One of the most casual PVP activities in EVE is probably joining a public fleet for an afternoon to earn some nice killmails. There are a couple of communities for this in the game, with – as far as I know – the oldest being Bombers Bar. As the name suggests, Bombers Bar is specialized on everything related to cloaky ships: hot dropping, cloaky gate camps and whaling fleets. They organize their operations by an in-game chat channel also called Bomber Bar, which contains the upcoming fleet schedule, resources for suggested fittings, a link to the Bombers Bar Discord channel and a selection of killmails from past fleets.
Bombers bar operates under a NPSI ( not purple shoot it) mode, which means they don’t have any allies or standings to other entities. If you are in a fleet, everybody apart from your fleet members are fair game to shoot if the FC calls for it. By this, you basically have the biggest potential target pool you can have in the game. However, you are not expected to shoot members of your own corp or alliance or any other party that has blue standing to you. In these cases, you simply don’t shoot the target.
How to join a fleet
Joining a fleet is very simple. Just check the fleet schedule in the Bombers Bar channel and wait until the time has come. The FC will then ping the fleet on the Bombers Bar Discord channel and link a formup channel in the main Bombers Bar chat. Simply join the formup channel and you will get a fleet invite for the fleet. On many fleets, you can even join when the fleet already started a while ago. Just type an X in the formup channel and you will sooner or later get an invite to the fleet.
Once you joined a fleet, the fleet MOTD will contain a password to one of the Bombers Bar Teamspeak channels. Bombers Bar operates their own Teamspeak server under voice.bombersbar.org, which everybody can join. To join one of the sub-channels that are used for fleets, you will need the password that you can find in the fleet MOTD.
The fleet MOTD will also contain instructions where the fleet will form or how to catch up if the fleet already left. Some fleets take place from a wormhole location and you will need to travel to a system where you can enter the wormhole. In that case just ask in fleet for somebody to pick you up and show you the way to the fleet location. Otherwise just travel to the system and follow the instructions the FC will give on Teamspeak for the formup.
Cloaky Ships
There are five different classes of cloaky ships that are used for fleet PVP and additionally some support ships that fulfill special roles in fleet. Just to get an idea what kind of the ships you could bring to a Bombers Bar fleet, I will give a quick overview of the different classes. If you want a deeper inside for fitting options, just check the BB-Fittings in-game channel, which lists a huge number of fittings for the different ship classes.
One common characteristic of all these ships is the ability to fit a covert-ops cloaking device, which allows you to warp cloaked.
Stealth Bombers: These are the main line ships for any Bombers Bar fleet. Bombers are so called glass cannons, which means they deal great amount of damage but have generally very little tank. Each race has its own version, which slightly differs in slot layout and each get a damage bonus for a different torpedo type. The main weapon system are torpedo launchers, which get a fitting bonus and bigger range by the bomber’s hull bonuses. Torpedos work best on big targets, so Bombers apply damage very poorly to smaller ships. To fly bombers, you will need the racial frigate skill and Electronic Upgrades to level 5 to unlock the Covert-Ops skill.
Force Recons: Recons are the cloaky T2 version of the electronic warfare cruisers. Each race has a specific force recon ship with range bonuses to the racial ewar system. These are the Falcon for ECM modules, the Rapier for stasis webifiers, the Pilgrim for energy neutralizers and the Arazu for warp scramblers and disruptors. Force recons need quite some skills to level 5 to unlock and are a long train. Additionally, the Recon skill gives this ship class great bonuses per level, so you should also train the Recon skill to level 5 which is another long train. Force recons are a great addition to any cloaky fleet, since they can fulfill roles that are very badly done by bombers, e.g. pointing a target far off or slowing it down to allow bombers to apply better damage. Especially Falcons can increase the survival rate of a bomber fleet a lot by jamming the targets to protect the weakly tanked bombers.
Tech 3 Cruisers: Each racial T3 cruiser (short T3C) can fit a subsystem called Covert Reconfiguration, which allows it to fit a covert ops cloak. The fitting options of T3Cs are too big to cover them in this post, but you can fit them as e-war support, damage dealers, probers and even logistic ships. However, they need an even longer training than recons and come with a big price tag. That’s why they are not used as common as bombers and recons. Losing a few T3Cs can be as costly as losing an entire fleet of bombers.
