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Sinkillr

Join Date 04/2010

+416

Absolute proof flak is overpowered (Updated with Replay)

I don't know if you guys know this or not, but flak frigates are actually EXTREMELY overpowered. The general consensus in the community seems to be that flak is only useful in leveling your opponents titan and making your eco angry. I can confirm that is NOT the case. A combination of low tech (only requires TWO labs… WTF), incredible range and speed (a handful of flak got lock down an entire gravwell), cheap cost (75 credits more than cobalt… what a bargain), and the ability to counter every ship in entire game besides cap and HCs make going mass flak one of the most effective strategies in the game.

What about its supposed counter, the light frigate, you ask? The majority of the sins community doesn't know this – which is why the secret I'm about to divulge will make the "pros" very angry– but LF doesn't counter flak... It is actually the other way around. Don't take my word for it, go make a custom game and see for yourself. 200 supply of gardas vs 200 supply of cobalts. If you micro the gardas just right, the cobalts will exhibit what I call "retarded fish syndrome," and spin out of control, unable to attack the flaks. Meanwhile, the gardas will steadily chip away at the ENTIRE cobalt group, and eventually win. I guarantee this will make your head explode, as you finally realize the awesome power of the flak frigate.

1st test

Starting Conditions: 50 Gardas vs. 40 Cobalts (both 200 supply)

NO upgrades for either side

ELEMENTARY micro for flak (consists of moving back and forth in straight line)

End Result: 22 Gardas remaining (88 supply)

Remaining gardas have very high health

SCREENSHOTS- http://postimg.org/gallery/371hjd9qc/4ab10b9b/

2st test

Same conditions

End Result: 27 gardas remaining

Replay: http://www.2shared.com/file/fBoBDoHM/FlakLFtest.html?

Ryat, a trusted and prominent member of this forum, ran his own tests with 80 sentinels and 100 disciples. He said the sentinels won, hands down.

Discussion about the aforementioned "retard fish syndrome" affecting cobalts can be found here: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/446223/page/1

Solutions

Eliminate crystal cost, increase credit cost to 400

A 25 unit decrease in crystal in return for a 25 credit increase seems to be more than adequate nerf for a unit of this firepower. As everybody knows, credits are the most important resource in the early game, so this will cut down the flak numbers substantially.

2. Increase ship speed

Hold on a second! This sounds like a buff! Well no actually. One of the key elements for the flak's op nature is its ability to dish out tremendous amounts of damage due to having a fast turnaround rate. Imagine how more powerful strike craft would be if they had the flak's speed and weapon cooldown! A faster speed would lower dps, as the ship would creep out of range due to forward momentum, which translates into less time shooting at the enemy and more time turning around.

3. Increase range

This will allow it to target more enemies at once, effectively reducing the dps per ship.

Please offer constructive responses only people. No trolling, name-calling, or put downs.

P.S. - does anyone know how to put screenshots into posts? I tried the "insert image" button and it doesn't work.

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RagnorakEviscerator

Quoting ,

quoting post

Solutions
Eliminate crystal cost, increase credit cost to 400

My friend, in every game, crystal is more sparce than credit income, therefore, implementing this change will lead to more flak spam and reduced cobalt spam (which is, according to your post, a bad thing).

Increase ship speed

Hold on a second! This sounds like a buff! Well no actually. One of the key elements for the flak's op nature is its ability to dish out tremendous amounts of damage due to having a fast turnaround rate. Imagine how more powerful strike craft would be if they had the flak's speed and weapon cooldown! A faster speed would lower dps, as the ship would creep out of range due to forward momentum, which translates into less time shooting at the enemy and more time turning around.

Since the flak frigates fire in every direction thanks to their side and rear weapon banks, increasing the movement speed of this frigate will only buff it, not nerf it.

Increase range

This will allow it to target more enemies at once, effectively reducing the dps per ship.

The amount of damage to enemy ships is dependant on the amount of damage per weapon bank. Increasing the range of the frigate will only allow it to deal the very same amount of damage while keeping it further away from the enemy frigates. Therefore this change would also buff the frigate rather than nerf it.

Conclusively (ignoring the fact that light frigates do anti-light damage which makes them statistically better vs. flak frigates), if you want to nerf the frigs, the best thing to do would be to reduce their overall DPS, or change the amount of damage they do vs. certain types of ships, such as light frigates.

