Firehawks are the most lethal building destroyer at GDI's disposal. A full airfield of firehawks can take down all bar the most heavily armored structures, and with both good armor and speed they stand a decent chance of making it home. Where the firehawk really shines, however, is when used with the stratofighter upgrade. This upgrade allows your firehawks to escape upwards out of anti air weapon range, and almost immediately come down at the chosen location.
The method most good players use in stratohawk bombing is flying in the old fashioned way, destroying the chosen enemy buildings, and immediately stratoboosting to the airfield after releasing the bombs. This provides the benefits of both rapid return flight to minimize downtime between bombing runs, and avoiding enemy anti air that would have otherwise shot the firehawks down. While very heavy, particularly tier 3 upgraded anti air will still cause losses, anything less will usually mean your firehawks destroy their target and all make it back home.
One key aspect of this tactic is utilizing the stratoboosters immediately after the firehawks have released their payload. Therefore it is important that all your firehawk groups release their bombs at very nearly the same time, otherwise you may strato out while some have bombs remaining, or else strato out after some have already been shot down.
The other key aspect of this tactic is choosing your targets wisely, and knowing how many bombs you need for each so you can inflict maximum damage with each run. A few common bomb requirements are:
- Deployed Surveyor, Crane, Barracks, Tier 4 Structure - 2 Bombs
- Power plants - 3 Bombs
- Tier 2 Structure - 4 Bombs
- Tier 3 Structure, Refinery, War factory - 7 Bombs
Equally as important as being able to utilize this tactic, is prioritizing your targets effectively. For general bombardment, usually tech buildings are the best targets, as they are the most expensive and cause your opponent the most annoyance. However it is often situational; for example you may need to take out a row of Obelisks so that you can assault the enemy base. Or, you may decide to target the tier 2 tech building and power plants to prevent the enemy from placing anti air defenses, allowing you to continue bombing the enemy base with minimal risk. Another method is to take out the enemies power, which is quite effective with 1 power plant per firehawk per run, you can literally destroy them faster than they can be rebuilt with four firehawks. You should also be on the lookout for adjacent buildings, by force firing between them you can get the full damage on both structures (be sure they are right next to each other however, or risk causing minimal damage to both!) Through experience you will learn which targets should take highest priority in any given situation, and this prioritizing will be a huge factor to your success.
The micromanagement required for this tactic is not difficult, it requires simple group interface knowledge, hotkeys and the minimap (or bookmarks, or even the 'H' key). Firstly, decide on the target. Get the firehawks grouped and airborne, and send them all to attack the first target. On the way, deselect the firehawks who will bomb that target (See
Totw #16 on how to do this quickly and easily) and then reassign the remaining firehawks to their targets. Repeat until all firehawks are assigned (and quickly too, otherwise they may get to the target before you are finished!). Reselect all your firehawks again, and as soon as the bombs are dropped hit your home key/bookmark/click minimap, hit ctrl A and click near your airfield. Dont forget to also tell them to land. Using this strategy often will teach you the importance of timing here, as many a time you may have all four firehawks coming home with only a minuscule sliver of health left. You should get a feel for the command lag in each match, so you know how soon to stratoboost home to minimize time between payload released and stratoboosting.
A mention to planning mode here: This can be used to take care of the micro management for you. Enter planning mode, assign the target, stratoboost home, then leave planning mode. The firehawk will fly in, drop its bombs, and automatically stratoboost out. While this can be useful in some situations, most of the time it is not recommended. This is because the firehawk idles for a moment after dropping its bombs, before executing the stratoboost. This can add an extra one or two seconds of anti-air fire it takes, which is often enough to ground it. If the enemy anti-air is light, and you have the time to issue the planning mode orders, then this can be an easier way of managing your firehawks.
If your firehawks are attacking targets far enough apart that they will not all fire simultaneously, then it is a good idea to set them into groups. Each group that fires simultaneously gets its own number, so then you can quickly call each group back as it drops it payload.
When using firehawks for bombing it is often a good idea to set them to hold fire. It can be frustrating and breaking to your strategy when you fly them around the side of an enemy base, and while idling their they decide to harmlessly bomb an enemy harvester. Hopefully you would notice this and retreat, otherwise you may fly into the enemy base to discover you have empty firehawks. It is also very helpful when stratoboosting behind or into the enemy base, so that they do not waste their payload over the nearest unit upon arrival. Make sure however that if you switch them to missile loadout to take out enemy aircraft, that you remember to set them back to defensive or aggressive, otherwise they will not fire anything that you haven't directly clicked on.
One final tip: Firehawk payloads can be split up. With good timing and lag prediction, you can reassign a firehawk after it has dropped only 1 or 2 of its bombs, allowing it to use the other bombs for another structure. Typically, this will only be effective when attacking a base without air defense, as the concentration it requires makes it more difficult to stratoboost out. However it may be effective if, for example, the enemy has 3 nod sam turrets and you have 4 hardpoint stratohawks. Sam turrets require 4 bombs to destroy. You can leave one firehawk idling near the enemy base, and use one firehawk on each sam turret hub simultaneously, stratoboosting out to prevent casualties. The fourth firehawk is then the cleanup, attacking on a good angle to get them all in one run (if possible), one bomb per hub. It may go down, but taking out 3 sam turrets means that your future runs are going to be much easier, especially if you can quickly follow up by destroying the enemy operations center.
