Typhon, Heavy Flak Discussion.

[N-Sunderland]

Why not use a Pyra/Junker/Mobula instead? They're faster, have a much higher turning speed and about the same killing power.

I'll let somebody else respond to the rest of your post, but a quick note: of the three ships that you named, only the Pyra is faster than the Galleon.

[Rainer Zu Fall]

You're right about that, Sunderland. Sorry.
Their maneuvering ability still is higher, their profile is smaller...

[RearAdmiralZill]

We need suggestions if this discussion is going to go anywhere. Awkm has already stated rightly that if a gun requires one ammo to work right, the gun is needing the attention.

I've already tried with : 1.reducing arming time 2.adding fire damage (albeit a small amount).

[Zenark]

My suggestion is to increase the shell life, or increase projectile speed while decreasing arming time so that the shell arms at about the same distance it does now, but the shell itself is going faster.

[Rainer Zu Fall]

I agree with that. I just wanted to point out that the patch didn't help fixing the problem of those guns. They covered it.
The main problem for far ranged combat (I'm not talking about the merc) are those many clouds. Reducing them a little bit might help. That's it for the LJ.

The flak though has different problems too. Reducing arming time would be nice, but seeing it as a long range weapon I think this was quite a good thing to introduce.
Fire damage is a good idea I gotta say. I'm really digging this one. It's unclear to me, however, if that would help solve the heavy flak's weakness as it is at the moment. Sure, creating an overpowered weapon isn't the goal to achieve. But increasing it's ammo capability might be worth a thought too. Still undecided about that either though.

[Captain Smollett]

My suggestion is to increase the shell life, or increase projectile speed while decreasing arming time so that the shell arms at about the same distance it does now, but the shell itself is going faster.

I'm with you on this Zenark, a tiny bit more speed (like a 10% increase), a longer shell life (so a normal shot can travel to 1.4 km) and perhaps a shorter arming time (remove a few tenths of a second)

[RearAdmiralZill]

My suggestion is to increase the shell life, or increase projectile speed while decreasing arming time so that the shell arms at about the same distance it does now, but the shell itself is going faster.

That would make shots with it with the new lesmok pretty easy to hit, though it's only one shot. I'm not sure of its current range but it can't be that short.

The flak though has different problems too. Reducing arming time would be nice, but seeing it as a long range weapon I think this was quite a good thing to introduce.
Fire damage is a good idea I gotta say. I'm really digging this one. It's unclear to me, however, if that would help solve the heavy flak's weakness as it is at the moment. Sure, creating an overpowered weapon isn't the goal to achieve. But increasing it's ammo capability might be worth a thought too. Still undecided about that either though.

Well for the arming time, it lets you use it when they get too close, but no additional change. The fire damage should give it a tad more bite to hull, so it potentially could be more self sufficient, though we never want it entirely so (remember Fjords....). I've thought about the added ammo, but if you do that, you'd want to decrease the damage  so you can't just outright murder things in one clip. Seems redundant if right now we have less ammo but more damage.

[Cloudrunner]

I'd like to see at least a longer shell life, an extra shell or a sight of some kind.

[Cloudrunner]

I like the fire damage too.

[Rainer Zu Fall]

Well for the arming time, it lets you use it when they get too close, but no additional change. The fire damage should give it a tad more bite to hull, so it potentially could be more self sufficient, though we never want it entirely so (remember Fjords....). I've thought about the added ammo, but if you do that, you'd want to decrease the damage  so you can't just outright murder things in one clip. Seems redundant if right now we have less ammo but more damage.

I don't want it to become OP, once again making that clear.
Murdering "things" in one clip isn't the goal we want to achieve, you're right with that. But it being achieved with 3 rounds on standard ammo is quite impossible in one clip, if I may say so.
The arming time, once again, is good as it is I think. It shouldn't become a medium to close range gun, we don't want everything to happen on close range, do we? A gun with a range from far to pretty close is overpowered too, so I don't think that's what we want to achieve.

Remember what a heavy flak is built for: to kill. BUT not too quickly and easily. We don't want the flak to become a surpressive or disabling weapon...or do we?
So as said: fire damage might be a good idea, depending on where it would spread to and how much fire damage would be dealt.

I'm with you on this Zenark, a tiny bit more speed (like a 10% increase), a longer shell life (so a normal shot can travel to 1.4 km) and perhaps a shorter arming time (remove a few tenths of a second)

I quite disagree with that, sorry. More speed makes it easier to hit and we don't need it's shots to travel further (we just need to look further through fifty clouds, my opinion), so it would become really easy to use and thus maybe drifting into the "old" heavy flak again.

The flak should stay the gun it is intended to be: A far range gun (without more than 1.2 or 1.4km range) ... and only a far range gun.

[shadowsteel]

What about giving it Impact damage as a primary while slightly increasing the secondary Explosive damage?

[Rainer Zu Fall]

If by impact damage you mean piercing...that would lead to the same problem the old heavy flak had: Too much power.

[Zenark]

What is it that we want to accomplish with a change, exactly? What are we complaining about? Too hard to use now? Not enough range?

I think it's fine as is, really. Even if it's too hard to use without lesmok, it's still easier to use than a lumberjack. Gunners just need to practice with it more.

What about giving it Impact damage as a primary while slightly increasing the secondary Explosive damage?

.... Long range impact damage? <3

[Rainer Zu Fall]

Zenark, I think what we want to achieve is to give the heavy flak a use again on, for example, a goldfish.
A heavy flak isn't a disabling weapon, so it's meant to help killing a ship. But at the moment it does none of the above. And that's the problem we want to solve.
It didn't change in terms of user friendly usage, so we don't need to change that I guess.

[RearAdmiralZill]

I'm out of my element with heavy flak, so forgive me if I say things that are known to be impossible. I'm not entirely sure on the going rate of death from 1.3 flak with two shots. I assume that a gunner can be trained to hit all shots in three shot clip, so the thing here was (which we seem to agree on) is that it isn't able to simply murder any ship in that three clip. If so, then ammo me up.

For the arming, it was purely just to compensate for the added reality that the long game has gotten harder, and with large arming times, your bubble of "oh crap, we cant do anything to him" can be large, so a reduction might help mitigate that.

Right again. It's purpose is to maim. I do like the idea of it suppressing though too, to a lesser degree than it's main role of killing. If my armor is up, I couldn't care less about flak shots. If armor is down, I'm looking for them the entire time. Any added suppression will make me at least factor it in as a threat at any time vs the former. It already light's things on fire thanks to the explosive damage. The fire damage was just to give it a slight bite to armor/balloon, while not giving it something OP like piercing.

I suppose you can say we agree here for the most part.

What about giving it Impact damage as a primary while slightly increasing the secondary Explosive damage?

Eh.