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A Suggestion for the Echidna Light Flak Cannon

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Dementio:

--- Quote from: Zanc on September 03, 2015, 11:38:56 am ---...however a Banshee is simply better - better arcs, rotation speed, and damage to armor & balloon.

--- End quote ---
The Light Flak, when armed, has more dps on the armor and, because it reloads faster, has a higher chance shooting at the exposed hull and get a full clip into it, which also does more damage than the Banshee. The Light Flak's explosion also is a lot of smoke and if spammed can maybe even screw with enemy accuracy.


--- Quote from: Zanc on September 03, 2015, 11:38:56 am ---...doesn't do much in the important first moments of a fight.

--- End quote ---
You mean like the Mortar that can potentially one clip every ship in the game without buff or special ammo type? Not only the first few moments of a fight are important.

ZnC:
@D: Interesting, I didn't know the Light Flak has more DPS to armor than the Banshee. I checked that with my spreadsheets and found it is indeed significantly higher, but almost the same DPS when factoring reload. However, Banshee still has a much higher chance to light fires, and causes problems to the Balloon.

In terms of killing power, the Light Flak wins hands-down, but the Banshee has a lot more utility (i.e. better arcs, faster rotation speed, higher projectile speed, fire chance). As weapon synergies will go, I guess the Light Flak is better paired with armor strippers, and as a wear down weapon, Banshee goes better with guns like Lumberjack.

Daft Loon:
I recently removed banshees from a few of my ships in favor of the light flak.

-A mobula left to right mine-L.flak-hades-hades-mine. The arcs are still managable and the extra hull damage and reduced scatter out near max range are well worth it.

-A squid on the rear slot paired with a side gatling. The arcs are a little tricky needing the width of the target ship to make them work sometimes but being on the rear of a squid makes it easy to keep out of arming range.

-Junker on the main deck slot of what was a banshee-banshee-gatling combo, only tried it once and got stomped for unrelated reasons but it should work well provided i can persuade the engineer firing it not to waste its DPS by thinking its like a mortar.

Does anyone know what the fire chance on the standard L.Flak is, all the explosive weapons apparently have one but the wiki only lists the H.Flak at 20% for 4 stacks on the AOE. If it gets more than 1 stack on either direct hit or AOE incendiary light flak could be worth considering. It gets the upside of rounding and only loses 16% clip size (rather than 25%) and reduced rate of fire only adds 0.75s to emptying the clip. It still does far more hull damage than banshee and reduces 45m of arming range.

BlackenedPies:
Decision for flak/banshee also depends on enemies. For example on lumber spire I bring burst flak primarily against spire, galleon, and goldfish; heavy clip banshee against junker and mobula with pyra/squid situationally. The combo of flak, banshee, and buffed merc works wonders on mobula.

My favorite junker is hades double banshee left, gat carro right. Meta setup with double buff and heavy clip banshees, lesmok hades. Both sides have easy trifectas with the front banshee.

Lieutenant Noir:
Okay after using the Flak for a long period of time, I have found that most of your builds that incorporate the Flak are the same as mine, have the same problems of mine, and even though I knew that from the beginning, I did it anyway. Now I am Disillusioned and I hate being Disillusioned.

I just want to say that I'm fine with the Flak being a PVE weapon for the new Alliance mode.
I, however, still have problems with the Flak that I don't think have been addressed and I want to lay down my thoughts in order to close this topic for good.

For one,
I don't like you guys comparing the Banshee and the Artemis to the Flak.
While the Flak does have more killing potential, these guns have uses in disabling which means that they have uses for outside the armour break.
As such, I don't think it is very nice to compare it to the light carronade either. Light Carronade can pop balloons in two clips but I think it still isn't fair to compare it to the light Flak. Mainly because popping balloons can disrupt arcs, make a ship vulnerable to Terrain, make the Hull more exposed, and separate enemy ships.. Even damaging balloons can cause a decrease in vertical mobility. The Flak can only kill and there is plenty of time for an enemy to incapacitate/ disable you in the time of that second clip.

I will now keep the comparisons between guns that are Explosive Explosive damage.
Mortar and Heavy Flak.
The Light Flak has more Dps than the Mortar but the greased un-buffed Mortar can kill any ship in one clip.
The Light Flak has a higher rate of fire and projectile speed than the Heavy Flak but the charged un-buffed Heavy Flak can kill a ship in one clip even faster than the mortar.
The light Flak is only useful at short-mid to long-mid range. Where as the Mortar has uses for short to short-mid range and the Heavy Flak has uses for long-mid to long range. I don't know about you all, but I tend to find that most of my engagements where I used the Light Flak ended up around the ranges of either the Mortar and Heavy Flak due to the prevalence of disable centric ships.

I don't think I like the idea that a gun that is only useful for when the armor is broken can't kill a ship in one clip when we have two guns that have that ability. It means that we have a gun that is only good for killing ships and can't do it faster than two other guns. I find it annoying that a gun that is useless for a vitally important portion of a fight will have to have the help of other guns that speed up the killing process.
You have a gun that is useless until the short window of opportunity in the armour break, only useful at the small window of mid-range where engagements are less common, and you can't kill a ship faster than other guns that are useless until armour break.

I wish you would stop bringing up Dps as a pro because not many ships have ridiculous hull health to utilise Dps on an Explosive Explosive weapon. Also most ships I tend to find, have their armour up around 80% of the time. I think damage per armour break is a much more accurate statistic for the potential of a kill centric weapon in PVP. Alliance mode isn't even out yet (Where enemy ships and structures will have more health to utilise the Dps of the Flak) and even then armour will be brought back up.

If we didn't have the Mortar or the Heavy Flak then I wouldn't have made this discussion. Now that we have Alliance mode coming, I think we will see a lot more Light Flak usage. I kinda wish Muse would get rid of the gun in skirmish because It would save me the trouble of describing how to use the Flak effectively on their Pyramidion for inexperienced players. When I tell them that using it on ships that have other guns that will help the process of wearing the health down, I tell them they can't use it up close or too far, and that they can't line up the Arcs to pair up with other weapons very well; they take it off the ship. It makes farming for those ridiculous Flak achievements that much more aggarivating.

I will say that I have used the Flak and it works but I would still much rather incorporate other weapons that kill faster or have utility purposes. I'm still not sure what you people see special about this thing but I accept it as it is because you all seem to agree that it has found it's place.


We live in the Era where the Meta is multi-range disable. People still bring Brawler ships and win with them because there are plenty of maps that provide wonderful ambush strategies. It is also still easy to ambush a ship and render the Flak ineffective due to arming time. Not to mention, the Flak is also still pretty hard to shoot at max range as mentioned by a few people in the forum. It is a "mid range" weapon not "Long range" which means you will be closer to the ship and have more opportunities to render it useless.



I like the idea that the Flak that is outclassed at killing can be used for a utility purpose such as creating smoke. I would like it so that the impact shots would eject smoke for a longer period of time to utilise this function to a greater extent. I think then, I would be much happier using the Flak in pvp as it would have a place in my torture/ mine builds.

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