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Fighters vs. Flak - Imbalance?

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Fighters vs. Flak - Imbalance?

from Sins Forums
I'll keep this brief as I'm going to hit the hay, as it were, but I've noticed that Flak frigates and their alien counterparts are extremely effective at eating up fighters.

This is especially interesting, since everything that can carry a wing of strikecraft (and can move) is a hell of a lot more expensive, fragile, or higher on the tech tree than AAA.

I generally have a fleet that carries a group of strikecraft - a Supercarrier supported by two or three cruiser-class carriers and a couple of flak frigates for their own well-being - they generally hang out on the edges and send in their own wings of whatever I need. I have most certainly noticed that if there is just one or two flak frigates, they simply stand no chance at all and will take EXTREMELY heavy losses. Even without being in fire, replacement of squadron damages is ponderously slow, and replacing damage to the entire WING is extremely time-consuming. I've really just taken to grounding all my squadrons until all anti-air defense has been cleared.

Sure, that parallels reality to a degree, but in reality, it also takes one laser-guided or anti-radiation munition to blow the top off an SA-25. You don't send F-15s into a battlefield plagued with AAA, but they have certainly been designed to detect and jam radar sites and anti-air weaponry as well.

I'm fine with flaks being effective against strikecraft, but I'm not fine with the fact that, at least on the TEC side of things, they can not only take a ridiculous amount of punishment and refuse to go down even under withering firepower, and even a wing's worth of bombers is unable to put a dent in them, but that they're a tech tier lower, significantly cheaper, and can so effectively lock down my strikecraft, removing them from play. A whole fighter group can be neutralized by a cheaper investment of flaks.

As it is, it's meticulously time-consuming to hunt down and slowly whittle away each flak frigate first before I can launch any strikecraft - even if I designate them to LRM launchers, they still wander into range of a flak and they're suddenly half-dead.

Thoughts?
113,327 views 69 replies
Reply #51 from Sins Forums Top
The advent bomber does beam damage, so wouldn't it be affected by Amplify Energy Aura?
Reply #52 from Sins Forums Top
I would have to contradict. Recently I got spammed by 50+ carrier cruisers (playing advent) and i got pawned for good. I had like 30 defenders, but they seemed virtually ineffective.One might think, that the other party would be helpless when solely relying on fighters versus flaks. But wasn't so.
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Reply #53 from Sins Forums Top
A whole fighter group can be neutralized by a cheaper investment of flaks.
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Thats the point.. If anti-strikecraft frigates wasnt effective against your bombers, there would be no counter vs carriers. Might be fun for you that like carriers, but what about the guy that prefers other ships?
If we nerf stuff to the point where everything does no damage and takes no damage, where will the game end up?

The fact is that bombers are great versus EVERYTHING except anti-strikecraft frigates. I'd say thats a pretty damn good deal, dont you?
Reply #54 from Sins Forums Top


So in a fleet of two capital ships, 30-40 assault frigates, a handful of cruisers, and 25-30 LRM launchers, it's completely balanced that I can completely stomp the Advent Drone Carrier spam - a race that is HEAVILY FOCUSED ON FIGHTERS - with just four or five flak frigates? That it should be expected that their entire force should slowly crawl around and chase away at a handful of units in order to use something?


how many drones? what support was there for the drones? how did you micro them?

as a person who has used mass bombers in many games, I have beating forces with more flaks than drones, so I think your just trolling.
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That's pretty much what he does. And the few good points made get lost in the noise of jackass-ery.
Reply #55 from Sins Forums Top



Repeat after me... "It's only a game... it's only a game".

End of quote


That is the excuse of every person who cannot come up with a way to prove their side right. And I believe the flak frigates really are way to tough I've already been thinking of how I may be able to use them as bait while my damage dealing craft don't take any damage... THE IDEA DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!!!! but it works...
Reply #56 from Sins Forums Top
That's what you get for being a strikewhore. Try using some other frigates once in a while. Flakcraft are not NEARLY as overpowered as assaultcraft (LRMs, Illums, Assails).
Reply #57 from Sins Forums Top
Did I say overpowered? Lets see... No I didn't Dreyf I suggest you learn the ability to read.
Reply #58 from Sins Forums Top
So in a fleet of two capital ships, 30-40 assault frigates, a handful of cruisers, and 25-30 LRM launchers, it's completely balanced that I can completely stomp the Advent Drone Carrier spam
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Yes, it is completely balanced that a MIXED FORCE would beat a SPAM of any kind. Stop whining and learn to use something other than strikecraft.


