Flak--Can it still do the job?

I've also found flak to be ineffective, especially against bombers. It's a constant pain to micromanage them to stop "chasing" fighters as they zoom across the planetary system, and most of the time they are not even able to fire at anything. I'm not sure about a ratio, but if the enemy has strikecraft, I usually rely on either a cap ship's anti-fighter ability, or strikecraft of my own.

Flak...don't...counter...bombers. Flak are purely anti-fighters. Flak do anti-very light damage. Don't get me wrong. Flak will kill off bombers...slowly and eventually.

What's happened is you finally actually have to make a large enough group of flak to counter enemy fighters.

So since the new Advent carrier has 20 slots, that means you need probably 15-20 slots of flak, meaning about 4-5 TEC/Advent flak, 3-4 Vasari flak.

The real counter to fighters/bombers is to make light frigates to chase down the carrier.

I'm more talking in flt defense. Defending your flt from SC. Lf's counter the actual carrier I understand. Where flak previously protected your fleet vs SC. Isn't that back wards. Shouldn't flak protect vs bombers. Fighters only damage light targets. Bombers are the main threat to the flt. Especially now that they have been buffed.

What? Fighters do anti-light damage and bombers have light armor. Sounds to me like the counter to bombers is more fighters.

Right, so they don't want you be able to use a relatively passive method (just change the engagement range on your flak frigs and keep them and your caps and cruisers together (a.k.a. make them into a fleet with tight formation selected) they want you to have to work to stop enemy bombers, which means stopping their fighter "escorts". Flak for enemy fighters, your fighters for their bombers.

And then do like people said and use your swarm of light frigates to take our enemy carriers.

Micro is fun

Fighters eat bombers.

The counter chain is something like:
Flak -> Fighters -> Bombers -> HC -> LRF / Flak / Light -> Carriers

In other words if your enemy has lots of bombers, use fighters and light frigates.

So flaks new role would be?? Well not much as I can see.

Also, don't get me wrong. I love the new carriers..er when they fix em anyways. Fighter bomber opps is the part I love the most. However the reason I started this thread was to help define the new role for flak/dv/sent.

Slaughtering fighters and doing low but reasonable DPS to the rest of the ship classes within its range? Without them, I'm not sure how you plan on protecting your capships from strikecraft swarms.

I've noticed that the flaks aren't denting
my strike craft squadrons too much
note that the light frigates have gotten a buff against the flaks
and also flaks base damage has also been reduced as noted in the change log

while i'm not sure if these are having a profound impact in the game
i've noticed that i'm not at all worried about my cruiser's attack capabilities
against the flaks in pirate fleets anymore.
they just don't seem to be worrisome at all

Flak is not, but almost useless.

I agree.

Ya, after getting destroyed by SC, I built 20 flaks to put into my fleet (a large number, being I was playing a small/14 planet map). I could not see them make any difference. Flak almost seems redundent now, as fighters counter SC, and Flak is suppose to also; except it's 1/10th the speed. . . If it stoped the LRM missles, they would have a great nitch in the game; a defencive LRM counter.

Flak was nerfed way too heavily. It is useless now.

Ok, since this is the beta what do we want from flak?
Imo part of the problem is the fighter. It is too good vs to many things. Or at least does enough while staying alive to do more. I.E making bombers not quite, but almost useless.(In a fleet action. Vs defense and planet structures bombers are the ticket.)
Flak. As much as we all want these giant unopposed strike craft battles. Where we clear whole enemy fleets in minutes kinda takes away from the multi-layered strategy that sins is.
A possible fix:
The role of the fighter needs to be anti-fighter anti-bomber.
It should not damage much else really due to light weapons.
Flak should be anti-strike craft in general but should murder slow moving bombers.
I think the balance between flak/bomber should be one of mutual destruction.

More to follow gtg but definitly more data and debate needed for a proper balance.
Good day,
DC

the problem with flak is why make a unit that only counters strikecraft? Strikecraft are regenerated freely for antimatter. Destroying fighters doesn't hurt you opponent at all because he can just remake them.

I don'tk now what the answer is, but a guess on my part would be to give the carrier "very light" armor too. The counter would be flak and flak would actually have a use.

Or, give flak a better damage multiplier against very light armor, so they're detrimental to fighters, not just a soft counter.

Good post R.A. Flack does seem like an "extra pinky" now, but I'm not sure what else to do with it. Like I wrote, If they helped stop LRM missles, I'd put them in my fleets to counter LRM spam (and help a bit with SC). Otherwise, at the time, I'd guess I'd always build carriers, not flack, for anti-SC.

