As someone who has spent extensive time on soloing high level Nomad missions, I will try to do my best to help you here.
First thing you will want and I would highly recommend is a Heavy battleship, such as Bismark or Zoner colony ship are you suggested. Basically any battleship that has 4 heavies is optimal here. There are different ways to accomplish this but overall the best setup I have used lately would be 2x Hurricane torpedoes and 2x either Heavy Mortars or normal Mortars. Your primaries/secondaries can be anything you like as your heavies will be doing 90% of the work here.
First make sure to preferably take a mission that is level 40 or higher. The chance of Battleships/dreads spawning on these missions I have found on average is not very good, about 1 in every 4 or 5. The main tactics explained here will be taking advantage of the fact that NPCs cannot detect you beyond about 5km away, so you can destroy or cripple them from long range before moving in. The tactics explained here can be used on not just Nomads, but any capital farming mission. When doing these tactics you will need alot of time and patience, this cannot be rushed in most cases.
The Hurricanes will be used to cripple the enemy capitals by destroying all or most of their weapons so that they can be killed at close range without being able to damage you. Mortars are used to maintain more sustained damage against them so that the missions dont take very long, depending on what spawns. Generally speaking, you will want to hit the hull of cruisers with just one torpedo and this will destroy all their weapons, and can finish them with Mortars at long range. To use the mortars correctly, move forwards at full impulse and as soon as you see the reticle, fire one shot of mortars. Right after you do this, hit your reverse thrust immediately so that you dont get too close to them. If using normal Mortars, wait about 3 or 4 seconds then release your reverse thrust and fly forwards again and repeat this process. Heavy mortars will need about 10 seconds and against cruisers you may need to fire them within 5 second intervals to bypass their shield reboot cycle so that you aren't just hitting their shields. Against battleships or dreads and specifically against Nomads, it will take some practice before you can perfect this process. Further tactics will be explained individually below.
When taking on cruisers, you may get no closer than 4.9km from them. Getting any closer will cause them to see you. Fire a pair of Hurricanes at them but do not “double tap” them by firing them both simultaneously. This is also because of their Countermeasures, in case they are able to distract a torp away, you dont waste both torps. Fire one, wait about 5 sec then fire another. Hurricanes can be fired at about 5.2km max range at cruisers.
Against Battleships, they will see you from within 4.6km. Fire torps from about 4.7km then swap to mortars and try to at least drop the shields before the torps hit the hull so that they can destroy some of their weapons. After about 2 torps hit their hull, all or almost all their weapons should be destroyed. It is best to try to hit from the sides so that their shield generator can be destroyed too as hitting from ahead may not do it. Repeat this for as many other battleships are in the formation. Please note that you may need to reposition your ship from different directions to do this without them being able to see you, as getting close to different ships may trigger other ones to start chasing you from getting too close. Once all have been crippled, move in on the formation and finish them with mortars or primaries at close range. You can optionally fire another torp or two as you start moving in. If you want to capture the Battleship remains, DO NOT kill them from farther than 2.5km as this counts as the 3km max limit to trigger proper loot spawns and killing NPCs from beyond that will not get you any loot.
A similar process can be executed against Dreadnoughts but it will take much longer. You may get no closer than 4.2km from them. Hurricanes can be fired from 4.4km. Dreadnoughts are especially difficult to take on because both you need to hit them from their side/below/above to destroy their shield generator so that you effectively cripple them. You will need to hit their hull with at least 2-4 torps to destroy most of their weapons. While doing this you can unload Mortar shots in between to speed things up. In order to weaken a Dreadnought group, you will likely need to fly above/below them so that you can hit them all from roughly equal distances. Try to reduce them all to about 1.5-2 mill HP. Be advised that you will not be able to destroy their main forward guns, this makes finishing them off more dangerous and must be timed correctly. After you believe the dreads are weakened enough, move in towards them and fire another torp or 2 at whatever ones have the most health left. If possible try to dodge at least the first barrage of their forward guns as these will annihilate you quickly. Once within 2.5km start hitting them with primaries/mortars and do not kill them before you get within about 2.2km as that is the loot cutoff. The goal here is to try to quickly kill all the dreads within a few seconds of each other so that they don't kill you or do heavy hull damage to you.
Using such tactics here have allowed me to take on several waves of enemy BS/dreads solo and without dying. As I said, this will take time to practice up and get a feel of how the rotation works of torps and mortars. If you need more info I can respond further and you can also contact me on discord at firewolfy. Hope this all helps.
