The spviewer has a really nice detection calculator that made me rethink the entire function of a deep penetration team working in Vanduul space. Instead of looking at how much damage it might do, I looked at the minimum Human Resources needed to be effective, flying 3 Eclipse off a Liberator. I settled on just 2 Firebird escorts, since that’s the maximum we know ought to fit in the Lib, and I settled on crewing the Lib with the pilots, so no one left aboard the powered-down Lib while the attack team is away. We’re talking about a team of just 5 players. A single Lancer MIS will give you all the berths you need. 6 players.
So what we know from the spviewer detection calculator is that in NAV mode, an Idris (S4 cap ship scan) can detect a Firebird at 8km, and an Eclipse at 7km. The Typhoon IX torps have a minimum lock range of 5km, and a speed of ~500m/s, a 4 second lock time, a 5 second arm time and at 8 km a 16 second flight time. Your target gets 25 seconds to react to your attack.
Let’s suppose you deploy your Eclipse on a plane normal to your attack vector (orthogonal, 90* on both axis) in an equilateral triangle, each separated by about 8km. All 3 torps attack the same shield face and have the same flight time. Together they hit for about 1.3 Mhp and can do this 3 times.
The 2 Firebirds deploy in the center of the 3 Eclipse, and remain there. The MIS deploys 3km behind. The Firebirds can fire up to 8 salvoes of Thunderbolt III or Chaos III each hitting for about 20khp. They fire only defensively as the first torp launch closes, and then regularly on the shield after its collapse to stop it reforming during the period until the next torp strike. The MIS likewise launches on the reforming shield. Need the target’s shield refresh rate and Eclipse launch period to do a real damage calculation, but if you do not need to relock the target, the launch period is just 4 seconds. If you do, it’s likely 9 seconds. You do not count torp travel time since there is no reason to wait for hits to continue to launch.
All 3 strikes deliver 3.9 million hp minus any shield refresh on the second and third strike, plus missile strikes; but for now we should guesstimate they should kill anything up to the size of a Void Bomber. This will not even come close to killing an Idris.
This is the best I have at the moment. Deploying all the ships in close proximity would make it easier for defending fighters to attack both torps and ships. Placing the force in a single line and straifing laterally has some merit, but is harder to coordinate and only improves strafing a triangular attack pattern very slightly. A triangle with defenders in the middle places the Firebirds at minimum distance from all attackers. It’s safer. Finally, straifing and attacking from 3 different points maximizes your stealth advantage. Defenders won’t know where an attack really came from.
6 players to kill a Void Bomber, but they usually deploy in pairs. Needs 2 Libs for 2 Void Bombers, so really to be effective needs 12 players. Also note, the stats for Void Bombers have never been trustworthy. This is based upon a worst possible scenario. It’s entirely possible a single 1.3Mhp salvo will destroy a Void Bomber meaning you need just 1 Lib to kill 2 Bombers, and some reports have VBs equipped with S2 sensors, so they can be attacked from just 5km range removing 6 seconds warning.
Who would you put your money on? Observations and insights? How can we improve this?
So what we know from the spviewer detection calculator is that in NAV mode, an Idris (S4 cap ship scan) can detect a Firebird at 8km, and an Eclipse at 7km. The Typhoon IX torps have a minimum lock range of 5km, and a speed of ~500m/s, a 4 second lock time, a 5 second arm time and at 8 km a 16 second flight time. Your target gets 25 seconds to react to your attack.
Let’s suppose you deploy your Eclipse on a plane normal to your attack vector (orthogonal, 90* on both axis) in an equilateral triangle, each separated by about 8km. All 3 torps attack the same shield face and have the same flight time. Together they hit for about 1.3 Mhp and can do this 3 times.
The 2 Firebirds deploy in the center of the 3 Eclipse, and remain there. The MIS deploys 3km behind. The Firebirds can fire up to 8 salvoes of Thunderbolt III or Chaos III each hitting for about 20khp. They fire only defensively as the first torp launch closes, and then regularly on the shield after its collapse to stop it reforming during the period until the next torp strike. The MIS likewise launches on the reforming shield. Need the target’s shield refresh rate and Eclipse launch period to do a real damage calculation, but if you do not need to relock the target, the launch period is just 4 seconds. If you do, it’s likely 9 seconds. You do not count torp travel time since there is no reason to wait for hits to continue to launch.
All 3 strikes deliver 3.9 million hp minus any shield refresh on the second and third strike, plus missile strikes; but for now we should guesstimate they should kill anything up to the size of a Void Bomber. This will not even come close to killing an Idris.
This is the best I have at the moment. Deploying all the ships in close proximity would make it easier for defending fighters to attack both torps and ships. Placing the force in a single line and straifing laterally has some merit, but is harder to coordinate and only improves strafing a triangular attack pattern very slightly. A triangle with defenders in the middle places the Firebirds at minimum distance from all attackers. It’s safer. Finally, straifing and attacking from 3 different points maximizes your stealth advantage. Defenders won’t know where an attack really came from.
6 players to kill a Void Bomber, but they usually deploy in pairs. Needs 2 Libs for 2 Void Bombers, so really to be effective needs 12 players. Also note, the stats for Void Bombers have never been trustworthy. This is based upon a worst possible scenario. It’s entirely possible a single 1.3Mhp salvo will destroy a Void Bomber meaning you need just 1 Lib to kill 2 Bombers, and some reports have VBs equipped with S2 sensors, so they can be attacked from just 5km range removing 6 seconds warning.
Who would you put your money on? Observations and insights? How can we improve this?
Last edited:
