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
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.
Dude Sie sind so dumm
Coming from you, that makes me feel super warm and fuzzy inside....
You need to have a direct link to the image, not a download link or a link to a page that "contains" the image and other stuff...if you copy that link into your address bar, you should only get the image and nothing else (like google used to do when you used google images and clicked on one)....when you click the insert image button, put in the web address, then click once in one of the boxes where you enter dimensions...the dimensions of the image should appear, if they don't then you don't have a good link...
Honestly though, can you not just post a replay or a video? I can print your pictures out and make a cool flip book but it's just not the same...
I came back after so many freaking private messages that said you were destroying the forums in my absence.
Its seems you have grown into something people can no longer get rid of and you even trolled Doci vs Grimm replay post.
I'm sorry buddy but i have been asked to police you.
seriously, Seleuceia is not the problem with this thread.
As for the OP, I believe Sel has pretty much proven that LF are superior to flak in many ways.
EDIT: RiddleKing you look a bit green pal, you should go and visit a doctor.
Whoops something went wrong here!
Cool it down, guys. Supply and Cost are two different ways of looking at balance, and are valid for different scenarios. There is no need to make it personal.
If you want to discuss it, stay on topic.
If flak were overpowered they would be able to win when outnumbered supply wise, cost wise, construction time wise and more.
EDIT: Did you achieve victory by sacrificing the frigate the Cobalts focus fired on, constantly moving it in circles, while your other flak frigates just fired away without taking any fire? If the answer is yes then I feel as though your procedure was invalid thus rendering your results irrelevant.
Furthermore your suggested solutions would only make this worse. If the flak being focused on could outrun and outrange the Cobalts it could always stay just out of range while constantly shooting at the Cobalts, theoretically allowing it to kill an infinite number of Cobalts while taking zero damage. The aforementioned statement assumes you wanted to increase flak speed to at least 825 (which is the speed of Light Frigates).
The core of the this "problem" is not that flak are overpowered, but that ships sometimes have issues retargeting or pursuing their targets...this affects pretty much any ship that has only frontal weapons (so scouts, LFs, HCs, and LRFs) and prefers focus firing (which throws out support ships)...
Barring a coding rework by the devs (which probably won't happen at this point), the simplest solution is to buff the turn rate of LFs (and possibly LRFs and HCs)...honestly though, this change should be more to eliminate a silly annoyance than to improve game balance...
In my personal mod, the turn rates of ships are significantly increased while linear speeds are mostly the same...while the ships do still act retarded sometimes, the issue isn't really that bad since they quickly turn and do what they need to do...hell, I even have LRF-like ships countering corvettes, and they do it with no problem since their turn rates are really high...
Looks like male porn to me (\__/) (='.'= )
btw Install "Adblock plus" and you'll get no adds.
Well then................that explains a lot....
If the problem with LF versus flak being that LF act like a heard of lemmings, why not turn off focus fire (prefersToFocusFire) for them? It would make them less useful in killing single units unless you micro, but against their primary opponent, flak, they might perform much better.
The primary advantage of LFs is that they can focus fire...they succeed in killing caps and early SBs, and dealing with frigate factories or repair bays when the time is right....if you take away focus firing, they would be pretty useless...
How can we nerd nerf flak yet again? I'm not going to take sides on this so don't think i'm on your side Selecuceia.
My main concern is people can't seem to understand that flak is always battling uphill when facing LF for the average player because there more expensive to get and you have to micro. The best Micro wins any sins game provided you have the perfect fleet ratio/ unit composition.
If you can't shoot a constantly moving enemy with weapons or abilities then at least try repair your ships or protect them with shield regen, hoshikos and repair cloud. I can't see flak damage on LF chipping away repair abilities and i consider this entire topic a weak attempt to troll the forums which Seleuceia is feeding on.
Seleuceia seems to always be trolling...
ON TOPIC
I have been noticing everynow and again a skilled player using flak vs LFs, but never really looked into it.