Black Ops Battleships: Black Ops Battleships ( short: BLOPS) are a racial specific T2 battleship that can create jump bridge to an active Cynosural Field Generator. Every ships with that can fit a covert ops cloak can use this jump cortal to jump within 5km of the ship that activated the cyno module. By this you can jump an entire fleet of bombers and recons on an enemy target. This is also one of the main tactics to engage for a bomber fleet. BLOPSes can be fitted as damage dealing ships but are quite pricey as well and usually not worth the risk to loose them in combat. To jump a ship through its jump portal, a BLOPS needs fuel located in a fuel bay of the ship. BLOPSes are the only ship of this list that cannot use a covert ops cloaking device.
Blockade Runners: Blockade runners are a T2 transport ships that can fit a covert ops cloaking device. These are usually used in fleet to carry the extra fuel for a BLOPS and to store the loot dropped by the unlucky targets of a BLOPS bridge.
On the Hunt with Bombers Bar
I decided to join a couple of bombers bar fleets that took place in prime EU time zone of about 17:00 EVE, which is a quite convenient time for me. The fleet type that was scheduled was “Armada” and I had no clue what that might be. So I joined the formup channel and soon got an invite to fleet after the formup started. I joined bombers bar mumble with the password from the MOTD and got instructions to travel to a high sec system where the FC was going to pick up the fleet. So I fitted a bomber as suggested in the bombers bar fittings and made my way to the formup location. The FC waited on a wormhole in that system and I learned that we needed to go through a couple of wormholes to reach our target wormhole system. So I followed the FCs instructions and bookmarked the wormholes we passed through until we finally reached our destination wormhole. This wormhole had a so called static null sec exit, which means that there is always a wormhole active in system that leads into null security space.
The fleet now gathered around this wormhole and some fleet members in tackle ships jumped through and checked the surrounding systems for targets to cyno bridge on. Apparently everybody is ratting in carriers and super carriers these days in null sec, which are the targets we were looking for.
If the tackle guys couldn’t find any targets the wormhole was “rolled”, which means you jump a couple of battleships through and back until the hole reaches critical mass and collapses. Soon after a new null sec wormhole will pop up somewhere in system. The FC scans down the new hole, the fleet positions on it and the hunters jump through again. This is kind of the rhythm of the fleet. Actually it can take a couple of these cycles to find a proper target, since the null sec system the static hole leads to is random. It might be a very quiet region that is not worth hunting or there might just be no targets. But sooner or later we always found somebody.
On my first fleet, we found a ratting Test Thannatos in Esotria and the fleet was told to jump through the hole and approach our fleet’st BLOPs on the other side. The BLOPs soon bridged us on top of the Thanny and we started to apply damage. We had over 100 bombers and a dozen of recons in fleet and the Thannatos was quickly killed.
On my second night of hunting we discovered a ratting Nyx and things got very busy quickly. We jumped the hole, approached our BLOPS and bridged on top of the Nyx. The Nyx almost immediately bridged a FAX in for help and the fleet started to apply damage to the Minokawa, which quickly died. While working on the FAX, a Phoenix jumped in too, which became the next victim.
After these two kills we started working on the Nyx again. However, killing the two caps took a couple of minutes, which was enough for our enemies to organize a defence fleet and finally about 20 caps and a few supers bridged in to save the Nyx. This was way too much to handle for our 50 man bomber fleet and we started to loose some bombers quickly. So the FC called to disengage and everybody to cloak up. Still, this was a very cool fight and shows how big the battles with bombers bar quickly can become. Here is the final battlereport.
On my third and final night, we managed to bridge on a Goonswarm Rorqual in Delve. However, I quickly learned that Goons are very good in protecting their Rorquals, because almost as soon as we landed they bridged an Erebus and a Nyx into system, which started to kill bombers. The Rorqual went into PANIC mode, which makes it invulnerable for a couple of minutes and we could only disengage again and made our way back into the wormhole.Lesson learned: Goons have quite some supers and titans on standy to kick ass.
Later on that night, we at least caught another ratting Test Thannatos in Esoteria, so the fleet was still a success.
To bring this post to an end I must say that I really enjoyed my bombers bar fleets a lot. The bombers bar FCs and members are very friendly and explain everything you need to know if you are new to covert ops fleets. The battles can be quite big in scale and very exciting , with lots of capital ships involved. I can just highly recommend to join a fleet if you have the chance, to get a couple of nice cap kills on you killboard and learn the art of covert warfare.