A bomber's lament. With calculations of the changes

I never said that.

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** ships dying too fast to even allow for seconds of situational awareness already **

CCP: “Let’s REDUCE resists and increase DAMAGE!.. That’ll get those avoiding pvp right into the action!.. Oh, and let’s make minerals scarce AF so that buying ships is even MORE expensive! YEAH!!”

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@Ms_Steak

Okay, this is the third instance of someone pointing out something in the dev blog that I didn’t remember seeing when I read it. I think they went back and added stuff after people started asking for clarification.

Eh, I can sympathize with you as well.

As for mitigating the nerf, could you not make your SB pilots x-up with their skill levels, and then organize them into squads in a way that would maximize fleet damage? Obviously, this would increase the workload of running a fleet, but perhaps it’s something the fleet boss/backup FC/training FC can handle.

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That was my POINT! Ships are already dying too fast. I’m going to have to send gf before I lock the enemy in frigate pvp to get it out in time. I’m going to fit sensor boosters on my worms now because that seems to be the meta. I better invest on sensor boosters.

Pretty sure they wanted this, because of the EHP nerf. They try to make sure bombers can’t one shot anything to use their torpedoes.

The x-up with skill levels is how it was done, usually. With semi-open roaming squads it proved necessary with that 10 skill level limit. And of course, when the group buys fresh ammo of a different type, or someone leaves, another joins etc, it really was a hassle if the fc tried to minimize waste of bombs and maximize output.
With the new nerf however, it’s now a hard limit of 4 applicable skill levels (racial bonus) across the entire squad, and as I wrote originally, that is just silly to try to manage. In all practicality the squad size has to shrink to 7.

For the posters who mention “use more squads”, there is also a practical limit (due to geometry) on the simultaneous use of squadrons. Even with an optimistic four squadrons (yes I know it’s six in theory), it still means that less sb pilots can be put on the grid dropping simultaneously with the new nerf.

The reason for me going through that lengthy redaction is to demonstrate that a lot more is at hand than just one single nerf on bomb damage. Yes, we will still have our shits and giggles, but it is odd that CCP seems to silently triple/quadruple the nerf effects (what happens “behind” the 20% damage reduction) for sb’s, especially when other weapons get increased damage and they want stuff to blow up faster. Hey, sb’s can do that too, lol. I know that sb’s are not popular with some ship owners, but still …

In a case like this, questions have to be asked and maybe a kind dev (looking at you @CCP_Rise ?) will provide context.

I can’t see why you got such ‘blah blah, fingers in my ears, blah blah, I’m a WoW forum troll’ type of replies over your topic. I thought it was very well researched and presented. Basically breaking down a deep understanding of your area of the game into language that ‘the layman’ could understand.

Other replies were more civil, actually replying on the technical aspects of the issue, which was probably not so deeply understood in Reykjavik.

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Why not add lockbreaker and void bombs into the fray? Just for added fun and “oh, shi~” situation for opponent to ensure whole squad survives.

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Thanks. As to what is understood or not in Reykjavik, I really don’t know if they have a developer in their ranks who used to be a die hard stealth bomber pilot, but I have no doubts there being a dev that loves or at least appreciates this cloaky high risk stuff as well.

I, and anyone else who likes bomb dropping, can only hope a dev reads this topic, and concludes that there is indeed a bit too much of an aftershock to the bomb nerf - or that someone links it on reddit/r/eve, or wherever devs may roam these days.

They are added when needed on the grid, and zapping capacitors with a volley of void bombs (often with a deliberate delay on the last ones to overcome repair modules that were still cycling) before the sledgehammer hits is part of the attacks by some of the more “professional” groups if tactics allow it (rarely btw), indeed with priceless “oh ■■■■” moments, like you wrote.

However they have different flight properties, have no resists at all and a different number of hp, do omni-damage (one type of which always receives a racial hull “bonus” if you believe it, lol) on each other and can all be vaporized by a single “normal” bomb on grid. In return, 5 of them would kill all damage bombs. In essence the non-damage bombs can’t be dropped simultaneously with damage bombs, both volleys need to be timed exactly.

So, when used it’s usually from an extra squad (with its own, different size limit) that coordinates with the others (who have to wait a number of seconds before they can launch their bombs to stay out of the first blast area). Mixing them in with the damage dealers is a way to create confusion, especially on battlefields with high pressure, very high risks of premature exposure (decloaking, the “pants down moment” any sb pilot dreads), fleet warp commands, a loss of ordinance etc etc.

Sorry, saw this a bit late. Well, torpedo fitted stealth bombers are not really affected negatively: the torpedoes function as before, and stealth bombers themselves are brittle glass cannons who will not suffer from armor/shield nerfs because they didn’t have tank in the first place :smiley:, that is to say except goku fleets (a doctrine I never really liked). And there was/is no limit on how many people can shoot torps at the same time. So, torp doctrines will not be affected negatively. If they could one-shot something before, they will still be able to - with all the risks involved as well but that’s life for an sb pilot.

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