Cadet II/Stealth nan
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| ← Combat nan | Force nan → |
Stealth nanning
We are not talking about nanning stealth bombers. We are referring to nanning in a stealthy fashion. The most devastating offensive techniques in Allegiance are the ones that are pulled off without being eyed. If the enemy can't see you coming, they can't form an effective defense in time. In general, any offensive run that is only spotted after it enters your sector will succeed.
Some ships, such as BIOS bombers, heavy troop transports and assault ships will try and enter the enemy sector without getting spotted. Therefore as their nan you must also remain unseen because the enemy will become suspicious about a group of scouts hanging around in a cluster in their sector, even if they can't see the target ship. You must therefore put some forethought into your loadout before launch.
First put your shields in cargo. They raise your signature quite a lot and you need to be not seen until you proceed to the offensive. Keep them in cargo until the ship you are escorting mounts its own shields, which generally indicates it has been eyed itself.
Note Bios attack ships will use their hvy cloak and then mount their shields. They are an exception to the above rule in that although their shields are up they haven't been eyed yet. Do not mount your own shields until either they use the voice chat "Oh they see me, I've been spotted" or you seen a mass of defenders launch
Second put your missiles in cargo. Once again they raise your signature quite a lot. They can be quite useful to destroy probes - do so from max range to avoid being eyed.
Tip: Dumbfires have less range than seekers, but also a lower sig.
Scouting ahead
Optimally you want your scout to have the same signature as the ship you're guarding. Depending on what you're escorting this may mean you have no shields but missiles loaded, or shields but no missiles, or nothing at all but you fire your gatt to raise your sig.
You do this so you can tell if the ship following behind will be eyed. If you get eyed you need to tell him, then expend some effort deprobing or finding a different route which is clear.
Trying to sneak through alephs is the hardest part for your friend. Normally he will be sitting about about 2k behind the aleph while you check the other side, so not only do you need to check if the aleph is clear of camps and probes, but you need to ensure it stays clear long enough for him to travel the 2k. If a scout or random fighter starts flying towards the aleph you need to warn your friend to abort.
If you are eyed and an enemy ship chases you, lead him AWAY from your friend. Revealing his position will probably earn you a swift boot and definitely earn you the ire of the pilot.
Heavy troop transport
Once the HTT is in position you'll need to wait for the run to be green-lighted. While you wait you can check the path between his current position and the green door, but you must be careful not to get yourself eyed - any commander worth his salt will instantly connect the dots and deduce that you have an HTT in his sector and will most probably calculate a vector to the HTT based on your own vector. Look up the scan range of the base you're up against stay out of it's sweep. If you must kill a probe that will eye the HTT prematurely, use a low-sig missile like a dumbfire to take out probes from afar.
Tip: If you face away from the enemy base your weak rear scanners will not eye the enemy. If they don't get eyed they don't realise there is a scout in their sector. After all, their may be a Cadet on the other team trying to deprobe and triangulating on your position.
The run will be normally be timed to happen at the same time as a bomb run, miner attack, or another htt run elsewhere on the map. A distraction, in other words. In any case once the run is given the green light you'll need to escort the HTT into the green door. Ram the HTT until you are within 1000-1500m of the green door. Further rams will probably knock the HTT off course, which is undesirable, to say the least. Once you are eyed, load shields.
Say you were successful, say you're looking at your newly minted base, what do you do?
If the enemy has HTTs there will most certainly will be an attempt to recap the base. So you can either dock and relaunch in an int to try and kill it, dock and launch in a nan for your team's re-recap, or don't dock and camp the green door. Most important thing to do is keep your HTT alive and ram their HTT off course.
Stealth bombers
Nanning sbs works well with Belters because their stealth fighters can mount nans. Equipped with decent sensors, hunters, snipers and a nan in cargo, this stealthy machine makes the ideal escort.
The process is pretty much the same as an HTT, except you are destroying the base instead of capturing it (nerve gas sbs being a rarely fielded exception). You'll need to scout ahead, eliminate possible ships that will eye your friend, clear probes and get him into his sector and recharge position.
Once he is recharged and has begun his run you can cloak and begin ramming him. If you take careful note of your sig and the bases scan range, you can even boost-ram him for a little bit while still being uneyed. Advanced SFs with their enormous energy reserves can maintain cloak while nanning, which makes them virtually invisible to defenders if the SB is firing from range.
If you are good enough and lucky enough, you can even lurk around to pick up the pods from after the run.
Assault ships
Nanning an ass ship follows the same rules as nanning an HTT, bar two VERY important rules:
- Do not ripcord to the ass ship. You will drain its energy reserves and more importantly give away its position.
- Stay clear of the ass ship when it is cloaked, as even a low-sig scout will have 10x the signature of the ass ship.
Once it is in position it will recharge its energy and then call for the run. Your team may rip in anything from a regular bomb run to a massive capital ship to deliver the end to your enemy. Your priority here though is to keep the ass ship alive. Don't worry about anyone else. Only once the ass ship is well out of the hot zone should you consider helping out the main run.
Regular bombing
As we mentioned in Cadet I, there are two kinds of runs: Loud or Quiet. At the time we told you to focus on the Loud ones, well now it's time you practiced helping the quiet ones.
Quiet bombers will fly around with missiles and shields unloaded and will often take a circuitous route to the target. Your most important duty is to fly ahead of the bbr and get rid of anything that will eye it, and pray that a stray newbie won't blow your plan in your face. Once in sector, load up your shields and ram your bomber, and hope to heck your suicide run succeeds.
Faction specific tactics
Bios
If you are Bios it is important that you bring a heavy cloak, which you will use at the same time as the ship you are protecting (i.e. when passing through alephs and the early parts of the attack). However, make sure you don't cloak before/at the same time as you need to Nan because cloaking rapidly depletes your energy reserves. Consider rebinding your keys to make it easier to eject once the time for stealth is over, because it has a lot of mass and makes your scout unwieldy.
Belters
With the exception of basic interceptors, every Belter small ship can mount a nan. A fighter or a heavy int with a nan has multiple times higher hull than a scout. A stealth fighter can cloak and still have enough energy to nan for quite a while. A stealth bomber can equip a nan to repair his fellows in a pinch. But don't ignore the lowly scout! With its small profile, high speed, and a booster the belter scout can still be a viable choice.
Do remember that fighters and ints have less energy than a scout - you won't be able to nan as long with those. Manage your energy.
Heavy ints make for excellent rammers - you can get your bomber to 150+ constant speeds with them. A Belter bucket-o-bolts going 150 is a tough thing to stop (except if it gets proxed - once again, the venerable scout saves the day!). Fighters aren't shabby rammers either.
Technoflux
Their adv and heavy scout can mount two nans at once - but be careful, as this means twice the energy drain.
| ← Combat nan | Force nan → |
