Author Topic: Fun with Flaks  (Read 12686 times)

Offline Lueosi

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Fun with Flaks
« on: March 17, 2015, 01:44:40 pm »
After our weekly scrimmage against each other we Ryders group up together for a final all Flak Spire 4vs4 match on Red Sepulcher. Watch the overpowered combination of a minimum of 8 and up to 12 Light Flaks and 4 Heavy Flaks hitting the same target, melting through armor and instantly killing any ship from a pilot's POV. We follow the Ryder paradigm: Forward and Focus!

The Light Flaks create a smoke screen for the hit ship, making aiming while shooting back almost impossible. All Flaks also have a high chance to ignite guns, balloon and armor that leads to fire being a serious problem - especially guns will overheat really fast if not maintained properly. It is very important that every gun focuses the same target, if a Spire goes down, stripping the armor and creating a smoke barrier becomes much harder. Usually at least three Spires are required to have good armor piercing.

Our closest result so far was 7 deaths. This time Dementio was not piloting - usually he goes down first - and we got away with 2 deaths.
Fun with Flaks - Ryders' closing match after scrimmage - My own point of view, Ryder Mumble with team communication recorded. Bonus: Ayetach goes crazy at the end and almost dies - literally.

Watch more content at our Youtube Channel.


Disclaimer: This is a pubstomp after very intense matches before, this is the only time we intentionally do this - even though we'd like to fight against good opponents here (what already happened). Comments about this particular issue please as PM to me.

Offline Kamoba

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Re: Fun with Flaks
« Reply #1 on: March 17, 2015, 01:47:36 pm »
Just to add, this was after a few hours training and not just a match or two  :o

Oh and match chat commentary from MightyKeb was fun too 8)
« Last Edit: March 17, 2015, 02:07:13 pm by Kamoba »

zlater75@hotmail.com

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Re: Fun with Flaks
« Reply #2 on: April 08, 2015, 07:51:37 am »
Denying lochnagar ammo isn't fun on rushing spires. imho.

Also wasn't aware that got streamed. But at least rydrs had fun.

zlater75@hotmail.com

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Re: Fun with Flaks
« Reply #3 on: April 08, 2015, 09:33:03 am »
EDIT to previous post (doublepost due to timeout of editing):
Correction:
Was another 4 flakspire pubstomp match i remembered with Rydrs on red sepulcher. Not the one streamed.

Offline MightyKeb

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Re: Fun with Flaks
« Reply #4 on: April 08, 2015, 10:01:12 am »
I've worked out a team composition that counters the flakspire army, but it's very demanding in the way that

1) Captains need to be decently skilled and need to put their trust into you as much to change loadouts
2) Their crew must also be good-ish, especially the gunners


The problem with 4flakspire is it forces the other team to go for trickier strategies, they're snipers AND close range weapons, very much similiar to how Ducks used to win with their Metajunkers, except they're far less mobile and more responsive to charging ships.


Which then brings up the inevitable conclusion that they're countered by sniper ships.


Now, I was lucky to join in with my clanbuddies as allies and one pilot who listened to us, so we ended up taking two sniper galleons, one hwachafish  (Ikuto's very nervous to pilot anything but a Fish and Pyra :c) and a Hades-lumber spire. Sadly, my spire was one of the reasons we lost that game because Rydrs focused it down whenever they could. However, even so Galleons were a fairly good substitute for countering the spires due to their fast disable/kill potential. If the pilots refuse to take drouge and go with claw to increase their chances agains't brawlers then they'll be more vulnerable to galleons, if the pilots take drouge then you can potentially have a chance against them with something like a hwachafish with banshee on the side just for the sake of supporting your allies. Chute vent should also be useful if you're the brawl/support ship. While flaks have average arcs on both vertical angles, Rydrs' strategy is to fly high and fly together to confuse their enemies and start firing from the max range, so you have plenty of room to get out of their arcs below if they decide to focus you down. Make sure to tap that thing hard for a good 2-3 seconds. You can even try sacrificing claw for Hydro, as you won't have a lot of time to brawl with those ships. However, back to the galleons, while they can tank and kill spires good, Rydrs can simply overheat the shite out of their guns and get much more accurate hits on them with HF over ranges.


Which then brings up junker. Thin hull profile + fairly high armor health, with flakspire around your hull health won't matter in the least bit, which junker gives up in exchange for armor and thus makes a semi-perfect counter. But no ordinary Metajunker, fighting agains't 4 flak spires is all about fast kills, thinning their numbers before they do the same to you. So double arts won't work not only because they're not the fastest killers around, but because disables won't matter with 15 more flaks shooting at you after you disable one. Instead I would suggest a hades-flak broadside, with either a flak front for trifectas or a flare gun for support (Red Spulcher's clouds give brawling teams on blue side a good chance agains't snipers, fairly balanced for such a large map.)


