Flak Guns Doing F* All?

[ZOVA]

I don't understand what I am doing wrong with my ship here. [imgur.com] I have COMPLETELY altered my flagship solely to counter the Xerxes (a nuke spewing ship with six launchers on both sides) and it worked perfectly against it in sandbox mode. But in practice its like the flak guns are either targeting something else or nothing at all. They are near perfectly positioned to take out the nukes on either side yet they just don't. Throughout my career game I've never had much luck with flak guns, they just seem to never really take that many missiles out no matter where I position them, I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or if its just bugged.

Someone please explain to me what the issue is because after hours trying to figure it out I'm simply stumped. I know it would probably be better to have a fleet instead of one giant flagship but in this run I am trying to just have one main ship with a hauler that I sometimes use.

[Scoob]

There does appear to be some discrepancy between Player ships using Flak and others. For example, like you, I played around with Flak - albeit only two on a smaller ship - and they appeared to be totally ineffective. Only firing infrequently, despite ample power and ammo.

Contrast this with a Pirate ship I've faced - which has Four Flaks - and I could see it firing regularly, multiple times a second, readily blocking fire from my ships.

I even took this ship - sorry, I cannot recall the name, not in-game currently - into a creative session and set it up to battle various other ships. It's Flak appeared to be quite effective there too, blocking a significant portion of my attacks.

Finally, I did myself come to the conclusion that multiple smaller ships are better than one behemoth. I now have my Flagship - which is quite large and tough, relying on armour for protection, while fielding four Deck Cannons and some recently added Nukes I'll be testing next time I play.

To support this ship I have a large unarmed Mobile Warehouse (I hoard stuff), a light scout and three Light Fighters. The Flagship tanks and does high damage, while the fighters flank the enemy and (try to) hit their softer spots. Works well.

This technique does exploit a flaw in the AI, in that it is very focused on a given target it seems, even if another ship is hurting it more. The AI will regularly make a bee-line for my Flagship, while the fighters scoot past unmolested.

[eXeZ|Gamer433]

I read MUCH about Flaks, but the most accurate I read: Flaks are crap, but the best you can use against Nukes.

I have 8 Flaks and 10 PDs, directly on my front, but its not possible to stop 3 Nukes.... everything's said.

[lalelunatic]

best thing against anything that comes directly at you... 20 rows armor... and enough credits to repair all that later... =P spent 8 hours today to find a mix of pd, flak, l/s shields and armor that sustains against anything focus firing... and failed miserably...

spend to much on flaks/pd, costs you nearly all armor/shields, spend to much onshields, costs you pds/flak...

the only thing that works against anything but has the downside of repair cost even against an amoeba... is armor... huge blocks of armor... like each and every AI ship has... and some auto aim missiles/rails/or still beams...

only problem is... AI ships dont care about utility, dont care about repair cost, dont care about speeding through the sector, dont care about their crew... they put each and every credit into combat prowess... which isnt a thing any player would do in a single ship...

sure you can build a brick... but honestly... this boils down to every "effective" ship kind of looks the same... i´ve yet to see a "good looking" ship that is actually effective...

[Techsuport]

nukes are for bypassing PD and tank busting, trying to out shoot them after they have speed up or tank their massive AOE damage is gunna be hard.

i counter nuke ships with flack if you can get close to the launcher and have your Flack in range as the missile fires and it will pop before it picks up speed.

The real counter to nukes is speed, once they target a direction and speed up they don't track your ship. for example you can have something speedy fly by the enemy to trigger a volley of nukes, then close range with your fighting force that can get flack in range or take out the launchers on that side of the ship and stay in its bind spot, tho it still requires more maneuverability than the target so taking out their maneuvering engines is a defensive measure

[icuurd12b42]

did you switch the guns' fire mode to attack instead of defence or both?

[ZOVA]

Originally posted by icuurd12b42:

did you switch the guns' fire mode to attack instead of defence or both?

I tried solely defense and then both, either way produces the same result, except with the fire mode set to both they seem to be even more distracted from the nukes.

[ZOVA]

Originally posted by Techsuport:

The real counter to nukes is speed, once they target a direction and speed up they don't track your ship. for example you can have something speedy fly by the enemy to trigger a volley of nukes, then close range with your fighting force that can get flack in range or take out the launchers on that side of the ship and stay in its bind spot, tho it still requires more maneuverability than the target so taking out their maneuvering engines is a defensive measure

This makes sense, I just really wanted to have one enormous city sized flagship, no fleet. But I supposed even a single nuke can take out a city. I'll probably eventually try making my giant ship into a fleet of two-three, but for now I still want to make my flagship work.

[Techsuport]

i like flagship style too, best you can do vs nukes is spaced armor with shields, and controlling that the nukes hit your most armored part.
so that the armor is a buffer for your shield to come back online, wile being spaced out from other things so the remaining nukes AOE only applies to 1 armor block ideally.
Remember to add lateral thrusters to ctrl where your defense is facing

[Scoob]

For me, and extra layer or five of armour is the only viable answer to Nukes. Flaks effectiveness vs. other types of fire is...debatable at best. I've seen it work well on enemy ships, but my own tests have proven fairly worthless.

