Flak--Can it still do the job? » Forum Post by DarkCloud

Also, more annoyingly, I had 16 Kodiacks chasing said cariers across 3 gravity wells and the combo of 3000 hp/shield the advent carriers have is way too much.

Kodiac HC's dont counter the carriers...had you used Cobalts In their place they would chased down and destroyed them. Mind you your fleet would still have had some problems.

I have found the counter to that advent drone carriers (they are the hard ones really with 3 squadrons each)when I played against them as tec. I pretty much had 15 flack ships, and 10 of my own carriers with half fighters, half bombers set up. And two Krols with one with Flak 2, and one with flak 3, both with shields and their rail guns autocast turned off to maximize flak bursts. The fleet also had a side fleet made of 20 Cobalts with the antimater eating thing. (I forget name forgive me)Also something like 20 lfms in the main fleet. No hcs or robotics yet at this point in game.

Now in this scenario The advent I went up against I was attacking their homeworld finally. The defences consisted of about 20 guardians, a progenatior (lvl 6) a battleship (forget name again...) 2 carrier hangers, and about 18 carriers (so 54 squadrons of strikecraft.They had some more stuff then that but nothing worth noticing. I suffered minimul casualties taking this out since due to a recent engagetment causing me to flee the scene vs their armada of strikecraft I had prepared my countermeasures. (the flaks, and my strike craft)

Thusly my theory on it is this. The only dangerous ones really are teh Advent ones with 3 squadrons each. The TEC and Vasari ones are not nearly as dangerous since it takes more carriers to reach Critical Mass.

quick edit: I forgot ot mention the cobalts were assembled in a side fleet and their sole job was Carrier killing.

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Historically, in real life, the only real counter to fighters and bombers were... fighters. That's it. Flak has always been highly ineffective, even vs linear, constant speed moving bombers like the B-17 runs at nazi Germany. In modern times, SAM are the only effective static defense, and still it isn't as effective as a good fighters.

Now, going into Sci-fi, except for Star Trek, in every other major (or minor) Sci-fi movie, fighters (and bombers) are countered by other fighters: Star Wars, BS Galactica, Farscape, Babylon 5. And every capital ship had also good point defenses vs strike craft.

I prefer to have more carriers and strike craft than the useless and rarely, if ever seen, flak frigate. They just should change the flak frigate to something else, put flak in all capital ships, and use fighters to counter striker craft.

BTW, I never use Flak frigates, even if the AI has tons of SC, I have a few (but not spam) of my own, and I order all my fleet to destroy the carriers first.

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interestingly enough I hadnt played as the Vasari in beta yet till today. (I random what race I play) So now I have a slightly different perspective on the drone carriers. What was easy to defeat with the TEC (now I am guessing a large part of that ease was due to the aoe damage to strike crafts) I was unprepared for drone carriers as Vasari and quite frankly had 2 fleets destroyed by them. Sure I took out their capitals and a good portion of the drone carriers. But with no carriers of my own till too late it didnt matter. I tried flak of course in a desperate attempt to buy time.

Waste of resources. So from what I can tell now. If your not TEC with anti strike craft upgrades on your Cap and with fighters of your own. Your gonna die. I lost two fleets that were over 40 ships in size without anti carrier defences. To fleets that consisted of 20 disciples 1 progenator (that died fast though) and 10 carriers. All cause I didnt have 10 carriers of my own.

so moral of the story in the new version of sins it looks like teching to 3rd tier military needs to be prioratized a bit more to compete against Advent carriers. I still dont really have any problems versus vasari, or tec carriers so far though.

Mind you I am only um 13 games into the beta (keeping notes and stuff as I find bugs actually found 1 or 2 today need to upload saves and create threads in a bit.)

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Kodiac HC's dont counter the carriers...had you used Cobalts In their place they would chased down and destroyed them. Mind you your fleet would still have had some problems.

This is true to a point, but my Kodiaks were hammering said carriers through 1 of those 3 systems that I had phase disrupters on. The point I am trying to make is that 16 Kodiks should have enough firepower to cut 20 carriers to pieces in the extra time it took them to phase jump, but due to their immense shield and hull points, not figuring in upgrades, I think they are a bit too potent a platform.

Historically, in real life, the only real counter to fighters and bombers were... fighters. That's it. Flak has always been highly ineffective, even vs linear, constant speed moving bombers like the B-17 runs at nazi Germany. In modern times, SAM are the only effective static defense, and still it isn't as effective as a good fighters.

Now, going into Sci-fi, except for Star Trek, in every other major (or minor) Sci-fi movie, fighters (and bombers) are countered by other fighters: Star Wars, BS Galactica, Farscape, Babylon 5. And every capital ship had also good point defenses vs strike craft.

