This article gives suggestions on how to bomb in an intermediate-level game--that is, a decent pickup game, or a low-level clue game. It's closely related to the Intermediate SC Play article, and is followed by the Advanced Bombing and Advanced SC Play articles, which are more geared towards top clue games and INL play.
Introduction
Full-time bombing is the most cereberal and least twitch-oriented task in netrek. It's also, not coincidentally, the most neglected. It's the ideal job for newer players, or anyone who isn't capable of dominating on the front; in intermediate games, the team which bombs better is nearly always the team which wins, and one full-time bomber is usally enough to make the difference. Unlike dogfighting and other front-line tasks, bombing is not physically difficult to do, and bombers get a better view of the flow of the game. If you are interested in raising your overall clue level, bombing is the best way to do it.
The reason bombing is neglected is that most players would rather twitch than think; bombing is often considered dull, but only by people who don't understand what is interesting about it. It's about positioning, communication, and decision-making, not about fighting. It's also not about DI; due to various factors inherent in the DI system, full-time bombing is a low-DI activity. It is about winning, which I consider to be the most interesting activity of all.
Bombing Goals
If there is no bombing, or lackadasical bombing, then any time a ship gets a couple kills, it can quickly pick up from the nearest planet, or the nearest fuel planet, and start taking. Your team cannot easily react to that sort of carrier; the planet take happens too fast, especially when that sort of thing is happening all over the front. This is where the bomber comes in.
If you have dedicated bombing, the enemy will find it harder to pick up. They will not find it impossible, certainly; as noted above, you can't hope to bomb all armies. But what you can do is force the carrier to go further for armies. You can force him to go to a non-fuel planet for armies, and then go get fuel somewhere else (or vice-versa). Essentially, you increase the amount of time between when he gets kills and when he is ready to drop armies. By delaying enemy carriers, you make it easier for your team to react to them and keep them from dropping; if your team is more time-efficient when it comes to dropping armies, you'll usually do better.
These two goals--controlling army supply, and gathering information--are things which are rarely done well in intermediate games, and often are neglected in top games. For example, in the Golden Bears at Sugarplums game in the Fall 1996 INL, Sugarplums stopped bombing in the last few minutes of regulation. This allowed me to get 2.5 kills with less than two minutes left in regulation, quickly go to our base to pick up while cloaked in green alert, and maxwarp cloaked to the Sugarplums AGRI. They didn't see me until too late. The lessons? Don't listen to Jitesh, and KEEP BOMBING.
A rule of thumb I use is that you want your total planets bombed to be at least 5 times as high as your ACC. Unfortunately, you can only check this after clue games, because there's no system for recording these stats in vanilla servers, but it should give you an idea of the proper ratio of easy bombs to hard bombs you should be trying for. Even more so than when you're scumming planets, you should take what they give you as a bomber; it's better to take an easy bomb of a planet at 5 armies than to try for a conested bomb on a planet at 7.
Another thing to consider is the type of carrier the other team has. Many of the top carriers are at their least effective when they have exactly one kill; they don't want to die, they don't want to SC drop, and they can't effectively take planets using 2 armies at a time. If the other team has players like this, the second ACC is more important to avoid than the first one.
Once you get them to core and below, bombing becomes difficult, but you must continue to try. Bombing often becomes combined with ogging here, but if you don't eliminate their armies one way or the other, you will not win.
The speed of the SC allows it to control a wide region of space while bombing. "Space control" in the context of bombing means the ability to beat enemy ships to a potential pop. Any planet which you can get to, bomb, and get away before any enemy can stop you can be said to be controlled by you. Your goal as a SC bomber is to control at least one AGRI planet and as many other planets as possible. If the enemy has two open-side rear AGRIs, you should try to position yourself between them or near them. If they have one open-side AGRI and one wall-side core or front AGRI, you should usually give up on the wall-side AGRI and concentrate on controlling the open-side one. If both AGRIs are wall-side, you can try to live over by the wall, but it's hard to avoid attracting attention and getting trapped.
You do not need to be directly on top of a planet, or even near it, to be controlling it. For example, if you are FED vs. ROM, and the ROMs have ERI AGRI, you can move within a region of space that extends down to REG and over past TAU and still have control of that AGRI because it's so far from the normal battle lines. On the other hand, if they have DRA/SIR AGRI, you need to be close because ships entering the game can quickly get to DRA, and SIR isn't far beyond that. A rule of thumb is that if they have just one AGRI you can control, you should try to be as far away from it as you can be while still controlling it, but if they have two AGRIs close together, you should be near or between them.
If there's only one enemy pop, you should move through the space you control towards it. You almost always want to use maxwarp; you can fuel up after you bomb the planet. If there is enemy ASW at the planet, normally you should remain out of his tractor/phaser range, but stay close enough to continue to threaten the armies while controlling as much space as possible. For example, if there is a pop at TAU and a CA sitting on it, you can move to just outside of CA tractor range of TAU and tack back and forth at warp 4-6. This way, you still control ERI, SIR, REG, and mostly DRA, and the CA at TAU has to remain there to keep you from bombing it. If he's any good, he'll move off TAU and try to push you out of his space; when this happens, keep out of tractor range, and keep trying to threaten to go around him and bomb TAU.
