Bomber (M8) Wings.

[Bishop149]

After using one as a cap ship killer in the early before I could afford/cap and M6 or M7 and then ditching it as soon as I could, I am now revisiting the M8 class.

I am rather impressed with the performance of a single M8, 3 missile barrages and pretty much anything's dead, but I am now in the position of building a small fleet, and have been trying out a wing of 3 Vipers.

My main disappointment is that the missile barrage command is not available for a wing. . . . I guess getting them to fire is going to be messing around with fire probabilities. . . . and then theres that bloody front missile turret that seems to fire more or less at random.

Any tips on how to set up a functional bomber wing, or is my vision of the whole wing simultaneously launching an 8 missile barrage a mere fantasy. . . . would I be better of micro managing the individual ships?

[mike2R]

I don't know about vanilla, but if you are into mods then CODEA can do some very funky stuff with M8s.

[Bishop149]

Nowt against scripts but these ones (MARS, MEFOS, CODEA etc) always look a little too extensive / overcomplicated . . . for my taste anyway!

[Triaxx2]

No wing barrage is a balance thing. If three barrages kills anything, then being able to order a wing of three to barrage is overpowered. It's an instant win button because even if fighters attack them, the sheer blast radius of the missiles they launch will vaporize the fighters.

Though you might want to check the Scripts and Modding forum. Someone might have added such a command.

[Bishop149]

No wing barrage is a balance thing. If three barrages kills anything, then being able to order a wing of three to barrage is overpowered. It's an instant win button because even if fighters attack them, the sheer blast radius of the missiles they launch will vaporize the fighters.

Though you might want to check the Scripts and Modding forum. Someone might have added such a command.

I see your point, but whats the difference between 3 ships launching 1 barrage and, 1 ship launching 3 barrages. If the latter is possible (as it is) then why not the former.

Anyway I've kind of given up on the barrage thing, just some setting where they launch missiles at a reasonable rate would do.

[cj-spartacus]

buy 24 of them and it will just be like 3 barrages at a time. It will be messy and dangerous but it will at least be pretty.

[IceFire909]

1. Ship Command Interface
2. Missile Fire Probability - 100%
3. ?????
4. PROFIT

(Am I missing something or would this essentially work?)

[Infekted]

Problem that I saw with 100% missile fire is that they keep firing the damn things untill the target is dead.. If the target is a fair distance away this could end up emptying the M8 of missiles on one M5.

[Chris0132]

I wouldn't use wings.

M8s are basically miniature missile frigates, and you use them the same as missile frigates, keep one in the back and fire barrages at anything you want particularly dead.

Your main limit is the cargo capacity, but as the missiles are much more powerful than frigate missiles, you shouldn't have that much of a problem with just one.

If you do want more firepower, then a missile frigate is basically the same as a couple of bombers, only far more durable and versatile because it can shoot flail missiles too.

Bit harder to keep armed though, the tomahawk factory produces more missiles faster and they do more damage, hammer factories produce them much slower and you need about 50 to kill most capital ships.

On the plus side the numerous turrets mean you can basically just park it in the sector and it will keep leaking missiles into the surrounding area. You can also set each turret to do different things, I usually set a couple to anti-fighter, one to anti-missile, and the rest to attack capitals/my target which makes it shoot at lots of stuff at the same time.

[mike2R]

Nowt against scripts but these ones (MARS, MEFOS, CODEA etc) always look a little too extensive / overcomplicated . . . for my taste anyway!

I can't disagree - CODEA is the only really major one that I use. But my God I could never go back now... AI fighters using docking computers, salvagers working completely automatically, dockable m8s... and I have only scratched the surface of it since I've only used it with one Panther, and it can manage a whole multi-carrier battle group with capital support.

I guess I've gone to the dark side and I like it here

[Infekted]

I'm with bishop. MARS, CODEA and MEFOS do too much for my liking.

[Twest09]

Ok this is going to require a few things but I had a similar vision a few months back.

1) Supply ship that has a Transporter Device and Jumpdrive.
2) Micromanagement skills.

Ok, yeah that's all you really need, so here is how I pulled it off.

