Scylla mortar vs Flak

[maitreya]

playing around, for a good while I was using the Artemis and a chaingun for a pyra. this pattern functioned extremely well and won 2v1 engagements for us time and again until I came up against two galleons armed with nothing but hwacha and chainguns and was blown apart time and again thanks to some impressive coordination on their part.

aside from that, I'm doing a refit to improve overall performance. from what I've seen the flavor for pyramidions at the moment seems to be chaingun-flack on the front then whatever you please on the side, this would be fine of course aside from I found some posts suggesting that the Scylla mortar was far better.

simply looking for opinions on a mortar-chaingun pairing vs a flak-chaingun pairing, also would greatly appreciate advice on how to counter the horror that is the hwacha in almost every situation. goofy as it seems I can almost swear every time I've lost my ship it was due to enemy hwachas

close range? gear blown apart by a hwacha
long range? getting peppered by a hwacha
mid range? you bet that's a hwacha bearing down on you
something from behind? engines are gone, by the way it was a hwacha

[N-Sunderland]

Flak and mortar each have their ups and downs. Flak is a lot more reliable. It's easier to hit, and it'll get you more damage per shot. The mortar, on the other hand, has a high fire rate and much larger clip. As a result, its DPS is higher. At the same time, though, hitting at range isn't very easy at all. Especially on the Pyra, where aiming high to compensate for the drop can result in hitting the nosecone.

I'd personally recommend flak, but if your gunner/gungineer is good enough with a mortar then that's a completely viable option.

As for hwachas, you have to remember that there's that extremely long reload time during which the other ship is vulnerable. Since you have a gat on the front, you should ask your gunner/gungineer to target their hwachas and take them out. It's not that hard to do with a gatling if you're a decent shot and have heavy clip. You should also try manoeuvring out of the way. Hwacha projectiles travel fairly slowly, so a well-timed chute vent / hydrogen can be key in escaping damage.

What's also important is how your crew is responding to hwacha fire. While your front gunners/gungineers should obviously be getting their guns up as quickly as possible, the main engineer's job in keeping the engines going is more complicated. If they simply just rebuild the engines, they're going to get destroyed by the next volley. Have your main engineer rebuild the engines almost entirely, so that one more hit will bring them back up. After the next barrage, they can quickly get all three engines going long before the hwachas come in, giving you room to reposition.

[maitreya]

so nothing else in particular would be advised for that second front slot? for any weaknesses the chaingun may have, it simply has an ease of use and reliable ability to strip parts and armour that keep it mandatory at the moment.

[Moriarty]

Could run a Merc and Art front. Nowhere near as good as a flak/gat for brawling but you get great range.

[Mattilald Anguisad]

Merc Artemis can take out any gun at long range (at the edge of artemis you should be safe from Hawacha, you are safe from carrorade, meaning you only have to worry about lumberjack. While heavy flak is a threat at such ranges, you can take out his gun relatively easy. Heavy guns have much longer rebuild time than light guns. - Be vary tho, that is a long range setup and woull be very vounerably in short range, due to lack of dps.

As for mortar vs flak: I'd suggest your gunner invests enough time to get pro with light mortar (there is a plenty of pro lumberjack gunners, but I haven't seen any pro Scyla gunners - not saying there is none yet, just saying that I haven't seen any). By the logic of people that say, lumberjack being hard to hit with, does not make it not op, Scyla IS TOTALY OP.