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Quoting Teun-A-Roonius,

reply 1

Credits are worth more than crystal in early game.

Quoting Teun-A-Roonius,

reply 1

Since the flak frigates fire in every direction thanks to their side and rear weapon banks, increasing the movement speed of this frigate will only buff it, not nerf it.

Do you not read what i wrote? Increasing flak speed will reduce the amount of time the ship spends shooting before it banks, thereby reducing dps.

Quoting Teun-A-Roonius,

reply 1

he amount of damage to enemy ships is dependant on the amount of damage per weapon bank. Increasing the range of the frigate will only allow it to deal the very same amount of damage while keeping it further away from the enemy frigates. Therefore this change would also buff the frigate rather than nerf it.
Conclusively (ignoring the fact that light frigates do anti-light damage which makes them statistically better vs. flak frigates), if you want to nerf the frigs, the best thing to do would be to reduce their overall DPS, or change the amount of damage they do vs. certain types of ships, such as light frigates.

Increasing range will allow it to target more at once ships, thereby reducing the amount of damage inflicted per ship. Since flak doesn't have the best dps, it will deal a severe nerf to their ability to deal with light frigates.

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Quoting Sinkillr,

reply 2

You are absolutely wrong here man. The way target per banks works, it applies FULL damage per target. There is no splitting of damage or anything. Having more targets per bank actually does the full dps to each target it can hit.

It's weird yes, but that is the way Sins works.

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stupid triple post or something

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stupid triple post or something

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GoaFan77

Join Date 10/2008

+629

Quoting Wintercross,

reply 3

Quoting Sinkillr, reply 2
Increasing range will allow it to target more at once ships, thereby reducing the amount of damage inflicted per ship. Since flak doesn't have the best dps, it will deal a severe nerf to their ability to deal with light frigates.

You are absolutely wrong here man. The way target per banks works, it applies FULL damage per target. There is no splitting of damage or anything. Having more targets per bank actually does the full dps to each target it can hit.

It's weird yes, but that is the way Sins works.

I'm thinking he's just trolling Winter, all of his solutions seem like a way to "buff" flak.

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Quoting Wintercross,

reply 3

Ok I did not know that. We can scratch suggestion number 3 off then.

Quoting GoaFan77,

reply 6

I'm thinking he's just trolling Winter, all of his solutions seem like a way to "buff" flak.

Wtff? I am not trolling. It is very sad that any controversial opinion in this community is immediately regarded as "trolling." Besides, did you not read the last sentence in the OP, Goa? It specially calls for constructive discussion with NO name-calling, which is what you are engaging in right now. Either add something worthwhile do this discussion or don't engage in it at all.

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1. I personally find I run out of crystal before anything else so this is, in my opinion, not a solution at all.

2. This would just make it harder to hit flak and allow them to fire their front banks before speeding by their targets and blasting with the rear before spinning around and doing the same. Flak fires on all sides so increasing their speed allows them to get in position quicker and do more damage.

3. If you increase range then flak can shoot enemies before they can shoot the flak. Coupled with your speed bonus flak is now untouchable.

Based on your suggestions I can't help but agree with Goa

Quoting GoaFan77,

reply 6

he's just trolling . . . all of his solutions seem like a way to "buff" flak.

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Ryat

Join Date 06/2006

+429

OMG he's right.

Flak is OP. They can even help defend against bomber spam.

NERF THE FLAK FRIGATES!

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Quoting Ryat,

reply 9

OMG he's right.

Flak is OP. They can even help defend against bomber spam.

NERF THE FLAK FRIGATES!

...And here I was trying not to be the dick I usually am when encountering rather odd suggestions such as these.

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This went well...

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Quoting ,

quoting post

[...] The majority of the sins community doesn't know this – which is why the secret I'm about to divulge will make the "pros" very angry [...]

Professional Sinners hate him! Find out what they don't want you to know!

On a more serious note, I'll have to try this out next game.

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I love how you guys are so quick to offer an opinion without having even tested it yet.

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

I can't believe I was duped by this, but I actually tested it...as stated in the OP, 100 gardas vs. 100 cobalts...

Ready for it?

Wait for it....

Here it comes.....

THE COBALTS WON

After about 50 flak were dead (cobalts still in the 80s), I just stopped even bothering to micro them...77 cobalts survived, big surprise there...