So to break down, the 3 most reliable builds agains't Rydrs' not-so-fearsome team composition on Fridays are:


1 - Meta Galleon

2 - Hades Flak Flak Junker

3 - Hwachafish with banshee side (to some extent, optional ship choice)

Meta Galleon and Junker do the killing, Hwachafish gets in semi-brawling range at the right times and uses hwacha's rapid clip release to unleash hull damage/disable all the flaks on a ship at once in brawling range and support hull damage with the banshees.


However, there are a few problems. As I've listed above, sniper ships like these depend more on crew's accuracy than your piloting most of the time, so if you fall in with a bunch of novices you've already lost the match. And this build also assumes the Rydrs will come at you for the whole game, and if they suddenly stop you shouldn't extend too far - the closer you are to their spawn the more time it'll take for your slow-ish ships (junker and galleon) to reposition and reorganize on death, which will mean Rydrs will most certainly focus the galleons first at that point, which means your team must ensure the Galleon stays a bit behind everyone else and is protected from the focus spire. It also requires active comms from the captains to focus down ships as soon as they come in- Plus they can kill faster than the spires if they focus down all at once, all-flaks can be redundant in most cases. Microphones are recommended among captains because  if you simply try comitting to focusing one ship down Rydrs will catch on and constantly shift the ship leading the charge to get you to overextend and gain a few free kills.



Ladies and gentlemen, this has been Keb reveals confidential information: The Musical , we (I mean, I.) hope you enjoyed the read from someone who just happened to take part in setting the current Rydr death record on Iron fork. And to rest of you Rydrs, from now on, good luck!


« Last Edit: April 08, 2015, 10:08:43 am by MightyKeb »

Offline David Dire

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Re: Fun with Flaks
« Reply #5 on: April 08, 2015, 10:09:33 am »
I've worked out a team composition that counters the flakspire army, but it's very demanding in the way that

1) Captains need to be decently skilled and need to put their trust into you as much to change loadouts
2) Their crew must also be good-ish, especially the gunners


The problem with 4flakspire is it forces the other team to go for trickier strategies, they're snipers AND close range weapons, very much similiar to how Ducks used to win with their Metajunkers, except they're far less mobile and more responsive to charging ships.


Which then brings up the inevitable conclusion that they're countered by sniper ships.


Now, I was lucky to join in with my clanbuddies as allies and one pilot who listened to us, so we ended up taking two sniper galleons, one hwachafish  (Ikuto's very nervous to pilot anything but a Fish and Pyra :c) and a Hades-lumber spire. Sadly, my spire was one of the reasons we lost that game because Rydrs focused it down whenever they could. However, even so Galleons were a fairly good substitute for countering the spires due to their fast disable/kill potential. If the pilots refuse to take drouge and go with claw to increase their chances agains't brawlers then they'll be more vulnerable to galleons, if the pilots take drouge then you can potentially have a chance against them with something like a hwachafish with banshee on the side just for the sake of supporting your allies. Chute vent should also be useful if you're the brawl/support ship. While flaks have average arcs on both vertical angles, Rydrs' strategy is to fly high and fly together to confuse their enemies and start firing from the max range, so you have plenty of room to get out of their arcs below if they decide to focus you down. Make sure to tap that thing hard for a good 2-3 seconds. You can even try sacrificing claw for Hydro, as you won't have a lot of time to brawl with those ships. However, back to the galleons, while they can tank and kill spires good, Rydrs can simply overheat the shite out of their guns and get much more accurate hits on them with HF over ranges.


Which then brings up junker. Thin hull profile + fairly high armor health, with flakspire around your hull health won't matter in the least bit, which junker gives up in exchange for armor and thus makes a semi-perfect counter. But no ordinary Metajunker, fighting agains't 4 flak spires is all about fast kills, thinning their numbers before they do the same to you. So double arts won't work not only because they're not the fastest killers around, but because disables won't matter with 15 more flaks shooting at you after you disable one. Instead I would suggest a hades-flak broadside, with either a flak front for trifectas or a flare gun for support (Red Spulcher's clouds give brawling teams on blue side a good chance agains't snipers, fairly balanced for such a large map.)


So to break down, the 3 most reliable builds agains't Rydrs' not-so-fearsome team composition on Fridays are:


1 - Meta Galleon

2 - Hades Flak Flak Junker

3 - Hwachafish with banshee side (to some extent, optional ship choice)

Meta Galleon and Junker do the killing, Hwachafish gets in semi-brawling range at the right times and uses hwacha's rapid clip release to unleash hull damage/disable all the flaks on a ship at once in brawling range and support hull damage with the banshees.


