The Power of Flak

Without looking at the reply, people should understand that carriers get a build penality in entrenchment when facing hostile forces.  This makes flak more effective.  I hope that the devs will add this feature to regular sins.

Hey John,

I should clarify....one of the games shows that carriers are not effective in the face of large numbers of flak...but the other game, they didn't even make carriers.  What I'm trying to demonstrate is that I was killing EVERYTHING with Flak.  It can certainly kill strikecraft just fine...it does in 1.15, and it especially does in Entrenchment 1.01.

So while I am trying to show it can protect you from carriers, I am stepping it up a notch and showing it can do more!    

Yeah, Flak has always countered fighters.  I see more and more people use them  

I prefer they try to out produce me in carriers because once I own the skies, they are sitting ducks.

I've tried it 3 times with tec and one with vasari.

I won with the vasari flaks. And clearly won twice with tec flak+ hoshi's.

1 Time with tec my flak fleet got kicked in the ass by illumspam (also cause I divided my fleets out on two fronts)

But my team still won the fight my ally had a bunch of novaliths and I blew up an sb in the advent fleet it's face.

4 games playing almost only flak and support, 3 flak won the game...

Grtz,
[_]-Flipkik

I just watched the reply where your partner left cykur. Wow

You made them feel dumb.  I see one of them say siege counters flak or something to that effect.  I know you were testing, but u really shouldnt have  won that game if those guys knew how to play other then just rush.  Your partner is one of those guys who leaves after cap dies. Classic

Yeah, they were trying to figure out what to do....the guy made that comment, then immediately said, nevermind, keep making HC's or something to that effect.  They certainly didn't attack me with siege!     I was starting to make other stuff to add to the fleet at the end because I was expecting them to "entrench" and they owned over half the map.  Luckily, they got discouraged when I destroyed all their ships, and they quit.

The one guy was in fact trying to mass HC's, and the other was making cobalts and tried to make a starbase.  The main key to victory was that I kept threatening the blue guys world and when he ducked back to it, I changed direction and doubled back for the orange guys fleet, effectively splitting them up.  The blue guy gave chase, but it gave me a minute to hurt the orange guy before I had to fight both their fleets at once.

Check out the other fight, that guy spammed counters as soon as he realized my fleet composition.

Glad you are having fun with it!

You guys are gonna make me develop counters for this strategy if more and more people use it.

Let people think flak suck.

Flak sucks, never use it.  Waste of money on research and fleet supply.

/Howthe secretly goes off and starts new game, building nothing but flak.

I liked the one with ZOOMERS, looked like he would have had it :/

Nice demo. Thanks for sharing. The flak frig is tough and you were able to fight effectively with less fleet supply than the vasari side. Now the flak nerf threads will begin. <sigh>

Ah glad to see someone use flak well. Ive been using flak like that since forever. But my views are tainted since its all be against the AI. Glad to see you can do it in MP!!

Problem with flak isn't whether it kills fighters (because it does) but rather how quickly it kills fighters.  A group of fighters can decimate your LRF units before flak on its own can suppress them.  Flak is great for cleanup when supporting light frigates which drain carrier anti-matter or destroy them outright, and also offers great durability for a very reasonable cost.  If you've got an anti-strike craft capital ship to give you breathing room, this lets flak shine even more by picking off the stragglers.  Flak frigates aren't miracle workers, and won't stop strike craft from killing stuff, but they're a practical part of a larger strategy.

If someone invests god knows how much in a carrier fleet, you can't really ask for their fighters to instantly die.  How fair is that.  If you are so worried about your Long Range Frigs, get them out of the fight.  I never said Flak frigates are miracle workers, I said they are an effective counter...which I just happened to use to kill every type of ship in the two games I posted.

I think you're mistaking what I said for opinion rather than observation.  I made no indication of whether I think the current state of flak is fair or unfair, I merely expressed my experiences with regard to it. My remark about miracle workers isn't that I believe you're presenting them as more powerful than they are, but rather that many people have higher expectations of them than they deliver.

Depending on what you're doing, flak can be very effective or very ineffective.  It all depends on how fast you need those strike craft suppressed and what else you have to support flak.  If you need something to cover a LRF-based army, flak on its own won't work.  I think this is where a lot of Vasari players try flak and just dismiss it as worthless, because they try to run an assailant / sentinel combo against carriers and their assailants get killed before the fighters are brought under control, leaving only unsupported sentinels.