I think flak guns should leave a *physical* AoE barrier for a short time when they detonate. So, they don't have to hit a target to slow it down.

That said, the game is crying out for more weapons / counters. How about Chaff/Flares? Anti-missile missiles? Laser PD's? I'm sure more is to come. Balance is "easy" in regard to Crew and material costs, as well as energy requirements.

[lalelunatic]

i just made a ship to test what weapons are the most effective atm... 1 huge block of armor in the front, zero defense, no shields, no pds/flaks, then a lot of engines... and 80 missile launchers with only HE rockets... and factories of course...

a totally slumped together, not refined in any way version of this, came in at about 4 mil, and when player controlled ripped any ship appart... sure i lost a ton of armor, launchers etc. but thats exactly the problem... thats what the AI ships do... they dont care for anything than to kill you... as they dont need to repair, get new crew, or have to traverse the sector before dying of age...

the whole thing istn really well balanced to be honest. i tried the same setup with pd/shields etc. and it lost more often then the absolute purist version... which should point out the uselessness of a lot of modules atm.

the point is, that armor doesnt need any logistics, or supply. its just there absorbing the most dmg per tile than anything else, with the least space used up.

using shields flaks, costs you so much in the logistic/space used category, that its les worth in comparison. especially as stuff like shields is even super hard countered by emps which are 1 of the 2 longest range weapons that also only have 2 semi usefull counters... and then theres armor, which completely nullifies them... you get my drift...

[sir Evans]

Originally posted by Zo.vA:

Originally posted by Techsuport:

The real counter to nukes is speed, once they target a direction and speed up they don't track your ship. for example you can have something speedy fly by the enemy to trigger a volley of nukes, then close range with your fighting force that can get flack in range or take out the launchers on that side of the ship and stay in its bind spot, tho it still requires more maneuverability than the target so taking out their maneuvering engines is a defensive measure

This makes sense, I just really wanted to have one enormous city sized flagship, no fleet. But I supposed even a single nuke can take out a city. I'll probably eventually try making my giant ship into a fleet of two-three, but for now I still want to make my flagship work.

Ok, there was a discussion under my PD turrets mod about adding heavy Quad PD turret.

I think this post actually convinced me to do so.
I'll make it costly in terms of special resources, but I guess 3x3 Quad PD that does double damage per shot for countering nukes will be helpful for "Big Mothership" playstyle. I like that playstyle actually, as there is no docking ships yet and larger fleets can be so messy.

But first, I'll convert Flak to Turret and will see how effective it is.

[ZOVA]

Outside of this flak gun topic, for reference, if anyone wants to try their luck against the enemy I am attempting to counter, its called the Xerxes. It costs a little under 1.3 million and has a crew of 200, so it is VERY efficient. It has 6 launchers with nukes on either side (plenty of nukes to keep reloading with, having them run out in a war of attrition is very unlikely as it will likely kill you first if you don't take it out fast enough) and has ion beams deep within that constantly chip away at shields and armor. You'll see, spawn it in sandbox, its a combat ship in the imperium, try your luck. My giant ship costs around 5-6 million and has a crew of almost 600, and yet cannot bring down the Xerxes before biting the dust. It gets close, but is either irreversibly totaled or completely destroyed during the fight.

[lalelunatic]

as i told another guy in another thread, you only need a) more reverse thrust, b) a rail with more range than anything your target has and c) just enough defense to counter any rail/emps your target has... wins every fight... no dogfighting needed... not even much defense needed... if it cant hit you, but you can hit it... you win...

[⇧⇨⇩⇩⇩]

Originally posted by Zo.vA:

Outside of this flak gun topic, for reference, if anyone wants to try their luck against the enemy I am attempting to counter, its called the Xerxes. It costs a little under 1.3 million and has a crew of 200, so it is VERY efficient. It has 6 launchers with nukes on either side (plenty of nukes to keep reloading with, having them run out in a war of attrition is very unlikely as it will likely kill you first if you don't take it out fast enough) and has ion beams deep within that constantly chip away at shields and armor. You'll see, spawn it in sandbox, its a combat ship in the imperium, try your luck. My giant ship costs around 5-6 million and has a crew of almost 600, and yet cannot bring down the Xerxes before biting the dust. It gets close, but is either irreversibly totaled or completely destroyed during the fight.

Ok so it has ions and nukes, you can outrange those with HE missiles and rail guns (if you can outmanouver them that is...

[ZOVA]

Originally posted by lalelunatic:

as i told another guy in another thread, you only need a) more reverse thrust, b) a rail with more range than anything your target has and c) enough defense to counter any rail/emps your target has... wins every fight... no dogfighting needed... not even much defense needed... if it cant hit you, but you can hit it... you win...

Yeah I tried that almost immediately and it slowly but surely chipped at it at 8x speed but took so much time that you'd likely run out of ammo first before killing it (the Xerxes AI knows to slant itself slightly while charging at you so the railguns shoot the ENORMOUS amount of armor it has on the sides instead of right down the center.) But besides, that just wasn't what I was going for with my ship/playthrough and doesnt really even seem that fun and is a bit cheesy to do that with every single enemy you come across.

But in the end, and the reason for this thread, is to get flak guns to work as (likely) intended so as to take out the nukes.