Belt ratting in a stealth bomber is honestly one of the things that I enjoy the most in EVE. Ever since I discovered it about 15 months ago, it is always what I go and do whenever I am bored with what I am doing in EVE at the time, and oftentimes it is what I go and do other times as well.
There are many, many benefits to ratting this way, and it's not as hard as you might think to get started.
Benefits:
You are in one of the smallest, stealthiest ships out there. You can warp cloaked.
It takes some determination for another player to catch you, either in the form of hunting you cloaked, gatecamping for you, or probing you down. In most of these cases, that player successfully catching you is due to you making at least one mistake, as well.
In my time SB ratting, I've honestly lost more bombers to rats than I have to players. And this, again, is a case where I made mistakes, either biting off more than I could chew, or not properly doing my homework. You're here, so you have the K'-Notes on it, which should save you a few SB's.
PS, even when I was newly figuring out how to do this, I was still bringing in more ISK than I was losing, by a pretty significant margin.
So, the reason why the choice of stealth bomber is made is due to a few factors. You have an extremely small sig radius, which helps mitigate incoming damage. You have the ability to dish out a lot of raw damage to large ships, which is the ideal for making lots of isk; the large ships have the higher bounties.
You do lack the ability to clear smaller ships off of the field, but there are a few solutions for this problem. And flying a small ship, dodging the fire of the bigger ships that you are hunting is rather fun.
WHY YOU SHOULD
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FITTING
Do and Don't:
DO fit a Medium Shield Extender.
DO fit an afterburner.
DO NOT fit a microwarp drive.
DO fit web or target painter, if possible.
DO fit a probe launcher, even if it has to be offline.
DO NOT fit a bomb launcher.
DO fit as many damage mods as possible.
DO NOT get cutesy with your flying.
Let's go through these one by one:
The medium shield extender does increase your sig, but not by too much. It gives the necessary tank for you to be able to take down battleship rats even in the presence of smaller ships that are better at hitting you.
The afterburner is to keep your speed up, give you more mobility, and assists in keeping your transversal up on rats as well as potentially helping you get through player gatecamps.
The target painter makes it easier for you to take down cruiser and battlecruiser sized rats, which can be very helpful in clearing suboptimal spawns.
The probe launcher can have a couple of uses: wormholes to escape a truly horrendously camped situation, signatures to make off-planetary-lines bookmarks, and if you can fit an expanded one on, allows you to offline your offensive capabilities for the ability to scan a gate you want to warp in to for potential problems (helpful sometimes in busy crossroads systems)
The lack of bomb launcher is simply because a single bomb has negligible usefulness. Using bombs on rats is far to expensive and doesn't add that much to your ability to take them down. Using bombs on players won't get you out of a bad situation, unless the other player makes a huge mistake (lighting an MWD on a frigate, for example). This is just one of those things that will be valuable only in certain corner-case situations.
Damage mods are clearly for damage, which not only helps your isk/hr, but also your survivability; the less time you have to spend on each spawn, the less your shield gets hit, the better off you are. Gank is tank.
Cutesy flying can include a lot of different things.
- trying to directly approach a large ship, so that "then you can get your transversal higher"; you don't have to take zero damage to succeed, you just have to survive. Orbiting BS's at 20km is good enough to do this, you don't have to get to point blank range.
- continuing ratting after a clearly dangerous ship appears on dscan. Interceptor, interdictor, recon, all of these count. Get into another system, or cloak up and make a sandwich.
- trying to weave between asteroids; this always turns out badly.
- sticking in on a target after your shield alarm goes off. The first rule of SB ratting is that when that alarm goes off, you align and warp out. No exceptions (Your shield is far larger than either of your other bars in an SB, so it's a really bad idea to stick in past this).
[Recommended Fittings]
So, let's step through the things that you need to be considering at each level, from closest to furthest.
FITTING
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PROCESS
The Process:
Dealing with the rats
The goal here is simple. For each engagement, which are easily separated, because they happen at different belts, your goal is to kill all of the battleship rats, while not taking any armor damage.
Warp time gives your shield ample time to recharge between engagements. If you take larger damage on a particular engagement, then choose to make a larger warp.
To take the least possible damage, light your AB when you land, and choose a path that will make your transversal big, quick. Try to work your way to where you are about 15-20k from each battleship, but remember you can still hit them from as far as 60km, and can be shooting while you are burning closer. Don't put yourself in a situation where you can get caught on an asteroid.
If you see an elite frigate, warp out, cloak up, and look it up. If it has scramming ability, never go back to that belt. If it does something more harmless (TP, for example), then you can potentially farm that spawn.
System Level
- Write down the locations of the larger spawns. You will want to come back to those in about 20-25 minutes, to harvest the battleships again. Likewise, write down the locations of dangerous spawns. You don't want to go back there.
- Be aware of local.
- Keep an eye on D-scan. As someone enters local, you can "reasonably" assume that they will be in the same ship they entered local in, unless that ship entirely disappears. IE, if you see a dominix on D-scan as a new person enters local, and then suddenly there is no dominix, but he's still in local, it's much safer to assume that he shipped into a Rapier or similar to kill you than to assume he's in a cloaky dominix.
- Which brings me to my next point, assume the worst. Someone jumping in system is there to kill you. If you don't catch them on D-scan, then they are in a ship that is specifically designed to kill you. If you do spot them on D-scan, then they have the best possible fitting for that ship to kill you.