However, there are a few problems. As I've listed above, sniper ships like these depend more on crew's accuracy than your piloting most of the time, so if you fall in with a bunch of novices you've already lost the match. And this build also assumes the Rydrs will come at you for the whole game, and if they suddenly stop you shouldn't extend too far - the closer you are to their spawn the more time it'll take for your slow-ish ships (junker and galleon) to reposition and reorganize on death, which will mean Rydrs will most certainly focus the galleons first at that point, which means your team must ensure the Galleon stays a bit behind everyone else and is protected from the focus spire. It also requires active comms from the captains to focus down ships as soon as they come in- Plus they can kill faster than the spires if they focus down all at once, all-flaks can be redundant in most cases. Microphones are recommended among captains because  if you simply try comitting to focusing one ship down Rydrs will catch on and constantly shift the ship leading the charge to get you to overextend and gain a few free kills.



Ladies and gentlemen, this has been Keb reveals confidential information: The Musical , we (I mean, I.) hope you enjoyed the read from someone who just happened to take part in setting the current Rydr death record on Iron fork. And to rest of you Rydrs, from now on, good luck!

Can we do another one of these and can I be a captain

Offline Kamoba

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Re: Fun with Flaks
« Reply #6 on: April 08, 2015, 11:08:27 am »
Keb that was beautiful.
8)

David, every Friday after Ryder practice (which runs same time as Iron Fork) we try to fill our four ships with for the flak party :)

Also Galleons are just big targets and the only reason we kept targeting your spire keb was the ideal range you spawned in :)

Offline Dementio

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Re: Fun with Flaks
« Reply #7 on: April 08, 2015, 01:03:44 pm »
The score of that match in the end was 12-6, in case anybody is interested and we have won barely with 12-11, I think it was (I won't tell anybody how that team managed this though).

We did try to focus down your spire, but sometimes you were just too far away and there were too many Galleons in the way. So instead of actually killing the Spire we just shot down the Galleons since they did try to get in brawl range and when we backed of to get distance from them, they could do nothing with their hwachas against 4 Flak Spires.

The main reason why you lost though wasn't necessarily the easy to kill Spire or the easy to hit and outmanouver Galleons, but instead your team had a lot of spawn issues. Many times the Galleons would spawn in one by one and get instant killed by all these flaks.

Keep in mind that I am personally thinking of doing other stuff than just Flak Spires so if a skilled team does manage to outsnipe us or if we just think it would, we would take something else to have our fun with  ;). Getting sniped while flying one of these Spires isn't particular fun, but it is always exciting to see if we can kill our targets before one of us drops.

Offline MightyKeb

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Re: Fun with Flaks
« Reply #8 on: April 08, 2015, 01:08:28 pm »
The score of that match in the end was 12-6, in case anybody is interested and we have won barely with 12-11, I think it was (I won't tell anybody how that team managed this though).

We did try to focus down your spire, but sometimes you were just too far away and there were too many Galleons in the way. So instead of actually killing the Spire we just shot down the Galleons since they did try to get in brawl range and when we backed of to get distance from them, they could do nothing with their hwachas against 4 Flak Spires.

The main reason why you lost though wasn't necessarily the easy to kill Spire or the easy to hit and outmanouver Galleons, but instead your team had a lot of spawn issues. Many times the Galleons would spawn in one by one and get instant killed by all these flaks.

Keep in mind that I am personally thinking of doing other stuff than just Flak Spires so if a skilled team does manage to outsnipe us or if we just think it would, we would take something else to have our fun with  ;). Getting sniped while flying one of these Spires isn't particular fun, but it is always exciting to see if we can kill our targets before one of us drops.

Oh yes, now I remember one of the galleons being 4hwacha. I think the meta one did fairly well though. And yeah, we had some comm problems and towards the end of the match 2 ships thought it'd be a good idea to spawn at mid while I just flied out of the right spawn where I was nearly shot down again.

Offline David Dire

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Re: Fun with Flaks
« Reply #9 on: April 08, 2015, 02:09:22 pm »
Keb that was beautiful.
8)

David, every Friday after Ryder practice (which runs same time as Iron Fork) we try to fill our four ships with for the flak party :)

Also Galleons are just big targets and the only reason we kept targeting your spire keb was the ideal range you spawned in :)

Well, next time, invite me!

Offline DrTentacles

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Re: Fun with Flaks
« Reply #10 on: April 08, 2015, 02:21:49 pm »
I think I was captaining in the 12-11 one. That was intense-and so damn close. I love those sort of matches, though. I'll take a challenging match that I lose over a pubstomp where I go 5-0 any day.