So, I had this idea to write a series of tactical analysis articles about a dead game I've hardly played, and am not likely to play for the foreseeable future. Why? Well, its something to do. I'm building some Ork Ships, so why not use the creative energy that's there?
The Context
So, when I started working on these articles, I had a more traditional approach in mind. I'd start with a grand summary of how the Ork fleets work, and then break it down, ship-by-ship over a series of posts. I decided against this because I'm just not an authority on any of this, and I'm not in a position to playtest. So, I go for talking points and light entertainment instead. One subject that wouldn't go away during drafting though was the matter of bombers. Something Ork fleets struggle with, both in defence and offence. What follows is a discussion of the matter, where the dread implement known as a calculator was used.
Bombers v The Lunar class, or Average McBaseline
Let us run through how a typical wave of 4 bomber tokens might interact with your typical humie Lunar Class cruiser. Bombers generate 1d6 attacks per token, minus the turret value of 2. This gives a spread of 0 to 4 attacks, and an average of 1.66666 - it goes on. We then assume that the cruiser can both respond and does so without flair, killing the average single token, leaving three to break stuff. This means the surviving bombers generate between 0 and 12 attacks, averaging 5, and remember we only need 8 hits to total the ship. We then apply armour value by dividing by 3, and ignore the matter of critical hits just now. What all this boils down to is that 4 Bombers could reasonably expect to inflict 1.66666667 damage on the Lunar. Isn't math fun? The thing you should take away though is that most weapons in BFG are rigidly predictable, and Bomber tokens aren't that. There is a wide swing between the minimum, average, and maximum, ignoring shields and positioning of the target. And, importantly, your turrets have to choose between destroying torpedoes and attack craft, so these numbers can go up higher.
How it looks for Orks
Ork Kroozers have one less turret and a 4+ rear facing, and this snowballs. A single bomber token averages here at 2.5 attacks with 1.25 damage, and maximum of 5. If we make the favourable assumption only 3 tokens connect as with the scenario above, this equates to 3.75 damage, more than double what the Lunar might expect, with the maximum being 15. This is the main reason why Orks hate Bombers, even under a modestly favourable scenario, its gonna hurt. Its hard to argue an upside here, except that the thick fronts of Ork craft usually mean torpedoes are ignorable, and while the escorts die fast to Bombers, its not worse than escorts usually do.
How do Ork Fighta-Bommas work?
In a jack of all trades kinda way. These move a little slower than Fighters, and their bombload is only D3. Later rulesets modify this in line with the “Turret Suppression” concept, which gives them a minimum output of 1 attack per token. The math for this is simple, anyway, assuming that the target has at least 2 turrets. Count up the number of tokens hitting a ship, deduct turrets, and then divide by armour, and you get your number. In the Lunar example above, again assuming average performance, 4 fighta-bommas would suffer one loss, inflict 1 damage, the maximum being 3. Meanwhile, Ork kroozers tend to have middling leadership so reloading the bays is often an issue. This would be reason 2 why Orks hate bombers, ours aren't brilliant. Now, the above means a Fighta-Bomba is unlikely to damage a capital ship that isn't already crippled, has only mediocre success against escorts, and you may not get to launch more. However, two things are easily overlooked. The first is that they always do at least one attack if they survive, and the second is that you aren't forced to choose between fighters and Bombers like other Factions are. This means that you can be opportunistic and adaptable, where others cannot. Also, Fighta-bommas are entirely functional in a Combat Air Patrol role.
Assault Boats, AKA Reason 3
Competing for launch space are Assault Boats, which are rulebook standard with no quirks. As such, these token move faster than your Fighta-Bommas, and reliably inflict annoying critical damage 5/6 of the time on cruisers, and fatal damage on escorts with the same ratio. This means that Assault Boats end up doing the anti-ship role more normally applied to bombers, and by extension demoting Fighta-Bommas to slow fighters with an ability people don't like.
Possible Solutions
The good news is that if Bombers are really getting ya down, the Clans list has two ways to increase turrets. Things look better for the larger Ork ships, as these bring more attack craft to the table, while lacking the 4+ butt, and frequently have 3 or more turrets. Its at this point where individual Bomber tokens start to have an even chance of doing either nothing or very little, so your opponent tries putting in a few Fighters for the purpose of Turret Suppression. How that can effect outcomes is tedious to work out, but it places a minimum number of attacks equal to the turret value of the victim. In such a situation, averages go up while maximums go down, assuming they don't just bludgeon a ship to death with a wing of 8 tokens. However, the most interesting solution to the Bomber issue I've come across is to simply feed them an escort. Bombers are tokens, not ships, which means their reactions are preset and MUST attack a ship when they contact one. Sending a Brute to its doom may well be worth it.
Wrapping Things Up
Orky issues with Bombers is something you just have the deal with. A weakness to be acknowledged, but not feared. There's ways around it, and if someone decided to go bomber heavy? Well, they are just gonna have less actual guns.
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