question regarding Flak frigates ~

I think that due to the damage and armor types, flaks can demolish LRMs. However, this only works if the battle is purely flas vs LRM (unlikely) or if for some reason the LRMs target the flaks in a balanced fleet (unlikely).

Check out this link for damage types (forgot who posted it)
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p7xc_snd9Cc-6o2UwvPEWUg&gid=1

Nah, they do no such thing. I'm having a hard time understanding why people like flak frigates, since in my limited experience of using them, they barely do any damage to anything other than fighters/bombers, which my own cap ships' fighters are more than capable of dealing with. Pretty useless unit unless someone is stupid enough to spam carriers exclusively... so, pretty useless unit overall.

I think they like them because they see that raw damage is 19 or whatever while light frigs have 11 dps, not realizing there are different damage types.

Flaks receive less damage from (Tec and Vasari) LRMs due to armour type and do more damage to LRMs due to damage type they do.
Flaks also have the advantage that if you position them right they fire at multiple targets at the same time, which you cannot read out of the damage charts(!).
Additionally Flaks have much HP and armour, giving them some staying power vs LRMs.

Flaks are not the "perfect" counter, fighters and heavy cruisers are more effective at killing LRMs quickly.
However, flaks need only two labs and thus are easier to reach than carriers or even heavy cruisers if you are under LRM pressure.
Also, their high HP and armour lets them hold out a while vs smaller numbers of their direct counters too, if that should be necessary.
The multiple weapon arcs and sturdiness combined give the flak a significant long term advantage in fights vs LRM blobs, if both fleets consist of comparable resources (The flak fleet can have somewhat less resources as flak ships than the LRM fleet and still be victorious, but 5 flaks wont win vs 40 LRMs... :P)

The same amount of resources in flaks will defeat the same amount of resources in LRMs easily and with few losses in "sterile" fights.
Of course, as posted already, a pure LRM fleet will seldom fight a pure flak fleet, and once you have a big flak fleet but the enemy stopped building LRMs (and carriers) that many flaks become somewhat useless...

In conclusion however flaks are a cost effective and easy to unlock way to bolster your fighting power vs LRM-mostly and LRM-only fleets.
Incidentally there is much whining about LRM spamming... so it might be helpful if some players try it for themselfs or simply accept that on a per resource basis flaks beat LRMs.




Interestingly flaks will be like 5 times better at fighting LRMs than light frigates... since LRMs are the direct counter to light frigs.

Flaks are excellent at fighting Long-Range Frigates (LRF) and I agree with everything said so far except one thing. I've personally countered LRF spam/fleets with Flaks with great success on multiple occasions. However, what do you do with those older Light Frigates like Cobalts, Skirmishers, and the Advent version? They're not useless! Let some Flaks or another ship draw fire and then get your Light Frigates behind the enemy's LRF's. If they take out your Flaks or your Flaks/Capital ship has to retreat, your Light Frigates will be in a perfect attack position. If the enemy isn't micro managing and is using a tightly formed fleet, its a piece of cake to keep those Light Frigates out of range of TEC's LRM's in particular--just keep them behind the opposing vessels by telling them to move (they'll fire while moving). It's a bit harder to do against Illuminators though since they'll shoot out the sides.

You can literally get opposing LRF's to go in a circle if you're chasing them. If you time it right, you can exit that circle at just the right time so that your Light Frigates run away to jump out before any serious damage can be dealt.

Flaks are just a good bargain, thats the main thing. They excel at their specialty of shooting down strike craft but become worthwhile because they are moderately useful for other tasks. Despite the fact that there are more effective methods for dealing with LRMs, Flaks do a good enough job cheaply enough while simultaneously shooting down strike craft that they are extremely useful in a fleet.

Its not like you're going to mass Flaks in the way that you mass LRMs. The LRMs deal good damage to everything, including platforms and cap ships. Nothing replaces that kind of utility. Flaks are almost necessary just to be able to defend yourself from the predictable tactics that emerge from the dominant DPS of LRMs. You need to defend your own LRMs from fighters, which Flaks are great at doing. You need a unit that can shoot down the enemy LRMs, which Flaks are decent at. Its a worthwhile unit at a very reasonable cost.

Ok I understand now. Thanks for everybody's replies.
  

Flaks are great because they're cheap and they're good insurance. They're good for protecting against fighters, and good insurance if you want to go all heavy/cap.

That being said they are very hard to use. I wish they had a close/guard command that would just force them to stick to your cap ship or your seige frigates like glue. My flak frigates are always wandering off when I want them to stick to my siege/caps.

Flaks don't have the best damage type vs lrms. Flaks do anti-verylight damage type, so they get 100% damage vs lrms which have light armor. Fighters and scouts get to do 200% on lrms. From what i understand the way they are being used to counter lrms is to use their multiple firing arcs to hit 4 ships, and if microed this way they have a 400% bonus. I've yet to see it happen in multiplayer against a lrm swarm, if both players micro, the lrms will still shoot while moving while the flak fleet has problems getting into position.

I prefer getting "air" superiority with fighters + using capital ship abilites to counter lrm spam. This is where i add a few flaks and let them follow the enemy strike craft, and kill enemy flaks first so my swarm of fighters stays alive and kills the lrms with their 200% damage bonus.

LRM's have to stop while shooting and if they are moving away from flaks, by the time they turn around the flaks should be in range (speed difference is tiny). Flaks are one of the only types of ships that can move while shooting without any problems.

Fleet your Flak Frigates to whatever it is you want them to stick to, and change their Agression Radius to "Hold Position". Issue orders only to the Flagship of said fleet, and they will stay in formation around your flagship, moving only to pivot for better firing arcs. Enjoy.