Did I say overpowered? Lets see... No I didn't Dreyf I suggest you learn the ability to read.
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What made you think I was replying to you...? Don't be so self-centered.
Reply #59 from Sins Forums Top
Present Flak Frigs are fine.
Reply #60 from Sins Forums Top


BTW, what the heck is an 'NME warhead'?
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That is the final upgrade for Vasari which increases phase missile damage by 20%
Reply #61 from Sins Forums Top
Anticommie: Yeah. It seems so ridiculous how that one squadron of bombers can annoy the heck out of my giant capital ship forever. You'd think the gunners would at least TRY to shoot them down if there was nothing left to shoot at.

Anyway, I haven't had any problems with flak frigates. But, then again, the only time I play with enough fighter / bombers to see such a problem is when I'm playing Advent. But with Advent, you get so many fighter / bombers that you don't really give a damn if you lose one or two hundred to a couple dozen flak... (Seriously.)

'sides, It's not like flak are the most durable things in the world. And they can't damage anything other than fightercraft too. So just dock all your fighter / bombers and shoot the little things with everything else you have. Considering their amount of HP, some focus firing would take 10 seconds to kill 4.
Reply #62 from Sins Forums Top

That is the excuse of every person who cannot come up with a way to prove their side right.
End of quote


Fine, you win. Flaks are overpowered. Now stop posting, please.
Reply #63 from Sins Forums Top

More precise damage stats:

TEC


44.4 dmg / 13.5s
3.29 x 5 -> 16.4 dps
25s build time

Vasari

76.9 dmg / 13.5s
5.7 x 3 -> 17.1 dps

Advent

34.4 dmg / 13.5s
2.55 x 7 -> 17.8 dps
End of quote


Wait... is there something wrong with the in-game infocards? How can '76.9' translate into a vague '6'? How can '44.4' suddenly turn into a '3'?

And though these are the kinds of ratings used for attack and armor, how come shields and hitpoints use 'normal' ratings in the hundreds or thousands?
Reply #64 from Sins Forums Top


More precise damage stats:

TEC

44.4 dmg / 13.5s

Vasari

76.9 dmg / 13.5s


Wait... is there something wrong with the in-game infocards? How can '76.9' translate into a vague '6'? How can '44.4' suddenly turn into a '3'?
End of quote


It looks like the in-game infocards list the damage as DPS, or "damage per second." Dividing the amount of damage by (the amount of seconds it takes to do that much damage, I think?), you get something like what appears on the infocards:

76.9 dmg / 13.5s = 5.70 DPS => 6, rounded up
44.4 dmg / 13.5s = 3.29 DPS => 3, rounded down
Reply #65 from Sins Forums Top
I havent bought game yet(eu player, havent come out here), so i cant talk about acuall gameplay...i just wonder one thing,is it possible to disable, destroy weaponsystems
on frigate and capital ships, in this case flak guns on frigates.

Reply #66 from Sins Forums Top
Sorry for offtop, but TEC flak frigate more and unbalanced effective than other flak frigate [Vasari and Advents). When i play TEC vs Advents and after game i saw game statistics for my frigates and was very wondered: Oldest frigate [as you know, all ship or object has number] destroy in two big battles 62 strike craft!!! And others 13 survived frigates has 536 destroyed strike craft. Best Vasari results for Junsurak - only 22 strike craft and one ship [probably trade shups]. In future try gather statistics for Advents. P.S: use v.18 patch and Entrenchment v1.01
Reply #67 from Sins Forums Top
@Zvevdochets well thats because tec's flak firing mechanism is like a X pattern (firing 45 degree at 4 locations at once) while vasari flak firing mechanism is more like two horns pattern .finally for advent, their flak firing mechanism is more like a spiral pattern
Reply #68 from Sins Forums Top

that was a preety massive necro....

there have been.... many? patches since feb 13 2008.... i mean... the game was what... 1.05 then? all out of date.

however... tec and advent flacks are very nice for thier cost... however once sentinals get charged missles... preety nice.

Reply #69 from Sins Forums Top

the fact simply remains, if you have more flak than he has fighters etc, you will win, if he has more SC than you have AAA, he will win, etc etc

stop trying to win the game with 3 ships, and you'll find the balance in Sins isnt as big an failure as spammers make it out to be