills to reduce their sigRad penalties? CCP, give us a skill to reduce the sigRad penalty of shield extenders. There is already one for shield rigs. (Shield Rigging)

Because shields have passive regen is my guess.
E: Actually, I thought about that a bit more and the equivalent of passive regen for armor is the large buffer.. So I suppose a skill makes sense?
And Jarod, ISBoxer isn't being banned. Certain features are, but it's not isboxer specific.

Not empty-quoting.

I'm new to this whole boxer thing and argument. Though from what little I've gleaned it would seem to be a third party mechanism that fits under the same ban as the macros miners of old? The fact it's apparently legal clearly means it's not ... but I'm curious how it manages to side step it. Any genuine volunteers to explain it better and breifly?

NB, ... I don't care what people do to do stuff in game ... that's for CCP to worry about. I'm just concerned with dealing with what I see in front of me in game, be that one ship or ten's of ships ... 'how' they're controlled makes diddly squat to me. :)

You should be more upset at 200 people sitting in none place ganking small gangs then 5 bomber pilots wiping out a fleet of drooling F1 monkeys sitting on one place with no counters besides n+1.

We did it before the change well enough, in fleets. Man up, learn how to use bombers without the training wheels.

Actually potato iirc CCP said that was a bug, which they fixed as it effected more than just bombers...

Proposed changes to cloaking reverted. Multiplexing/broadcasting banned. Bombers still got more base tank and fitting with only slightly worse agility. Bomber net buff.

Bomb flight time and velocity slightly adjusted. Very slight nerf.

Final tally: Slight buff.

QFT

By removing what was the most abused part of the bomber equation. That being the ability for one person to effectively fly a fleet of bombers effortlessly with the broadcast capabilities of ISBoxer.

It can still be done if you are well organized, but the chances for error are much higher now... and of course a gang of individual pilots is dangerous if well organized.