Stealth bombers are a very specialized part of PvP. They can play many roles in all sorts of fleets, as scouts, damage dealers, or bombers. They are not very hard to train into, and it is always a plus to be able fly them, because they have so many uses. They are also used in “covert drop” gangs which we will get into later.

Before you decide which stealth bombers you should fly, you should know the pros and cons of each ship. There are four different stealth bombers, one for each race.

• Manticore - The Pride of the Caldari (5/4/2) (High/Mid/Low)

The Manticore, along with the hound, is one of the most widely used stealth bombers. It is so common mostly because the majority of EVE players are Caldari. It gains a bonus to kinetic missiles and bombs, and looks badass.

• Hound - The vicious dog of the Minmatar (5/3/3)

The hound is the top dog (hah!) of the stealth bomber group. It has a bonus to explosive damage, and because of that is most widely used. If you have not decided on a bomber to choose, choose this one.

• Purifier - The cleric of the Amarr(5/3/3)

This ugly ship is just like the hound, but it gets an EM bonus, great for killing drakes and shit.

• Nemesis - The maverick of the Gallente (5/4/2)

This guy is also like the Manticore, but not as cool looking. It gets thermal bonuses.

Bombers (short for Stealth Bombers) can be used as glorified covert ops ships. You use a bomber the same for scouting as you would a covert op ship. I won't explain how to scout here, you can find that info here.

If you ever find yourself looking at a bunch of war targets, neutrals, or reds once you jump into a gate, the first thing you have to do is not panic. You have 30 seconds to evaluate your situation and come up with an escape plan.

• First - Don't panic, and tell the FC about what ships there are
• Second - See if there is a warp disruption bubble around you, or a person who can put one up, like a heavy or light interdictor
• Third - How many fast ships are there that are close enough that they could possibly uncloak me?
  • With Bubbler - Take the fast ships into account, and press full speed. What you want to do is wait about 1 second before hitting your cloak, because that will make it look like you are not going to cloak to the enemy, but they won't be able to target you. If there are no fast ships, you can just sail away through the bubble and warp off. If there are fast ships you will need to change your direction as fast as possibly to either the up, backwards, or down position. Take into account where the other fast ships are before you decide which way to turn. You should have already learned how to decloak a ship, and since you know they burn straight for you, if they believe you are going one way, but once you cloak and go another way they will have a very difficult time of finding you.
  • Without Bubbler - You are lucky! you can do the same technique as with a bubbler, or you can just hit the 'warp to' button and cloak instantly. They will have a really hard to getting to you before you warp off.

AFK Cloaker is the act of flying into an unfriendly system, warping to a safe spot and cloaking for hours on end. It can make people more hesitant to rat or mine, even if your ship is not combat fit, which makes it a great psychological tactic.

As a more direct tactic, you can AFK Cloak in a system using a combat ship (such as a Heavy Assault Cruiser or Strategic Cruiser) wait an hour or so, use your Directional Scanner to look for people who are ratting or mining, then warp in for an easy kill. Its important to keep at max range, and burn away if the target tries to tackle you, you're looking for easy kills, not easy deaths.

To fit an SB you first need to know what you'll be doing with it. A stealth bomber has three main roles:

• Lone scout
• In a gang of other ships: Long-range, Battleship-sized DPS
• In a gang of sneaky boats: Ambushing with a torp-and-bomb spit-roast

For scouting, only the Covert Ops Cloaking device is necessary. It's damn near impossible to catch a smart bomber pilot, and if you need to defend yourself on your own you're pretty much screwed anyway. Bombers are fragile; their only defenses are their small signature radii, high speed, and, of course, the ability to go into sneaky-mode at the touch of a button.

When you're in a fleet, a bomber can provide some welcome fire-support; with decent skills, one can put out the DPS of a battlecruiser or a poorly-fit battleship from a safe, comfortable range. For this, a sensor dampener can help if your victim decides that you're easy pickings, though most of the time you'll be left alone. A bomb launcher is rarely welcome in gate camps, since you'll be hitting your corpmates as well. However, a well-placed bomb or two is good for softening up a gate camp if your fleet plans to come by and break it up.

