Do your fighters automatically evade your flak?

[Sabaithal]

I noticed very early on that flak fields damage any fighters or munitions that enter them, and through experimentation learned that friendly-fire was a thing in those fields. Since then my normal protocol is to turn off the flak whenever my fighters are very close or on a direct course back through the field. Obviously, my thinking is that they would fly right into the field and get blown apart.

AND THEN, I just witnessed an...how should I say this: Tactical error on my part? I sent two fighters after a revenant in front of my battlestars, not close enough to be in the flak fields though. My ships blew the revenant apart right when the fighters got there at the beginning of the turn. There were no other nearby enemies, so the vipers started to head back to their berzerks. In the direct path between the vipers and their carriers, was the battlestar flak field. I prepared for the fighter squads to be heavily damaged or destroyed, when something rather unexpected happened.

The fighters suddenly veered off as they were nearing the field, and flew up and over it of their own accord, towards their carriers still. I've also noticed my sweepers have never once been caught in the flak fields despite operating at extremely close range (pretty much right behind the battlestars, tight formation).

Has anyone else noticed this behavior? I'm not complaining, but I want to know if this is consistent behavior, or a one-off event. This was in campaign mode btw.

[Duke Leto]

Im playing anabasis now...and the couple of times i HAD TO activate flak close to my own fighters, they seemingly had no damage.
I still dont know of its luck or if they just added some brain in those pilot skulls...

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by ducaf:

Im playing anabasis now...and the couple of times i HAD TO activate flak close to my own fighters, they seemingly had no damage.
I still dont know of its luck or if they just added some brain in those pilot skulls...

Hopefully the latter. It really doesn't make much sense that the pilots would think "Well we need to return to the main carrier now, but nobody ordered us NOT to fly through the giant wall of flak in our way, so lets just take our chances! *BOOM, SPLAT, PEW*"

[TheMadTypist]

They made a change in the recent patch notes, your squads will avoid friendly flak and if recalled will try to dock on the far side of the Battlestar.

If you don't activate flak while the squadron is already inside where it will appear, it's unlikely to hit them now.

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by TheMadTypist:

They made a change in the recent patch notes, your squads will avoid friendly flak and if recalled will try to dock on the far side of the Battlestar.

If you don't activate flak while the squadron is already inside where it will appear, it's unlikely to hit them now.

Only the 'recall' command? Because the aforementioned fighters lost their target, and defaulted to defending their respective carriers.

Now, I assume fighters will probably still chase other fighters through a flak field...which probably wouldn't be an issue because anything that flies into one of these fields is getting ripped to shreds....

[TheMadTypist]

Not just if recalled. They will avoid friendly flak at all times, and if recalled will try to dock on the far side.

Specific bullet:

Originally posted by Alberto:

Squadron movement improvements, including Flak evasion - fighter squadrons will now attempt to stay out of friendly flak fields - and made squadrons choose the opposite side to the mothership's active flak field to dock when recalled

[Sabaithal]

Well that's certainly useful. I don't have to worry about sweepers flying into the flak fields, and I don't have to lower said fields to recall my squadrons.

Pretty much the only time I have to lower the flak screen is to launch munitions in that direction, or launch squadrons, yeah?

[gmuir77]

I'm looking forward to this change since I've lost a lot of fighters before due to flak.

[VanguardMk1]

Originally posted by gmuir77:

I'm looking forward to this change since I've lost a lot of fighters before due to flak.

It's already in the game, it was in the latest update.

[lytleclan]

If you use the defend command on a ship using flak, the fighter will stay away from the flak and patrol the other side of the ship opposite from flak. The new fighter AI upgrades are fantastic.

[Duke Leto]

Deo gratia!
That was sorely needed <3

[Xautos]

don't activate flak around your fighters, they will be shredded in a hurry. i learned this the hard way. :P
the best time to use flak is on the opening moves in a fight where munitions are likely to be launched out of sight and out of mind by the Cylons, torps and missiles are going to be coming for you at that point, once you dealt with that shut the flak down and launch your mk2's.

if you use your fighter on seek and destroy missions far enough away from the battlestars you can use flak again, just make sure your fighters aren't caught up in the flak or when a target is about to be destroyed move them across to another target so they aren't getting caught in flak after the target goes down.

pretty much what others here have said that happens to fighters as well.

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by Xautos:

don't activate flak around your fighters, they will be shredded in a hurry. i learned this the hard way. :P
the best time to use flak is on the opening moves in a fight where munitions are likely to be launched out of sight and out of mind by the Cylons, torps and missiles are going to be coming for you at that point, once you dealt with that shut the flak down and launch your mk2's.

if you use your fighter on seek and destroy missions far enough away from the battlestars you can use flak again, just make sure your fighters aren't caught up in the flak or when a target is about to be destroyed move them across to another target so they aren't getting caught in flak after the target goes down.

pretty much what others here have said that happens to fighters as well.

Bear in mind that like 99% of the time the cylons in the campaign battles will NOT fire direct-yield munitions (guided missiles, torpedos, NOT mines) until about the third turn. Meaning you can launch vipers and send them all out towards the enemy fleet out of range of your own flak, and on the third turn activate said flak.

Some ships will wait until the fourth or fifth turn though. Mostly arachnes.

[ptwr]

Originally posted by Xautos:

... the best time to use flak is on the opening moves in a fight where munitions are likely to be launched out of sight and out of mind by the Cylons, torps and missiles are going to be coming for you at that point, once you dealt with that shut the flak down and launch your mk2's...

Flak barrier is such a crude, brute force, approach... it also shuts down guns on that broadside. Deploying chaff from Sweeper is much more civilized and without nasty side effects. Combine that with nnice multi-layered formation with fighter cover and you have not as much use for flak barrier as in before fighter AI update :)