Afternoon folks,
Interested on your thoughts on the capabilities of using Force Recons, Bombers, and Black Ops battleships as a subcap support for a Carrier group, dropping in sov null to ambush something like a roam reported on intel. Recons would have anchor bubbles in their cargo to improve strategic options.
Said carrier group would involve carriers and faxes (aaaalll the faxes) with supers on standby in case they have cynos.
The idea is that because blops fleets are bridgable, they could become as portable as capital ships, allowing supported capital fleets without having to burn gates or use a titan to bridge. This would be used primarily as support in an engagement you don’t expect to escalate beyond a small/medium size (25 pilots in the hostile fleet, tops).
The recon fits I came up with are armor tanked (~50k EHP arazus and rapiers, mids almost completely focused on ewar), and an 8LY jump can see each BB bridge up to 2 recons and 8 bombers along with themselves (fuel for return trip either in a fuel truck or carried in a fleet hanger on a carrier). The BBs would be 'Deemers for the buffer tank, as well as their flexibility of engagement ranges (scorch and conflag).
The intent would be using the Arazu to RSD subcaps (to help screen friendly fighters as they approach) and point/scram stuff, the Rapier with dual web and dual TP, the bombers and BBs for actual damage.
Judging by pyfa, a single rapier will allow my bomber fit to apply rage torps perfectly to anything larger than a destroyer, meaning that a single blops support squadron (1 BB, 1 Arazu, 1 Rapier, 8 bombers) would able to dish out a respectable amount of damage. That would of course diminish greatly when the bombers go pop, which is entirely possible, but relatively moot because that’s what the caps are for.
Said bombers also have a bomb launcher, allowing them all the utility that a bomb launcher would have to offer. Such as focused void bombs if they counter-drop, or regular void bombs if they bring subcap logistics.
While it’s certainly more expensive per-capita than a traditional support fleet, I believe that mobility makes it an interesting trade off.
The question is, would these subcaps actually be useful for this kind of engagement?