1) Set missile fire to 100%
2) Obtain a target
3) Quickly use the Supply Ship to stock the APPROPRIATE amount of nukes to the wing using the Transporter Device
4) Send in the bombers

If everything goes to plan they will quickly launch the entire cargo bay of nukes and be in and out in no time flat BUT the beauty in the design of this is that you have managed how many nukes they launched by limiting the amount of missiles in the cargo bay.

[Triaxx2]

There's a delay between Barrages if one ship does. So it takes a second or so to get all the missiles launched. But three ships can launch 24 in a single burst and there's no chance to stop it like there might be with a single ship firing.

[Bishop149]

Ok I have done some experimenting, attacked a station with my bomber wing of 3 Vipers, missile fire probability at 100%.

They don't empty all their missiles instantly. . . . far from it.

The way it seem to go every time was as follows:
- Attack order issued
- Wing moves towards target
- Whichever wing member is closest to the target begins firing missiles at a rate of about 1 every 5-10 seconds
- The other two only begin firing once very close to the target (close enough to begin evasion)
- Station is destroyed with around 5 missiles having been wasted (still in the air)

I'm going to try and find a cap ship target and try it out on that. . .

Edit:

Right, next set of targets a J and a K.
Pretty disastrous to be honest. . . . more or less exactly the same as the station attack. Only of one the three fired any missiles at all, not enought to kill the J before arriving. . . whole wing killed pretty fast by the J.

Q, the same, only difference being that this time enough missiles were fired to kill the Q, still lost one Viper.

Overall Crap, it would seem bomber are best used as Chris0132 suggests. . . . 1 at a time.

[Madw0lf]

Last week I decided to invade and "Cleanse" X101, with 2 bombers my Panther, a Cerberus and some fighters. Alternating which M8 fired the barrage was pretty good at keeping them both busy and extending their missile supply.

Until an M got close to one an wasted it with its own barrage.

[Palladin888]

After looking at the weapons layout on a M8 I noticed that they are great shooting missiles at 10+ km but they get wasted if anything gets closer than that. M8s don't really have any close combat weapons least not enough to make much diff. WHich is why i have not used any yet.

I currently have 2 x Hades and 1x Claymore

I guess you could have the M8s run away from a Cap ship or a Q and still be effective.

[Triaxx2]

Using Star Wars as a comparison you come up with your fighters like so:

A-Wing/Tie Interceptor = M5. Fast and light, can do lots of damage, but blows up easy.

X-Wing/Tie Fighter = M4. A little more survivable, also does lots of damage, not as fast.

B-Wing/Tie Defender = M3. Heavy fighter, gives as good as it gets, not very fast, doesn't need to be.

Y-Wing/Tie Bomber = M8. Bomber, useless against fighters, designed to have great punch against capital ships.

So in short, if they get close to the enemy, they will die. If the enemy tries to close, they can blow it to bits before it gets that close.

[Palladin888]

I'm wondering if I should try using my M8s for patrol duty with a wing of say three M3s for protection.

1x M8 now wing assignment 75% missile order.
3X M3 with wing assignment orders to protect the M8

[Twest09]

Ok, for the sake of this thread I did some serious M8 bomber wing testing since this thread piqued my interest...

Setup #1

3 Bomber Wing + Missile Supply Ship

Missile Fire probability 100%
Fight Command Mk 1
Fight Command Mk 2
Triplex Scanner
Jumpdrive
Transporter Device on the Supply Ship

Set them after a Capital Ship with Wing Command Attack, the end result was not that great.

Setup #2

3 Bombers not in a Wing + Missile Supply Ship

Setup is same as #1.

Commanded 1 to attack Capital Ship and Broadcast to like ships in sector and all of them proceeded to empty the cargo bay of missiles in a timely manor... SUCCESS!!!

[Aro]

Actually, an M8 for OOS defence would probably work well.

All missiles fired are guaranteed hits. Anything smaller than an M6 will be instantly vaporized. M6's may have a problem if a few M8's are used.

OOS Barrage obliterates anything not invincible but that's not automated. Using 50 M3 or M4's does work but the attrition rate can get annoying. Seen an NPC ship fire a big missile at one of my ships OOS, I panicked.


A pack of M8's should be able to decimate anything popping out of a gate while OOS. Automate missile supplies (?, never used Supply Command. Perhaps CLS can.) and it could very well be the best way to block a gate.