I'd post my replay, but I'm too afraid that someone might criticize my microing and hurt my feelings...hopefully someone more skilled than me can post a replay of their cobalts winning....or better yet, a replay of the cobalts losing...now that's a replay worth watching...

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The majority of the sins community doesn't know this – which is why the secret I'm about to divulge will make the "pros" very angry

ROFL

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When I post in a non-graphics related thread, you know something trollish is afoot.

I vote we nerf all LRMs in the same way: more range, more speed, less non-credit cost. That'll show those pesky Flak ships!

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Quoting Seleuceia,

reply 14

THE COBALTS WON

After about 50 flak were dead (cobalts still in the 80s), I just stopped even bothering to micro them...77 cobalts survived, big surprise there...

Why does Seleuceia continually deceive the public with his troll posts? Does he think the community is stupid enough to believe the crackpot that he writes? Apparently so, as I have demonstrated numerous times throughout this forum that Sel neither has a ounce of objectivity nor a pound of intelligence (see previous threads discussing starbases and cobalt light frigate). This supposed "test" only confirms that fact.

Although I sincerely doubt whether or not Sel actually conducted a "test," I'll humor him by accepting the fact that he did. See anything wrong with it?

He not only:

1. Refuses to carry out the conditions to its proper conclusion, thereby completely destroying the accuracy of the experiment

AND

2. Admits to the fact that his flak micro is not sufficiently skilled enough, invalidating a critical component of the power of flak.

AND

3. Arrived with a confirmation bias, eliminating any possibility of an objective observation

NOWHERE in my original post does it suggest that a random noob/troll like Sel can just use flak and dominate pro players. In fact, I specifically state that a high caliber of micro is required for them to be used as a counter to light frigates. However, did Sel read any of this? No, because he does not care about the truth. He does not care about impartial analysis and examination. He does not even care about maintaining what few grams of consistency he has left. All he cares about is the art of trolling, which even I admit is adept enough to fool even the most perceptive individual.

NOW, let's get to what Seleuceia SHOULD have done:

Maintain the initial conditions for the entire duration of the experiment
Keep an open mind about the conclusion
Provide evidence that confirms your results

If he has just stuck to these three principles, then all would have been well and I would not be here giving him such a hard time. For those that are asking where is my evidence, my past posts demonstrate I do not have a reputation for fudging numbers (unlike Sel). However, I admit the lack of data was an oversight on my part, and I will now divulge my proof.

Starting Conditions: 50 Gardas vs. 40 Cobalts (both 200 supply)

NO upgrades for either side

ELEMENTARY micro for flak (consists of moving back and forth in straight line)

Guess what happened?

FLAK WON!

End Result: 22 Gardas remaining (88 supply)

Remaining gardas have very high health

Screenshots- http://postimg.org/gallery/371hjd9qc/4ab10b9b/

See how utterly full of crap Seleuceia's above "test" was? Not only is the Garda flak frigate pound-for-pound superior to the cobalt, it is far more cost-sufficient as well. "But sin, doesn't the high crystal requirement of the garda counteract its cheaper credit and metal cost?" First appearances may be deceiving. The high metal-to-crystal ratio of the cobalt is actually a detriment, as it forces players in the early-mid game to sell their crystal and buy metal. Any use of the black market means the player will lose in absolute economic terms, due to the nature of BM "sell low, buy high" mentality. In contrast, the metal-to-crystal ratio in the garda is much more reasonable, lessening use of the black market. To make a starcraft 2 analogy, a garda is both a mineral and a gas dump, resulting in neither an excessive surplus of metal nor of crystal. And that is an important ability to have in a matchup.

MOST IMPORTANT of all, the above results were accomplished without even microing very hard. All I was doing was just moving up and down in a straight line. If I optimize my flak movement patterns to match the enemy fleet, I can achieve results with up to 30+ ships surviving.

Further evidence of flak's OP nature can be gathered by my recent 5s multiplayer game. After a 6 month hiatus in sins multiplayer (played only like 3 games during the period), I participated in a 5v5 matchup just today. I spawned in frontline position and laid down two military labs for my new strategy. I then proceeded to demolish an unsuspecting Mulch, a reasonably skilled player, with my army of mass flak. If a rusty player like me can beat one of the pros in his first game, think of what others can do?

