5thHorseman wrote:Ryu wrote:When you look at the number of shots that would get through shields to hit the hull, the flak 2's start to look a little better. For example say you fire four flak 1's and the enemy has 4 shields and all the shots hit. You get 8 shots hitting their hull per salvo, whereas flak 2's would have 10 shots get through, plus whatever else you happen to be using with them. Also, when you are using a boarding type of ship, having a fast highly destructive weapon setup is counterproductive, except where you get automated ships, which are pretty rare.
Also I have as of yet to run into 2 glaive beams in any one game, so those seem pretty rare to me, though flak guns are fairly common weapon type to run into.
8 shots per salvo vs 10, sure, but you fire twice as many salvos.
10 seconds, you do 2 damage to their shields. granted it'll probably be more like 4 but still, that's 2 shield bubbles down. 10 seconds later the enemy only has 2 shields and with luck their pilot left his seat. Your 12 shots now have 10 hitting the hull (at about the same time that your Flak 2's would fire their first shot) assuming no dodging, and their shields are down. Also, you could split them up 2 at shields and 2 at weapons, and with their tighter shotgun spread actually have a chance to hit what you're aiming at.
Keep your flak 2s. I'll take 4 Flak 1s any day.
I do agree with most of what you have to say, but you did overlook a couple details that I also had stated, the first being that I don't think that two flak 2's by themselves are that great, its what you can have with them at the same time that makes them so strong.. With two flak 2's, you have the choice of a third weapon with 2 power(such as
Beams: like the pike, fire, bio, and hull;
Missiles: swarms, Pegasus, and hull;
Lasers: burst 2's, hull smasher 1's, and chain burst;
Ions: charger and heavy; and
Bombs: fire and breach 2's), or two other weapons with 1 power such as the mini beam, ion stunner, dual laser, most bombs, leto missile launcher, basic laser(as long as your ship has a total of four weapon slots at least).
The second thing is that you have a lot more flexibility on what your strategy can be. For example you can get a variety of weapons that can enhance your boarding strategies(like the fire bomb/beam with rock boarding party), or drastically boost your damage potential beyond what just two flak 2's can do(having a swarm missile bypass their shields to get a shot a direct shot into their piloting or shield room right before the flak gets there). In addition to this, having that extra flexibility makes it possible for you to get more blue events due to your weapon variety(beam weapon cuts a ship stuck in an asteroid out or a missile weapon to destroy the live mine by a rock ship).