Just figured fleet comp change and mostly was just like 'wtf...he drunk '
Im going to look into this...
ok so heres the thing, do 2 tests. one for flak, one for LFs to more realistically compare the 2 in a game scenario
early game send colony ship to one roid, akkan to other, build 1 additional scout. do nothing else
test 1: spam LF (need only one lab, still delete cap factory)
test 2: asap spam flak from hw (delete cap factory asap for 2nd lab)
research 1st fleet supply upgrade aswell for both (need it earlier for LF, later for flak)
manage resources as necessary to maximize your spammness (namely selling)
at roughly the 11 minute mark you should have ~29 flak frigates
at roughly the 11 minute mark you should have ~38 light frigates
no go 29 flak vs 38 LF
flak raped, it gets worse as the game goes on. It takes roughly 16 minutes for flak to max out the 1st fleet supply upgrade (48 flak)
obv does not take into account any feed, distance to enemy etc etc
if 2 equally skilled players spawn next to each other, are both tec. one spams flak asap and one spams LF asap....LF guy should rape face...
Flak are more expensive per ship, take longer to build (+8 secs) and require research (2 labs!),, whereas their counter (LF) require no research and are cheaper and quicker to mass. meaning the LF guy can go civ lab first, and will most likely grab that volc before you even have 1 civ lab
comparing fleet supply in this case is only one side of the story, if you spam flak and your opponent spams LFs and you are at the same fleet supply early game,,,your opponent is ecoing or just noob or possibly your getting feed.
once you get to midgame however it does change to more of a fleet supply issue than a cost issue, but still, if you are both at same fleet supply, he is likely to spend alot more on upgrades which may or may not invalidate OP flak.
Not sure if flak raped means:
Yes, the active or passive sense isn't very clear there but you can see his conclusion later on:
By that logic, heavy cruisers counter carriers. Plus, I never said flak is a hard counter to light frigate. Troll harder.
Fleet supply is the end-all, be-all determinant of fleet power in mid-late game. The test I ran clearly uses a mid-game force. By that time, feed should be up and running so construction time is not that big of an issue.
Man, you really are thick. As the test results clearly demonstrated, the 50 gardas were clearly an overkill for the cobalts. Therefore, 40 gardas or less would have been more than sufficient.
Also, WHAT DID I TELL YOU? Sel has a reputation for fudging numbers, and its not hard to see why...
Flak are one of the best ships for focus firing in the game. The trick is to get them close enough to the target so that all four cannons are firing. If you don't do that, the firepower if effectively reduced by 75%. I've killed many a capital ship with flak alone...
Using your logic, light frigates counter heavy cruisers. Better logic please.
I have no idea what this paragraph even states or is implying. As you can see from the screenshots, all I did was move flak up and down in a straight line. Not that hard to do...
Huh? Flak didn't have shield regen, hoshikos, or repair cloud anywhere in my test. In any case, those three abilities would likely benefit flak more since they have more health and armor.
That last statement is rich coming from you btw...
Replay/screenshots or it didnt happen.
Says the man who has posted no replay. In my opinion screenshots are useless. Also, Construction time is always relevant unless you plan on having a desert world with nothing but frigate factories.
Christ, this forum is devoid of all logic and sense. There's clearly no need for a replay in my case because all it is is just comparing two ships against one another. Construction time, upgrades, timing, etc are all irrelevant. Do you really need to watch an entire football game to see who wins at the end? Or do you just need to see the scoreboard? However, Uncrustable's test is 100x more complex than mine, integrating those same factors I mentioned above. Even if he tries to be objective, there is a very high likely there is going to be a mistake somewhere.
It's not the destination it's the trip. QED The result is only meaningful based on the process. I can make a setup so 50 Gardas destroy 1000 Cobalts without a single loss but that doesn't mean a thing. It's easy to set things up so that you reach the desired outcome.
Anyways, I want to know if you did what I suspect you did and that is sacrifice the one ship the AI was focusing on while the others destroyed the Light Frigates without taking any damage. Exploiting the AI does not make a ship OP, if it did then starbases would be OP because the AI has no hope in hell of getting through them (provided you have one or two strikecraft upgrades to engage any Ogrovs or Solanuses (Solani?).
~
Setup - 40 Cobalts (LF) vs 50 Gardas (Flak)
Procedure -
Results -
Conclusion - While Flak can beat LF with micro the amount of micro is intensive. If LF were controlled with equivalent micro The result would have likely been a LF win. I would by no means call it a "hands down" win for the Flak. At the halfway point it was essentially the same as when the battle had started. Compare that with the halfway point of the unmicro'd battle and it becomes painfully obvious that Flak, while not bad if micro'd (due in large part to having guns on all sides in addition to an impressive range) is by no means a practical combat ship.
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