Seleuceia, I will now be accepting a full apology, complete with a card and a birthday cake.

Quoting CPPFZKrdaxDrkrun,

reply 16

I vote we nerf all LRMs in the same way: more range, more speed, less non-credit cost. That'll show those pesky Flak ships!

It seems counter-intuitive, but higher speed will actually nerf the flak.

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1. What did Mulch's fleet consist of in the battle with your flak fleet?

2. Did he also make any effort to micro his fleet?

3. Post a replay of you winning a game (or front line battle to be precise) with a fleet of flak like this. Screenshots vs. the AI is not evidence of much.

Quoting Sinkillr,

reply 2

Increasing flak speed will reduce the amount of time the ship spends shooting before it banks, thereby reducing dps.

This is nonsensical. Flak are able to fire on the move. Increasing its speed just means an unmicroed fleet of LFs will spend even more time rotating uselessly. It also means they'd be able to close the gap in a gravity well much faster to take advantage of their 360 degree dps vs. the head-on firing arcs of LFs.

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Ryat

Join Date 06/2006

+429

Quoting Sinkillr,

reply 17

1. Refuses to carry out the conditions to its proper conclusion, thereby completely destroying the accuracy of the experiment

Agreed. If certain conditions make something OP then they need to be study in such series of conditions. To do so would invalidate the results.

Quoting Sinkillr,

reply 17

2. Admits to the fact that his flak micro is not sufficiently skilled enough, invalidating a critical component of the power of flak.

Exactly. Just because a noob can handle the flak with LFs with ease does not mean that a skilled player can't turn the tables in such a situation.

Quoting Sinkillr,

reply 17

3. Arrived with a confirmation bias, eliminating any possibility of an objective observation

I don't know how many times I have seen this ruin a test.

I ran my own tests. I took 80 Sentinels vs 100 Disciples. The Sentinels won, hands down.

Quoting Sinkillr,

reply 17

Seleuceia, I will now be accepting a full apology, complete with a card and a birthday cake.

And he must sing for you as well.

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Also there are a few values that sins handles in terms of movement speed:

maxAccelerationLinear 150.000000
maxAccelerationStrafe 10.000000
maxDecelerationLinear 500.000000
maxAccelerationAngular 2.750000
maxDecelerationAngular 9.999996
maxSpeedLinear 700.000000
maxRollRate 2.000000
maxRollAngle 35.000000

This is the set of values that you would tweak, and if we go with your idea, maxSpeedLinear, the ship will be able to traverse gravwells at a much higher velocity, but it wouldn't do anything else to nerf it, and would be a direct buff to it in every other way.

Also,

Range 3900.000000

Increasing that would be a buff no matter how I see it because:

TargetCountPerBank:FRONT 1
TargetCountPerBank:BACK 1
TargetCountPerBank:LEFT 1
TargetCountPerBank:RIGHT 1

It won't spread its fire any more than efficient/inefficient micro would already.

The only idea I would give credit to is the credit one (haha), though I think that increasing ALL costs would be far far better than shifting that over to credits. Also your idea would be a buff to late game flak spam, because crystal can then be spent on research instead of valuable flak frigates.

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While I originally thought this guy was just ignorant, I am now convinced he's Trolling.

You can tell a troll by the 'drama' and the excessive use of large font.

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

While I'm bitter that Sinkillr here duped me into wasting 5 minutes of my time in the dev.exe, I'm fairly certain he wasted more time responding to me....a response which I didn't bother to read...

Okay, that's not true...I did read the big bold text, which intrigued me to yet again view the images...but as soon as I went to them, I instantly became more interested in the pictures of half naked girls (and one hottie dude) at the bottom...

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Quoting Seleuceia,

reply 22

While I'm bitter that Sinkillr here duped me into wasting 5 minutes of my time in the dev.exe, I'm fairly certain he wasted more time responding to me....a response which I didn't bother to read...

Okay, that's not true...I did read the big bold text, which intrigued me to yet again view the images...but as soon as I went to them, I instantly became more interested in the pictures of half naked girls (and one hottie dude) at the bottom...

Ladies and Gentlemen, I didn't think we could do it, but we have got Sel to admit he is trolling the thread. However, considering we all knew that already, it isn't much of an accomplishment. I guess he got tired of having his butt kicked over and over and over again.

