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Typhon, Heavy Flak Discussion.
Moriarty:
It's not an exaggeration to say I've probably spent hundreds of hours on the Heavy flak.
The Heavy flak is an Awesome and underutilized weapon, which hunts the damage feed for the 'armour destroyed ' (raspberry) message then ends the hopes and dreams of a crew before they can fully comprehend what's happened.
Here is how the recent changes affect the weapon:
1. Killing things at distance just became a problem, lesmok was the go to ammo to make impossible shots merely hard - In light of the recent change its going to be pretty heroic to get two hits on a moving target near max range...LET ALONE time those hits to the armour destruction.
2. Secondly it flattened the arc, this is important because when using other ammo against a ship charging into your arm time it's easy stuff up the vertical axis and overshoot or under shoot, this is a factor of the projectiles extremely slow speed. (this sounds minor but when you have two shots and 5 seconds to kill or be killed by a charging pyra all of a sudden this is clutch)
3. In all honestly the changes have killed the weapon for the majority of the player base.
Now this being said I'll be pushing for the Paddling to continue to use the gun, as it still has a unique edge for competitive play. But dear god why did one of the most currently maligned guns with a long history of getting abused by patches have to suffer even more?
I see 4 options:
1. Reverse the patch artimis style
2. Increase the projectile speed (I know this *seems* reasonable but its not, a precision buffed heavy flak with charged rounds at 1.6k, will have people whining like the old days)
2. Massively increase the damage and arm time (one can dream)
3. Give it 2.9 shots or something so it exists as an exception to the lesmok nerf, yet only fires two shots with any ammo.
By way of reply to the fire enthusiasts and people suggesting other utility effects ... No. The gun has a defined role, it does hull damage, its good at it and it does ALOT of it....IF YOU HIT THE BALLOON WHEN ITS UP YOUR DOING IT WRONG.
Echoez:
--- Quote from: Moriarty on August 14, 2013, 06:59:57 am ---By way or reply to the fire enthusiasts and people suggesting other utility effects ... No. The gun has a defined role it does hull damage its good at it and it does ALOT of it.
--- End quote ---
Well, you see, that's the problem with it, it can only do one thing and one thing only. Compared to all other Heavy guns who have multi-role purposes, this gun is simply not on par.
Projectiles fly at a snail's pace, Lesmok is now worthless on it, it does negligible damage to anything BUT the Hull and is completely dependant on other guns to destroy the armor for it, else you are just sitting there gathering dust.
With all the disabilitites it has, you might as well just make the AoE damage it deals as Fire and not explosive, then at least it has a Mid range dominance option other than "I will just sit here till armor is down and hope the enemy foolishly flies in range" while it does retain its finishing power, but is wholely restricted to mid range only.
I mean what, vanilla has like 1000 meters range? and it's impossible to hit at that range on moving targets with the vanilla's projectile speed.
Now I'm not saying this should be implemented. Tested? Maybe. But the Heavy Flak is a problematic weapon, it was in 1.3 and it still is, even more so in 1.3.1, it's too specialized of a heavy gun.
Moriarty:
That is a terrible idea, its like taking from Peter to pay Paul.
The heavy flak isn't for all situations like the annoying but ultimately ineffective manticore. In taking the heavy flak you've made a bargain with skill and fate, namely if the enemy can keep their armour up they win, if not you win.
High risk high reward, surely we can all appreciate that.
Echoez:
--- Quote from: Moriarty on August 14, 2013, 07:24:57 am ---That is a terrible idea, its like taking from Peter to pay Paul.
The heavy flak isn't for all situations like the annoying but ultimately ineffective manticore. In taking the heavy flak you've made a bargain with skill and fate, namely if the enemy can keep their armour up they win, if not you win.
High risk high reward, surely we can all appreciate that.
--- End quote ---
No we can't actually. Not like this.
I know the Paddling uses the Heavy Flak in competative and that you guys are one of the best, if not the best team in this game, considering you are still holding the Champion's Cog and I do respect that. But your usage of the Heavy Flak doesn't prove anything about the gun being actually good and efficient.
You guys use the gun in a very specific team set up for a very specific role. Out of the three ships that can equip a Heavy Flak, on how many can the ship itself make use actual use of it by itself?
Goldfish can't get a bifecta, so that only leaves the Spire and the Galleon. On a competative set up, the Spire is a very high risk/reward ship, if not THE Risk/Reward ship of the game, but it's considered highly inefficient due to its fragility and very high risk. Is it truly? Well who knows. So that leaves the Galleon that makes the most out of it.
That's 1 out of the 3 ships that can even equip the gun. And that's only for competitive.
In pubs the gun used to be usable with the old Lesmok on the Spire as well as the Galleon, the Fish still couldn't make any truly efficient use of it. It was a realy rare weapon to see as well and almost nobody could actually use it properly.
So the usageof the Heavy Flak is basically: 1 Competative team, the odd guy in pubs that used it well, low level pilots on Galleons that couldn't use it and eventually switched off of it.
Are you trying to argue that the gun doesn't need changes just because you guys can use it in one and only one specific situation and team set up?
I mean no offense and I don't want to sound patronizing, but that's the vibe I get from your post Moriarty.
Moriarty:
Fair call, cant agree with the spire thing tho.
Merc/flak spires are spires at their best (easily the dominant force in the baptism by spire) ... that makes 2 out of 3 since your counting.
As for the goldfish well lets be honest there are lots of problems with the goldfish, it's been a support ship for a few versions now, relegated to carrying a manticore since the carronade changes.
so 2 out of 3 ships find a use for it. That's not bad.
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