Last night I logged on and the corp was idle, not surprising for a Wednesday evening, and I heard that the low sec roam was already done and had bagged a lowly mining ship. With free time on my hands, I proceeded to implement the Manhattan Project and get my bomber to 0.0.
I picked a good target area to patrol in a border null sec region, far from interference of CVA's NRDS policies that I would be violating. I'm calling the system I will be mainly patrolling New Mexico in honour of the first nuclear bomb test.
Once I ran past the two ship gate camp I started making bookmarks. The limitation of the bomb launcher is such that you aim by pointing your ship where you want the bomb to go and it flies 30 km in that direction before blowing up and hitting everything within 15 km. The theory is that you get into position while cloaked and then uncloak, launch bomb, and warp off before you get locked and tackled.
I wanted to validate the process and make sure there was no surprises so this morning I waited until the system was quiet and I did a test run at the empty gate. I got 30 km from the gate and launched the bomb, watching it with the ranges overlay on. It has a cute little icon and it was amusing to watch it travel from my ship towards the gate. Ten seconds after launching it exploded but quite a distanced from the centre of the gate... what's going on?
"Ah, of course," I realized after a second. "The distance in the overview is the range to the stargate's docking ring, not its centre of mass." Since region-to-region stargates are so huge nowadays, the 0 meter mark to the gate in your overview is still some 10-15 km from the centre of the actual gate. Good to remember. Most times I should be aiming at a ship and they will not have that problem.
After the bomb detonated, an Ishtar showed up on the gate and was probably wondering what the hell I was doing. I didn't wait around to chat and instead cloaked and flew off, my inital bomb test considered a success.
Next time I fire the bomb off, it will be at a ship.
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Nice. I have a bomber too but I need to get my Bomb skill; me not being Caldari I sorta skipped missile skills as I mentioned in my last blog post.
ReplyDeleteI wish you many a camp bust !!!
In honour of that test?
ReplyDeleteFrom the wikipedia link in the post:
"Following the success of the Trinity test, two bombs were prepared for use against Japan during World War II." ... "The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed at least 148,000 people immediately and many more over time. By 1950, the death toll was over 340,000.[26]"
Those that died immediately were the lucky ones.
Too bad the test was successful.
I don't condone dropping nuclear weapons on anyone in real life, and the test itself was not directly responsible for any deaths. And it would be foolish to say that should the first test have not been successful than no nuclear weapons would have ever been created and used. Sooner or later a successful test would have happened.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the word 'honour' was not the most appropriate, maybe 'recognition' or 'harken back to'.
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ReplyDeleteHow funny would it have been if that Ishtar had popped in just after the bomb was launched? Good times!
ReplyDeleteSweet good luck hunting in "new mexico" then I have a hound and I love the covert ops bomber now..still getting better at it but practice makes perfect. BTW the explosion ring starts at 6KM and goes to 8KM range
ReplyDeleteOooh. I never actually knew how those worked. Handy stuff.
ReplyDeleteDon’t expect too many kills in a solo bomber when using bombs... they don’t do too much damage. What you have to do is about four stealth bombers together. That will do some damage. Personally, when I am soloing in a bomber I like to camp jump bridges and kill haulers.
ReplyDeletePrometheus09
http://podlogs.com/thecaptainslog/
Yeah, I know the bombs are not great for killing a lot of stuff. I'm doing it mostly for the practice and fun.
ReplyDelete