And Sel, for future trolling attempts, at least be smart about it. The image hosting site I'm using separates adult content from normal pics. Therefore you are lying about the hot girls you saw.

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

Alright, I feel kind of bad for the OP...it seems after all he's gone to a lot of trouble to make his point, and we've all been rather mean to him (except for that one kiss ass troll), so I skimmed his most recent test results....

50 flak vs. 40 cobalts -- 22 flak survive

Let's just first take that at face value...no reinforcements, no cap abilities, no considerations for how likely that fight is to even occur...

Standard credit to resource ratio is 4.5, though I'll go with 4 since this is early game and thus you are more inclined to do some selling....per ship, that puts a garda (375/40/25) at 635 and a cobalt (300/55/0) at 520....

So, garda spammer is spending 31,750 for his 50 flak while cobalt spammer is spending 20,800 for his 40 LFs...now, all the LFs died so that guy lost 20,800 worth of shit...28 flak died, so that dude lost 17,780 worth of shit...

For some perspective, the LF spam lost 17% more in terms of resources...however, the flak person invested 52% more resources...let me say that again: flak fleet cost 52% more than LF fleet, but LF fleet only lost 17% more...

On the basis of cost effectiveness the flak actually did rather poorly...counters aside, I would sure hope the flak would win in this situation considering that the flak fleet had 52% more invested in to it...furthermore, this was a very unfair fight since the "fairness" was determined by fleet supply, a poor comparison in the early game when maintenance is really low and the two limiting factors are resources and construction time, not fleet supply....

A better setup would be a per cost equivalence, in which case you would be pitting only 33 gardas against 40 cobalts, and I challenge the OP to show the gardas winning that battle...

One must also consider the aspect of construction times, which can easily be a limiting factor early game, especially if feed comes into play...per ship (and on faster speed), cobalts take 17s while gardas take 25s...for a 50 garda vs. 40 cobalt setup, the flak fleet took 1250s to build while the LF fleet took 680s to build...for perspective, by the time all 40 LFs are built, the flak fleet would only have 27 ships...

Regardless of whether you go by cost or construction time, the fair fight is 27-33 gardas vs. 40 cobalts, a far cry from the OP's 50 vs. 40 setup...when you equalize with cost or construction time, flak don't really seem all that out of line...again, if the OP can show 33 gardas beating 40 cobalts I might maybe be slightly impressed...maybe...

Now, if you were to do a similar setup, say pit 70 TEC corvettes against 60 javelises (which would cost 53% more), the corvettes would still win provided they were microed properly (I got about half of them to survive)...so, while LFs still do win against flak in fair fights, perhaps you'd still gripe they don't counter them as hard as other early game counters....

But then there is the big kahuna of draw backs for flak: they suck at focus firing...even per fleet supply, they will never compare well to LFs or LRFs when it comes to killing orkies or capital ships, and so even if your flak scrapped a slight win in the fair 33 garda vs. 40 cobalts, they would come at a the disadvantage of being terrible at killing the enemy cap, stopping an Orky rush, or quickly wiping structures...seems like a fair trade: the ship fairs better against it's early counter, but sucks at everything else early game...

Perhaps most importantly, skilled players can elicit the "confused sperm" phenomenon with a few corvettes or with their own LFs (grimm has demonstrated how to do this in great detail, cat has also been a big trainer for noobs in doing this)...in other words, a skilled player can exploit the phenomenon through other means that don't have the huge drawback of shitty focus firing capabilities....

In short, you are still better off spamming LFs than going for flak instead...in small fleet engagements, in battles involving Orkies, and in situations where you have to drive off a cap or kill a frigate factory, the LFs will come out on top...the only situation where flak might be advantageous to spam is if the frontliners are far apart and the first engagement will be with large fleets...well that and when facing a Ragnarov, cause that Ragnarov won't be able to do shit against all those flak circling around it...what a shitty titan...

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

Quoting Sinkillr,

reply 23

And Sel, for future trolling attempts, at least be smart about it. The image hosting site I'm using separates adult content from normal pics. Therefore you are lying about the hot girls you saw.

"Most Guys Voted That Their Favourite Female Body Part Is..."

I mean really dude....seriously? You really thought I was going to look at your pictures of confused sperm over that goddess? Is she even wearing any clothing? It's so hard to tell........

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