I don't know who zoomer is but at the end right at about 1 hour into the game when he tells you "GG" what he doesn't realize is that he is actually winning.  He has a Cap ship sitting idol cause he is an idiot and a SB with HCs pounding you and he gives up.  .....I was like, well he is coming back from the flak spam and all of a sudden he gives up.  Well actually for some reason I had a mini dump watching the replay at 1 hour so I don't know what happens the last 12 mintues but that was my view watching both sides.  He had more money, fleet capacity, metal and crystal and his factories were sitting doing nothing.  I was scratching my head a few times. 

No offense ofcourse.

The flak can't really have 18 damage a shot can it?  that is more than a frigate...what is the deal with that?  does it shoot slower or is that damaged cut at least by half when firing not at fighters/bombers?  Cause if not why build frigates at all lol

It only does 25% of it's damage vs most things except for lrf's and some other stuf.

Grtz,
[_]-Flipkik

That is what I thought.  Looked fair to me.  Looks like it won't work either,  All the player has to do is not give up because all the frigate fire looks overwhelming.

Yeah, I agree, people have unreasonable expectations.

Not even your own carriers can guarantee the safety of your LRF.  You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.  If the LRF have nothing to kill and are just big targets, people need to learn to pull them out.  Not arguing, just commenting, because I agree, no amount of flak can keep you from losing some ships.  No amount of anything will, until you suppress the strikecraft.

I wouldn't call Zoomers an idiot...he is a fairly capable player and had a lot of pressure on me.  Everyone makes some mistakes, or gets focused on managing one area of the map.  I think he was off colonizing with the other cap -- probably forgot it somewhere.  And no, he was no longer winning at that point, but he wasn't quite losing yet either.

After you minidumped, I destroyed that Starbase and the HC's with the flak / marza / hoshikos.  He said GG, because the tide had definately turned, but he hung in there a bit longer.  Assuming he did pull back and make static defenses or muster enough HC's, it was certainly within my power to make a different kind of ship, right?  Point is, I didn't need to...I continued to push my way back toward his HW.

Flak damage is split amongst its banks, so while it is high, it can't project all that firepower at one opponent and is bad for focus fire.

It does 50% damage to most stuff.

Has anyone else here watched the second replay with 4 players lol?  Either they suck or Hoshiko+Garda flaks are unstoppable.  Lets hope they suck.  I really hope it is the Hoshiko Cruiser because if the garda flak ships can wipe the floor with star bases and heavy cruisers like that than call me a dork but they are over powered and we need a f*cking patch again.

If you disagree I want a replay of you killing this guy when he does this one on one.

Which is my point, flak on its own can't suppress strike craft.  If you want a functional strike craft supremacy, you need either a fighter dominance or some special capital ship helping out.  Flak works wonders to mop up stragglers and keep strike craft down once they're suppressed, but on its own it won't get you there, which is I think where people are disappointed.  As I said, it's not a miracle worker, just a practical workhorse.

Hoshikos are a hard counter to heavy cruisers.  Their demolition bots make heavy cruisers (and all frigates, for that matter) deal paltry amounts of damage, and coupled with their abillity to heal what damage is done virtually nothing dies.  At that point, it's not really the gardas doing the killing, but rather mopping up what the hoshikos have incapacitated.  You could swap in any unit type and clean up heavy cruisers (but with gardas you don't have to worry about strike craft, which is what made this strategy work I think).  The best way to counter them as TEC and Advent is to take away their anti-matter with light frigates.  Not sure about Vasari, I'm not as experienced with them as I am with the other factions.

If they don't dock it, yes, you can make enough flak to kill every single strikecraft.  The carriers will launch more strikecraft, and they will instantly die.  I have done this before, and I have had it done to me before.  You just need superior numbers of flak an a little time.  It is MUCH easier to do this now that carriers build slower in Entrenchment.  Small numbers of flak do what you say, which is clean up stragglers.

Absolutely true.  Except I didn't have enough military labs to research Demolition Bots in the games I posted and wasn't too concerned about it since I was winning already.  I was using the Hoshikos for repair only.  But Demolition Bots are awesome.  I just wasn't using em in these examples.

BTW, Vasari use Subverters as their disabler.

LoL I just tried it one on one on a unfair PC with no pirates and won in under 20 minutes.

Light frigates are the answer?  gimmie a break,  they don't take ANY damage.  I just tried it.  It was hillarious,  you can sit there and pound a star base to death with a bunch of lame flak frigates haha.  How much anti-matter do light frigates take?  I didn't even know they did damage to anti-matter.