About the Flak Rework

[Thunderer]

Okay, I'm just going to go ahead and say that me and Haste have spent the past 30 minutes on Skype trying to decide whether you're trying to tell us they're overpowered or underpowered. Your first post has a bunch of conflicting statements, can you please clarify whether you think they're too good, too bad, and why?

The aim of the rework was, as I think, to enable multiple flaks to damage the target. Battleships with few secondaries will generally mount only two flaks (because the light slots are few and precious), close to each other, both of which would explode at the same distance from the target for that reason, and damage it. Those can mount full flaks now, yes, but we know that this will make them defenseless due to flak range.
The only change made to battleships with few light slots is that the damage output of their two flaks has been reduced. That is why this is bad for them.

Battleships with a high number of light slots (let's say 12 or more) are capable of mounting both enough flaks and enough secondary turrets. They will not notice the change as easily, but it is bad here as well. It requires them to mount more flaks in order to retain the flak damage output they used to have at the cost of secondary turrets. It also prevents them from dealing more than 30K damage to anything with a single flak salvo, wich is equivalent to 3 old flaks, or 6 new ones. I could already fire 3 flaks from my Valor at someone's bomber and all would do damage due to their chosen hardpoints, so I see no change here, except that I must mount more flaks in order to do the same damage.

An increase of flak projectile health would allow for more of them to be effective in case of battleships with a high light slot number. It could enable carriers to effectively use up to 15 flaks. However, it could also cause a great number of friendly fire casualties among snubs if used incorrectly. In that case, the change would be a double-edged sword.


This is why the rework has only changed the number of flaks required to deal a certain damage. I think that everything is good as it is except flak damage output and energy consumption. I think that it should be reverted to the previous stats. The 30K projectile hitpoints don't allow for more than 3 old flaks to reach the target anyways, which was already possible before, so it will not overpower them.