If there are multiple enemy pops, you should prioritize them by ease of bombing, proximity to your ship, and the number of armies on the planets. If you're sitting between ERI and SIR, and ERI pops to 7 and SIR pops to 5, go for ERI first (assuming no defense at either place). But if ROM pops to 7 and SIR pops to 5, bomb SIR first; always take the quick, easy bomb when it's there.
When considering ease of bombing, think about not only the ease of bombing given the current game state, but the general difficulty of bombing that specific planet. Give more weight to planets which are not normally easy to bomb, but which you can easily get to at the moment. For example, if DRA pops to 5 and SIR pops to 6, and you can get to DRA unmolested, go for DRA first, because it will be easy to pick up SIR later, and it probably won't be easy to pick up DRA.
Always be careful when trying to bomb the homeworld or a close core world. It's generally not worth it to try to get your teammates to stop killing people so you can bomb; it's better to sit behind the homeworld and watch the messages and the game flow until you see an opportunity to bomb the planet without having an enemy pop up on top of you. As you go in, keep an eye on the kill messages, and be ready to cloak if any opponent dies. It's usually best to be cloaked whenever you're bombing the homeworld; usually entering ships won't react immediately if they can't see you.
When there are no enemy pops, you should find the position that gives you the most control of enemy space, and hang out there at warp 4 or 5. Warp 4 or 5 is better than 0 because it's faster to turn at that speed than it is to accelerate to that speed. So, if you're between DRA and SIR at warp 5, you'll get to a pop at ERI faster by turning at warp 5 and maxwarping than you would by accelerating in the right direction from warp 0, even if the patrolling at warp 5 took you further away from ERI. Being at warp 5 also makes it much easier to retreat from big ships who try to harass you.
Obviously, you need some fuel, too, but if you've got over 3000 fuel, it's probably better to be moving than to be at warp 0.
You are not Red Shirt. Don't fly DD's. I refuse to say any more on the subject.
The most common way to get a CA deep is to space control on the open side. When your team gets a numerical advantage, you can extend the front by pushing up past REG to SIR or beyond. This is especially effective when SIR is AGRI; a CA can sit at SIR, controlling its army production from any SC droppers, and also causing significant problems for any CA's wishing to pick up. A CA carrier usually will not try to engage a deep CA alone, so your presence up there forces your opponents to dedicate a ship to clearing you out, or give up on the AGRI on that side. If a 0-kill ship tries to clear you out, butt-torp and give ground into third space, especially if there's a convenient fuel planet. Your position is valuable, so you don't want to die without a good reason. Even if you're being engaged by a 0-kill ship, you can still harass carriers, and you are still helping the SC bomber and your space controllers.
If a CA with kills and/or armies tries to engage you, you also have the option of mutualling. You should resist the impulse to ogg, because often what the CA wants, especially if he has only one kill, is to get another kill. Because the ship with kills will not fight as aggressively as the 0-kill ship, you probably can engage without giving ground. Keep him away from the planet you want to control, and try to kill him if you get a good chance. Don't give up your position to run headlong into his butt-torps.
A low-fuel CA is in more trouble than a low-fuel SC, so regaining fuel is more important for CA's than SC's. For this reason, when you're low on fuel it's usually best to sit at warp 0 rather than tack back and forth, although it's still better to tack back and forth at warp 3 or 4 if you're at full fuel. If they are trying to get you out of their space, you often have to be content with keeping their ships busy, instead of doing actual bombing.
The AS can take 280 points of damage, which is not much more than a BB's 260, but while a BB can take only 130 points of hull damage, the AS can take 200. Since your shields are down when you're bombing, this gives the AS a significant advantage in bombing defended planets; it takes a lot of fuel to do 200 damage to a cloaked ship that's detting. This is most relevant when you're attacking core or LPS; the AS's cheap cloaking, combined with its ability to take damage, make it much more likely to get in to bomb under those 3 BB's.
The AS'es dogfighting weakness and slowness make it difficult to use as a full-time ship. In the course of a normal game, it can be useful to pull one out when you see a front-line planet at 5 armies; you'll always bomb it to 3, and often bomb it to 2 or 1. In the course of a typical clue/INL game, this adds up to about a 10 army advantage if you do it consistently.
The main thing you want to avoid in this situation is giving a second kill to a primary scummer. Again, they usually won't be able to phaser you down, so be very careful to avoid any torps he sends out; as long as you do that, you'll probably be safe.
One other caution: a weak ship will usually run towards his teammates. If you are chasing the weak ship, you'll have a relative speed of warp 21 with the teammate he's running towards. At that speed, you'll be trapped if you don't decelerate or turn by the time the ship coming towards you is on your tactical. Don't give out another free kill; if he gets defenders, just peel off and resume bombing.