First of all I must say I'm happy with the balance as stands LF vs LC. It works.
==Flak==
How about taking flak back to almost 1.05 with an increased fleet supply and cost. Lf actually counters flak now so this may work as well. It also makes you manage your SC. Which is good because it engages you. Adds more strategy to fleet engagements.

"It also makes you manage your SC. Which is good because it engages you. Adds more strategy to fleet engagements."

I have two problems with this statement:
1) I already have plenty of stuff to be doing in SoaSE - like a second battle, checking on my opponents, building an additional fleet, or managing my planets - without having to micro-manage additional individual units, especially strike craft.
2) Managing SC is almost certainly a tactical exercise, not a strategic one. ("RTSs" like StarCraft aren't really named correctly)

The links are from Merriam-Webster Online.

@jsw
Its your battle tactics that achieve your strategic goals. Since you want to be technical and not read between the lines a bit..hehe. The ai does a great job of managing SC. Now for those of us who like to get that extra punch in a battle when and where it's needed. We manage our SC. Its fun and adds depth to the tactics employed in battle. Sorry for those who just want to point click say fight and watch. You can do that vs Ai. It doesn't counter moves or fight back in a human way. It just fights to a preprogrammed point and quits or dies. Humans we get pissed and fight harder or get demoralized and quit. This game is kinda stressful sometimes but so is poker. When you you win or lose you sorta get the same kinda rush. Be it they may feel different.
Back on topic.
Flak: What do we want from flak?

In this age that Sins takes place in, I hope the flak turrets aren't manned by any crew members. What would make more sense is fire and forget missiles that have a long range that are only effective against strikcraft. I know the Vasari flak firgate uses missiles but they would be better if they had a longer range to deal with the increased # of strikcraft. So the ship could just fly around firing missiles that would auto-track fighters, instead of chasing a squadron only to have to turn around again. These ships would be vulnerable to anything other than strikecraft so they would need protectioin. But maybe altering the existing ships to this could help balance it...?

I'd have to agree that fighters are too effective against ships. I think they should be needed to counter bombers and perhaps be able to clean up scout ships but the idea that the fighters can destroy cap ships when spammed doesn't make a lot of sense. Bombers, OTOH, should definitely be scary to fleets and therefore would be used much more than fighters for engagements against fleets. Then the fighters become necessary to counter, etc.

Fighters (and by extension, carriers) just upset the overall balance too much, IMHO.

Phalnax has an excellent suggestion. If the range on flak were to be increased, then you have an effective counter and the flak don't need to be running all over the gravity well to get one shot off. I would also suggest decreasing the flak nerf from 43% to 25%. Increasing their effectiveness against bombers would also be great: In World War II, how many fighters got shot down over Germany due to flak? How many bombers got shot down by flak? I think if you think about it logically, flak should be more effective against bombers than fighters because they are larger and slower targets.

I also still like my idea of adding 1 flak gun (the flak frigate has 4) to HCs. Think about real life, a big honkin' cruiser out at sea has anti-everything weapons. HCs should be the same way. They are good at everything, but great at none.

I agree with Howdidudothat and VARoadstter for two reasons.

a) this is the kind of kill relation we have come to expect from sci fi. look at space shooters like freespace or x-wing etc. fighters dont kill big ships. in fact they dont even make a dent (I spent 15 minutes trying to kill a damaged shivan corvette once because I just wanted that kill). bombers do. thats about the only thing they do. they are a tad slower, less agile, but heavier and have the bigger guns. period.

there is an option to keep strikecraft docked. so, this could in effect become a pretty nice strategy. knowing you have several squads of bombers that could shred the enemy fleet apart, but first you need other ships to take down enemy fighters and flaks. maybe keep fighters undocked but close by for defensive action. then, if you manage to knock out enough enemy anti strike craft capacity, you can send them on their nasty mission.

maybe a nerf on another point might be interesting as well. maybe it should take more antimatter to replace strikecraft, so they are still a powerful unit, but not so much of a throwayay unit. currently, you can send them in because they get replaced reasonably fast. if you keep them as powerful as they are, but with a much longer rebuild time, this could make for a very different, and much more exciting balance. and its a very soft change, compared to some voiced who suggested resource cost for strike craft similar to sc carriers.

very interesting thread, and I tend to agree that flak is unfortunately pretty useless (even in 1.05, I don't use it that much)

Do we know if Stardock reads the thread and take notes of what we experience?

There was another thread in the general forum where one person stated that the AI in 1.09 simply spam strikecrafts and there's nothing to do about it except spamming strikecrafts too.