manticore

[Kather]

i cant find a thread about it so....

i've flown a stealth bomber once in my life and it blew up straight away. however, my alt has the skills, but how do i fit it for 0.0 roaming? cant fit a mwd as far as i can see. what do i put in the mids? rigs? i really am a noob at these ships

all i can think is

2 BCUs

2 sensor damps
2 sensor boosters

3 cruise
1 cloak

(as an aside, i can fly a purifier, would that be any better?)
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[Aeaus]

It really depends what you're going to do with it. Setup wise, that looks just fine. But keep in mind unless you're going to be specifically fitting for a SB gang, then, the ship itself is pretty useless.
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FMAR: I want to eat foie gras off your chest... With a zesty mustard sauce.

[Kather]

[Unknownuna]

The damp nerf hit SBs hard, in my experience. A web and scram is pretty handy for inties that get up close. Other than that, the best you can do is try to squeeze an extender on. Too slow for mwd, really.
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[Violated]

Well, im thinking of training for a stalthbomber, but i keep people saying the manticore is the best by far. I've looked both up, the only advantage of the matnicore i see is 1 more medslot. Kinetic damage is also a bit of an advantage. Explosive like the hound will rape armor tankers, but it has 1less medslot. But the hound is just cool.

Can someone inform me on whats the best option? Guess ill start training missile skills first then (8k sp in missiles or some )

[James Lyrus]

Manticore used to be, because it used to be the only one that got 3 launchers. Now they all do, so manticore isn't as clearly awesome.

More mids are handy, as they let you do stuff like sensor boost and ewar, and basically your ship is made of tinfoil anyway.

[gluecksbaerchi]

[James Lyrus]

[Unknownuna]

Manti is also one of the better SBs because of its CPU. Allows you to fit more BCU/damp/SB etc, instead of having a speed mod or the like in the last slot due to fitting issues.
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[Helen]

I remember a spartan pilot using a Hound once to kill a hauler of ours that was delivering stront. Bomb was unexpected!
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[Byr Gena]

[James Lyrus]

[Bruce Boyako]

Exceed Inc have a ton of videos that theyve released of them pwning EVERYTHING with stealth bombers (YO GOB! ) its pretty incredible. Other ships could of done it, but not for the same tiny amount of isk lost.

lol just looked at link: holy crap the link was to them, what do you know.
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[Duun Suhuy]

I have decided that since my corp has dissolved it's okay to release a nugget of our tactics and setup knowledge.

I'll preface by saying, using a bomber, you can wrack up more solo kills in a day, with fewer losses than in any other ship I have used. But it's a patience game. The bomber is not meant to be flown solo throughout eve, hunting it's prey. It is a single high traffic system camper. It's prey are light ships within fleet formations, haulers, scouts, and rival bombers.

My proof:
http://eve-incognito.com/kb/ (Main KB Link)
http://eve-incognito.com/kb/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=2442 (3 bombers killed this eagle in 12 seconds, while the rest of the camp just sat there unable to counter)
http://eve-incognito.com/kb/?a=pilot_detail&plt_id=13(Our most successful pilot)

That's a very brief snippet, feel free to browse. We have bombers on mothership killmails even. We made BWF hell for Smashkill, and HED was our previous stomping ground. AAA and IAC developed specific counter attacks in an ongoing arms race before we left.

The setups:

Before you make a setup, you must determine your target. Are you specifically hunting inties? Will you then need a web? How about other bombers, should you be rigging for flight speed and have a plate/extender for surviving an incoming volley? Bombers are versatile within their limits and incredibly pilot skill intensive as opposed to SP intensive.

Anti Interceptor:
1 x improved cloaking device II
3 x Arbilest Cruise missile launchers

1 x Fleeting Webifier
3 x Sensor Booster II

1 x BCU
1 x Overdrive

rigs - Flight Speed (Missiles must hit target before they can ramp up speed and escape the webber. Missiles only do full damage on an interceptor at sub 800m/s or there about. Actually, I'll just say that this is easily the most desirable rig in every setup. Just use it. Maybe a missile califaction rig... but even that isn't as universally useful.)

Tactics:
In general it's really only possible to kill an inty that isn't moving, or at least that is moving in an obvious pattern i.e. orbiting a gate. The second is noticeably harder as it requires a mistake on the part of the inty pilot to be completely successful, and an incredible gauge of velocity and angle on the partof the bomber pilot. This is an incredibly dangerous maneuver.

What you have to do is approach your target to near point blank range <5k is preferable. Or place yourself within 5k of the inty's flight path. That is the difficult part, the decloak and attack is quite straightforward, Decloak, fire up the boosters, and engage lock, be sure to fire boosters first, as the lock time change doesn't calculate correctly otherwise. I would suggest make use of the hotkeys for if you're lucky enough to have a G50 keyboard, bind all three modules to the same key.

With any luck you should have a dead inty in under 5 seconds. Congrats. Expect to lose many ships while perfecting this tactic. If anything goes wrong, you're toast.

Anti-Bomber Bomber:

3 x 'Arbalest' Cruise Launcher I
Improved Cloaking Device II

3 x Sensor Booster II
Medium Shield Extender II

Ballistic Control System II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I

Rigs:
Ancillary Current Router I
Hydraulic Bay Thrusters

Tactics:
The Manti is overall my least favorite bomber. I find it's anti bomber setup to be very difficult in general, it's powergrid is feeble, it's slow, and armor tanks are far easier to fit on bombers than shield. Regardless here is is. There are many ways to hunt for enemy bombers, my favorite is to bait them by decloaking to check cans, or fire at random targets with one missile and keep the other two in reserve to kill the bomber. You're essentially trying to make him decloak for you, then beat his locktime/flight time/tank his first volley so you're will hit.

I'll leave you to figure out the other ways to go about this, after the setup it's just a matter of preference.

-----------------

Those are the only two really specific setups. For general hunting solo, I'd say fit closer to the second setup, survivability is key. If you're just learning throw a stab in there so you can run from interceptors. It may be dishonorable, but it'll keep you alive.

For those of you who bothered to read this far I'll also let you know the utmost important thing to do as a bomber pilot. SET UP WARP INS AND OUTS. If you don't align every time before decloaking (Unless you know what you're doing and baiting or something) YOU WILL DIE. Always be ready to run. And always have the gate thoroughly bookmarked so you can warp in at range. This is why the overdrive is an important mod if you can fit it. It does wonders for getting you in place faster.

In my opinion the best bombers are the hound and nemesis. Hound is fast with good damage type, and really easy to fit. The nemesis is decent to fit with the best damage type. I flew the purifier, it's perfect but EM blows.[/url]
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[Kaylana Syi]

A black ops in 0.5 can bridge up to 60 stealth bombers into 0.0. That is 30 ravens worth of cruise lauchers. Probably about 24 ravens worth of DPS. For the price of about 8k m/3 worth of fuel. You can keep reinforcements almost constant if everyone has their medical bay in the system with the black ops ship.

Add a few interdictors and a HIC and you can lock anything down in 0.0 really. That is ofc... if the system isn't cyno jammed. Pirates could get rich with the right low sec camp fleet setups with SBs.
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Approach things in life like a dog. If you can't eat it, sniff it or hump it then just piss on it and walk away.