Region Level
The most dangerous point in this whole operation is jumping from system to system, but if you are in a quiet enough branch of nullsec, this presents little problem, itself. It also behooves you to take particularly quiet times (if you are going to be regularly in the same region of nullsec) and making offgate bookmarks to be able to warp to. Remember, you will have the ability to cloak whenever you are in an SB, so you don't have to be offgrid, just off-warp-line. [Future link to Nullsec Travelling post]
The map also provides many tools [Future link to map post] that you can use to make your travelling safer.
PROCESS
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EXPANDING
Making it bigger:
The temptation here would be to add more stealth bombers for additional DPS. This is a reasonable idea, but in a funny instance of math, you actually get more of a DPS increase by adding a single Rapier to your squad than adding a second bomber. This additionally leads to the ability to clear out spawns with pesky smaller ships, as the rapier's weapon systems, paired with the long webs and TP bonus, allow it to melt those frigates (and cruisers melt under Rapier web/TP and SB fire).
Beyond this single rapier, you can add multiple stealth bombers to increase potential DPS/system coverage, with an operational limit of (I would guess) about 4 SBs per Rapier.
This can lead to a very interesting roaming gang, largely set up for PvE, but able to take on particularly ignorant nullsec ratters with relative ease. You're looking at putting out about 2000 DPS per 5 man platoon, with the ability to hold a target motionless, and the only risk really being medium turrets to your stealth bombers, which could be somewhat overcome by SB's using their TP slots (opened by the Rapier having TPs) on things like turret disruptors or sensor dampeners.
EXPANDING
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FAQ
What SB should I use?
Always match torpedoes with the damage bonus on the stealth bomber. Always. Then use the stealth bomber that is appropriate for the region you want to go out and rat in. Stain? Use a Purifier. Syndicate? Use a Nemesis.
Where should I go?
There's a lot of good options. Pretty much anywhere in nullsec (outside of drone space) is a reasonable choice. The more active a piece of space is, the more dangerous it is to you to rat there. The lower the true security status, the more profitable it is. My initial instincts said that the best reward-to-danger-ratio, but in trying to find a source to verify this, I've gotten some mixed messages. Something else to look into! For the moment, I'll just point you in the general direction of Ombey's Eve Maps, and tell you that it's a good resource for planning a space to go hunt in. This may be the topic of a future post.
What do you do about the loots?
A few ways you can handle this; leave them, drop them off at a station, or somehow get a secure can into a safespot. Each of these has their problems: leave them, you lose the ISK. Drop them off, you just put yourself in a station, needing to undock, which is the most dangerous spot in nullsec. The secure can requires that you had a hauler to drop it, and a hauler to pick up the loot afterward. It's also something that brings you to the same place multiple times, which is always unsafe.
Aren't Torpedos too big to carry many of them?
Sort of. But if you daytrip, I guarantee your full cargohold will last longer than you will.
If you plan on sticking around for longer than that, then you have a couple of options;
-buy a lot and haul them in
-bring BPC's and make them yourself from reprocessed minerals
-In your travel fit, you can use expanded cargoholds in your lows, stuff more torpedos in your hold, and store them in a nullsec system nearby.
Should I live in 0.0 to do this?
SB's are slippery enough that it's not a horrendous idea to base your jumpclone (if you decide to place one) out of a lowsec system and make the low->null jump every time you want to go ratting. I tend to prefer this over having to undock into an unknown situation every time; I think even if you jump into a gatecamp you can burn back to the gate often enough that it's worth it.
What is most dangerous to you?
Gate camps suck, obviously.
As far as the dangers in the actual belt-ratting itself, you _must_ watch out for elite frigates. If there is one on grid when you land, warp out straightaway and google it. Sometimes they do something harmless, like target paint. Sometimes they scramble you. And then you are dead.
Other than elite frigates, the only thing that poses a danger to you is your own pride. Never fly close to asteroids (just don't do it). You might get caught on a warpout. Never stay in after your shield alarm goes off (just don't do it). You will get popped surprisingly fast after that.
But you are in 0.0 without a point!
Yes. Stealth bombers are limiting enough with their slot layouts that you don't want to try to do more than you can. On the stealth bombers that have 3 mid slots, you really need to use all of them: AB/MSE/TP. With the fourth, you could use the spare for a point if you really wanted to, but I've found that the second TP (or a web) to be way more useful. Sometimes you just have to clear out a cruiser spawn, and these modules make it much easier to do this. You can definitely take these fits and throw a point on them if you wanted to go SB hunting rather than SB ratting, but that's a different topic altogether!
Why the expanded probe launcher?
To me, having the ability to use combat probes can be a lifesaver if you are travelling through uncharted nullsec. Dropping a quick set of probes onto a target gate lets you know if there is a camp there, even if it is off d-scan. This proves helpful in station systems where people could be docked or in space. Core probes are nice, yes, and you can usually have these offline, but to me if you are at the point of using combat probes, you can afford to offline your offensive modules, because you are looking to get out of there, not to kill something.
FAQ
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TLDR
TL;DR:
If you've never considered it before and you are close to being able to fly one, think about ratting in 0.0 belts in a stealth bomber. Throw on an MSE and AB, and go somewhere where you can shoot bonused torpedos for the best damage. Shoot at BS and BC rats, and run away from Elite Frigates.
Fun and reasonable profit await!
-K'