Absolutely true in the real world. But if you remember the pilot of BSG, the flak on the capital ship Galactica was more of a defensive perimeter than it was an offensive weapon. Maybe this could be a special ability for the flak frigates? Some sort of flak burst that can seal out SC for a limited period of time? I realize that may be hard to implement with large amounts of flak frigates... its just a thought.

so moral of the story in the new version of sins it looks like teching to 3rd tier military needs to be prioratized a bit more to compete against Advent carriers. I still dont really have any problems versus vasari, or tec carriers so far though.

This should not be the case, moreso when you consider how early in the game Advent can start building SC. The Advent, who now IMO have a totally lopsided advantage in the sense that not only do they get 3 squads of craft per carrier, but the craft per squad is greater than that of any other race, AND they only require 2 reasearch buildings to start churning them out. Cobalts might work against AI to chew up carriers, but no human player will let you near his carrier fleet with light frigates. That presents a problem for the other races that is compounded by the nerfed flak vessels.

I am not pretending I know how to go about fixing this, but at the moment this seems more unbalanced than it was at the start.

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Forgot to add that should things stay this way with SC having a more prominent role in the game from here on out, I think it is time for some kind of flak or SAM (space-area missle? lol) platform to be available and built for planetary defence. This would make SC more strategic for use in combat rather than planetary attack, which is more or less a complete reversal of thier role in earlier versions.

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I dunno, the more I play the more I hate hate hate hate the advent ones. They are such a pain in the ass. Its not that they cant be destroyed, its that while yoru destroying them the fighters/bombers and disciples are laying waste to your back ranks since it takes a long time to kill them in the fairly early game. (even with carriers of my own going 2 to 1 fighter/bomber ratios)

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Basically, most Carriers are twice as strong now; Advent 3 times as strong, and flak, one of SCs counter, nerfed. Time for another version of the beta so we can test some leveling of this. Not much else we all can do (if the Devs have seen all our posts) but to wait and see what/when they put out a new beta patch. . . .

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I dunno, the more I play the more I hate hate hate hate the advent ones. They are such a pain in the ass. Its not that they cant be destroyed, its that while yoru destroying them the fighters/bombers and disciples are laying waste to your back ranks since it takes a long time to kill them in the fairly early game. (even with carriers of my own going 2 to 1 fighter/bomber ratios)

If you play as a race other than the advent, you can all but forget about bombers. The advent simply put too many SC in the field of play. One sure fire way to kill mounds of Advent SC is with a few TEC caps.
1. Get a Dunov and a Kol to lvl 6. Get Flak burst to at least lvl two and get finest hour and flux field.
2. Find Advent carrier fleet.
3. When SC approach hit the flux field (reduces ability AM cost) then finest hour (reduces ability cooldown time, AM regeneration, and AM cost even more), and target SC yourself when there are a lot in range.
4. Get off 6-10 Flak bursts and watch your Kol tear those SC a new one.
5. THEN launch your own fighters and you should have air superiority, but by then you also have the upper hand and the advent is retreating.
I got three cap ships from levels 7-10 in three skirmishs like that.

Dunno if it would work the same for Vasari because I rarely play them with the sound on.

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If you play as a race other than the advent, you can all but forget about bombers. The advent simply put too many SC in the field of play. One sure fire way to kill mounds of Advent SC is with a few TEC caps. 1. Get a Dunov and a Kol to lvl 6. Get Flak burst to at least lvl two and get finest hour and flux field.2. Find Advent carrier fleet.3. When SC approach hit the flux field (reduces ability AM cost) then finest hour (reduces ability cooldown time, AM regeneration, and AM cost even more), and target SC yourself when there are a lot in range. 4. Get off 6-10 Flak bursts and watch your Kol tear those SC a new one.5. THEN launch your own fighters and you should have air superiority, but by then you also have the upper hand and the advent is retreating.I got three cap ships from levels 7-10 in three skirmishs like that.Dunno if it would work the same for Vasari because I rarely play them with the sound on.

Yeah I know that stuff for mid to late game. But the problem I am running into is the ai in 1.09 is building them around the time my Cap is lvl 3 and I only have one kap. Obviouslyits a Krol for shields and flak burst.

But again the problem is the fact that we are talking about 30minutes to an hour in the game. Your economy is still weak over all. ONE thing I know I need to do is start microing my flak bursts myself for maximum effectiveness at this stage of the game. Another option I am looking at is instead of going for carriers early to counter thier carriers is making a mass of Light frigates (20 or so) whos entire job is to hit the carriers the second I see them, then they can move to secondary targets.

If you want to see more of the problem I mean. Play Kronac's cross against 3 medium AI's (hard if your brave +50% resources to ai lol) sand make sure at the very least one of them is advent. This is the map they been whooping me on, and I Have a thing for if I start losing on a map I keep playing till I start winning. One of the things that makes this map dangerous is all enemy homeworlds are just 3 jumps away.

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