A must for a stealth bomber, besides the requisite three siege launchers, stealth module, and bomb launcher, are target painters. Just like the signature radius of turrets, explosives have explosion radii. If the explosion radius of your torpedo or bomb is greater than the signature radius of your target, it will experience a damage penalty.

• Explosion radius of torpedoes: 450 (650 for Rage torps)
• Explosion radius of bombs: 400
• Signature radius of battleships: 420
• Signature radius of battlecruisers: 275
• Signature radius of cruisers: 135

Since target painters increase the signature radius of the painted target, most bomber pilots fit a couple target painters to maximize the effectiveness of their weapons.

The primary limiting factor in what you'll be able to fit is CPU output. Since missile launcher rigs increase the CPU need of launchers—and you'll want one or two for velocity and maybe one for damage, depending on your style—you may need to install a co-processor to deal with it. Your spare low slot should be reserved for a T2 ballistic control module.

Finally, you want an afterburner. Most battleships won't be able to track you at full tilt, and a MWD increases your signature radius, making you easy to lock.

You can check skill plans for bombers and other ships here.

Beside the requisite skills for a stealth bomber, you'll want the following at the very least to be an effective bomber pilot:

• Frequency Modulation III
• Long Distance Jamming IV
• Long Range Targeting IV
• Sensor Linking IV
• Signal Suppression III
• Signature Analysis IV or V (For Sa Matra-style insta-locking goodness)
• Target Painting III
• Weapon Upgrades IV
• Bomb deployment I
• Missile Bombardment IV (required for bomb launchers)
• Missile Launcher Operation IV
• Missile Projection IV
• Rapid Launch III
• Target Navigation Prediction III
• Torpedos IV
• Guided Missile Precision IV
• Warhead upgrades III
• Evasive Maneuvering IV
• Covert Ops IV

If you have a good deal of time to invest you could consider Torpedos V, Missile Launcher Operation V, and Torpedo Specialization I, giving you access to T2 torpedos, which are more specialized and cheaper than faction torpedos.

• Your cloak has a few caveats. You cannot cloak if you've been locked, and you'll be bumped out of cloak if you're within 2000m of anything that is not cloaked or if you get hit with an AoE weapon. Jetcans, stations, gates, ships, bombs, and smartbombs will all make you visible, targetable, and vulnerable to an aggrivated sexual assault at the hands of any nearby enemies. For this reason, tell your corpmates to warp to at least 5km away from you; never warp to zero.

• Once deactivated, you can't re-cloak for another 15 seconds. Many (non-NPC) battleships won't be able to lock you in this time, but cruisers and battlecruisers likely will. Warp the hell out if you're being targeted.

• Once you let loose a bomb, spam warp until you're out of rape range. Bombs tend to incur more anger than damage.

• There are few ways to actually die in an SB. Beyond the obvious (being tackled, accidentally bumped out of cloak in a very non-permissive environment…), the most effective way to catch an SB in a gatecamp is to have a heavy interdictor wait at a gate with the bubble deactivated. When a stealth bomber (or anything with a covops cloak) shows up, begins to align, and hits cloak, a person in the camp MWDs toward the victim in the split second before the cloak kicks in while the interdictor throws up a bubble. The pilot approaching you bumps you out of cloak while the others engage in a bit of quick sexual violence, deflowering your ship and likely podding you. To avoid this, align (double click) to a direction roughly tangent to the gate—IE, if someone were to fly out to you from the gate, they should hit you at a perpendicular angle. As you align, instantly hit your cloak and your AB or MWD immediately after; if you're lucky, you'll be further than 2000m away from any enemies burning toward you. Continue in this direction until you're out of the bubble, then warp away. You should watch for fast moving ships to be burning at you, and where you might be heading and should modify your heading as necessary.