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]

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.

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]

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.

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.





 

[Echoez]

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.

I meant that a FlakSpire isn't realy the 'go to' thing in competitive and my 1 out of 3 ships assumption was for a competitive enviroment only. In which case, the Heavy Flak only appears on the Paddling's Galleon.

In Pub games FlakSpire is a bit safer to use since people don't realy care a lot ( I know I don't, I love the ship ), but since Lesmok cripples the Heavy Flak considerably now, it's not realy the most effective thing, even more so on a competitive setting. FlakSpires weren't that popular in Pubs either, so far I haven't seen many people using them bar me, Smollett, Keyvias and 2-3 other guys, it's a very high risk ship to use.

As for the fire thing it was just an idea, I think it would be worth testing in the App and see how it would impact the game in general.

[Zenark]

You people keep saying that these long range shots are impossible without lesmok o.0 how have I been getting kills with it then? (well, my gunner) I know he's not using Lesmok because he shoots twice.

I'm thinking I might be using this weapon in closer ranges than everyone else is. I can't tell how far the enemy is, but it takes a second or two for the round to hit, and it's enough to kill. What is the minimum and max range with charged rounds?

[Echoez]

Lesmok gave the gun some more true range, I can get kills too with a competend gunner, but that doesn't mean it isn't doubly hard to do so now.

I still insist that since Lesmok is very good on so many things and apparently needed a change, that this gun gets some treatment, even if it is just a faster vanilla projectile speed.

[awkm]

I think there's some major confusion here or issue with the particular language everyone is using.  Therefore, it makes it hard for me to understand what it is that you are complaining about.  Smollet also had some confusion some it might be how the Ducks and other high level talk about gun stats.  What this leads me to believe is that you are all speculating again.

If you really want change to happen, test before you talk.  Speculation does not help me, in fact in can confuse me and lead me to make stupid changes.  And if you have tested before you spoke, thank you.

Old Lesmok:
+60% projectile speed, -20% clip size, +30% projectile lift, -40% gun rotation speed

New Lesmok:
+80% projectile speed, -30% clip size, +30% projectile lift, -20% gun rotation speed

Heavy Flak without Lesmok:
- Range: 1008m
- Arming Time: 1s (remains the same even with ammo)
- Arming Range: 240m
- Clip size: 2
- Rotation speed and projectile lift is rather obvious

Heavy Flak with old Lesmok:
- Range: 1600m
- Arming Range: 384m
- Clip size: 2

Heavy Flak with new Lesmok:
- Range: 1800m
- Arming Range: 432m
- Clip size: 1

Pros of New Lesmok:
- Even greater range (+200m compared to old Lesmok)
- Less gun rotation nerf (half from old Lesmok!!)

Cons of New Lesmok:
- Ammo is dropped to 1 (compared to rounded to 2 with -20% clip size, therefore no change)
- Greater arming range (due to increase projectile speed, Arming Range = Arming Time * Projectile Speed)

SO, in my mind the only really big nerf is that guns with clip size 2 really get it.  Ammo is dropped to 1.  Increasing Heavy Flak's ammo is one solution, what its DPS should be afterwards is still TBD.  Increasing its Shell Life is an easy possibility, therefore increasing the gun's effective range without affecting drop.  It'll just take more skill to get shots on things further away, it's one helluva drop.

Lesmok will need to change in some ways to account for abuses on other weapons.  The laser-like surgery it affords to guns like mortars is nice but it's too easy to use right now.  It has solidified itself as the default ammo for that gun.  I don't like it.  Some additional thought will need to be put into Lesmok or even to the Mortar itself now that reliance on Light Flak has been lowered.

[Rainer Zu Fall]

This is just some thinking about what might be a problem and how to solve it regarding effect to cause and balance. Logical continuity not guaranteed (as well as specific terms, tried to describe them). No thoughts have been made about damage changes, since I don't know the specific numbers.


About the heavy flak:
Increasing shell life might be an easy solution to get it even more into it's niche, however it already has quite a high range and doesn't need to become a second merc, the way I see it.
I still think that adding one more round to it's clip would be the way to go by boosting as well the gun with lesmok but also with burst and other ammo types, making them worth using gain in combination with the flak too as well as decreasing the speed the projectile flys with, e.g. lochnagar or others.

About the mortar:
Increasing it's stability towards lateral and vertical movement, so shots aren't affected that much by movement anymore, would prevent overexcessive use of lesmok and force the players to use other ammo types to gain advantages. Decreasing it's range would make lesmok still necessary with particular kinds of playing without pushing it too far in direction of being OP with other rounds if changes stated before would be made.

[awkm]

Increasing it's stability towards lateral and vertical movement, so shots aren't affected that much by movement anymore, would prevent overexcessive use of lesmok and force the players to use other ammo types to gain advantages.

I'm not clear on what you mean by this?

Stability as in recoil?  Mortar has no jitter or recoil whatsoever?

Lateral and vertical movement?  I have control of how far you can turn the guns (pitch and yaw angles) and how fast they move in those directions (pitch and yaw speeds).

What brought mortar into the limelight recently was its new freedom of movement, I believe I increased its yaw angles and maybe its yaw speeds so it's easier to get the gun on target.  This can be brought back again.  I was thinking of actually having Lesmok do it but of course that would have consequences on other weapons as well.

[N-Sunderland]

What brought mortar into the limelight recently was its new freedom of movement

Actually, that didn't have too huge an effect on its viability. What really brought the mortar into play was the change to heavy clip, which meant that the light flak only had three shots at longer ranges. With four shots and a buff it was able to take out the Pyramidion, which was key seeing as that's the most popular ship alongside the Junker. But now that the light flak only gets three shots with heavy clip, it can't kill as much at range, while the mortar can.

[Wazulu]

Increasing it's stability towards lateral and vertical movement, so shots aren't affected that much by movement anymore, would prevent overexcessive use of lesmok and force the players to use other ammo types to gain advantages.

I'm not clear on what you mean by this?

If I can pick up on his meaning, I think he's suggesting that the movement of the ship upon which the Flak is firing is a considerable difficulty when trying to hit a target. He's suggesting that the movement of the ship should affect the direction of the shot less and by doing so other ammo types would be used.

[Rainer Zu Fall]

"Increasing it's stability towards lateral and vertical movement, so shots aren't affected that much by movement anymore, would prevent overexcessive use of lesmok and force the players to use other ammo types to gain advantages."

This means that if your own ship turns right on the spot to keep the guns aimed at another ship, your gun would be affected by that turning less. Same as you did with the gatling, but inverted.
I think it's not a problem of the angles but that the gun behaves as if you had heavy clip loaded into it, it's shots are far too precisely.

[Twinkie D-Lite]

I guess my biggest complaint is trying to do these new achievements with all these changes. I cant see me getting anymore Lochnager and flak part destroys since the heavy flak is even more shunned for the moment. And please dont even bring up the light flak, would anyone really expect to do a lochnager shot with that thing . This has to be done without accidentally killing them, which in itself is fairly absurd. 2000+ m part destroys is still possible I guess using charged rounds, but I just truly despise talentless buffoons that sit in the corner with a mercury, so I have been slowly getting mine done with a LumberJack. I guess my main concern is all these achievements. It is no secret I like to get my levels, thats how I am, and could care less who likes it or not. The heavy flak is hard to hit with at range, even with the slothlike lesmok projectile. Just put 2 rounds back in the thing.