Flak cannon to weak against liberator?

I just had a little session were I thought "hey wouldn't it be fun to mount a flak cannon on a Sunderer and shoot down aircrafts?". So I did and I quickly realized that flak cannons is utterly pathetic against aircraft, in particular Liberators.

How come? Well I emptied about 2 1/2 magazines of Flak (around 65-75 rounds) right into a Liberator hovering nicely about 70-100m (200-300 feet) from me, easy target. It shoot back of course. But I thought "you dummy, I am shooting you with a flak cannon." And I shot and I shot and I shot. The liberator started to smoke a little. Then I exploded.

How can that be? In a fight between a Liberator and a Sunderer with Flak, surely the Sunderer would win. But it doesn't, and that is because the Flak barely do any damage to the Liberator. The Flak should have ripped the Liberator to pieces within the first magazine considering about 80-90% of the rounds hit the Liberator or exploded near it.

Why would anybody bother to mount a Flak cannon, a dedicated AA weapons, if he can easily be shoot to pieces by an aircraft who should fear Flak like the plague?

Until this serious imbalance has been fixed it's a waste of cert points or station cash to get a Flak because they do as much damage to an aircraft as a ordinary machine gun. Either make Flak cannons do twice the amount of damage (about 200 instead of 100, which is less than what the smaller 30mm machine gun does) and/or allow guided AA missile to be mounted on the Sunderer and some other vehicles (like the Nemesis AA rocket launcher).

Which btw should have been included to begin with. Every modern military IRL has armored trucks with guided AA mounted on it. An army would be moronic not to.

As it is now Air is way way overpowered in terms of technology. The air is top modern 22nd century, while the ground AA is early WW2. It doesn't make any sense, air should fear ground AA. But as it is now, they can't even be bothered to care, they just stand still hovering as they blow your AA to dust. Either nerf Liberators, or buff Flak. And please for the love of all sense and logic, do allow us to mount guided AA missile on Sunderer at least. it just make sense. Is this game a military simulator or not? isn't it supposed to reflect and simulate real life?

That's it, I'm done with my ranting. Thanks for reading.

It might be a bug, but flak seems to do very little damage to a galaxy. Like unnoticeable damage.

The flak guns for MBT's, Sundies, and Harrassers (the Ranger) suck. they are absolute trash. You aren't going to be killing anything with those.

The sundy's main purposes are transportation, spawn logistics (AMS), and armor support (. The lib's main purpose is A2G shelling. Why would you expect to win that engagement?


Here's a little tip: If you want your sundy to stand a chance, go dual Basilisks. Make sure to have the zoom optics on at least the first rank. And have comms with your gunners to coordinate focused fire.

Flak guns are good for what they do, Its an AOE burst gun so you don't need to nearly be as accurate while using it. IMO the burst radius is actually too large so i think the low damage is fine the way it is, but i would say that a smaller burst radius with a slight damage increase and a slower velocity would make the gun better as for now the gun is very strong against EFS's and ok against other aircraft.
Basically you just had the Ranger vrs Walker situation, Both are good, but both are niche and situational. With the vast amount of stuff that can be thrown at aircraft in PS 2 I think its good to not have a one gun solution as they already draw the most fire on the field.

To answer you question, No this is not a military simulator, No its not supposed to simulate real life. Its not even a real FSP, Its a twitch hybrid shooter MMORPG.

liberators are fine. if anything, they need an armor buff to withstand more antiair/flak

also, that ranger you got is pretty weak in comparison to other flak like turrets or the skyguard. here you have a good demonstration vid (comparing walker to ranger). you have been deceived by SoE, sorry. the ranger is terrible. base turrets as well as skyguards do a pretty good job versus aircraft though. for the sunderer, buy the walker instead or stay with the default basilisk which is pretty decent against anything

Walkers are much more DPS against aircraft but they don't burst, you need to actually land your rounds to do damage. I have a sundie with dual walkers and lots of extra ammo and when they're both manned, they take down aircraft very quickly if they aircraft is low enough. ESFs flying in slowly to lolpod get wrecked, and Libs that aren't a billion miles high/away start trying to escape pretty quickly.

Rangers are just trash, yeah.

Well I tried the Walker and it's a huge difference. Though I still do not understand how a bigger round (ranger 40mm, walker 30mm I presume) can do less damage on direct hit... and the 20mm basilisk, does even more damage. Explain that to me. Though as you say this ain't apparently a military simulator. I just hate it when realism has to suffer for gameplay...

Though I have yet to see an excuse to why i can't mount guided AA missile. Would they be too powerful? That would be a good thing imo considering how hard it is to take down an aircraft. you really shouldn't have to empty several magazines of ammo for one stupid Liberator...

So you think it's fine that one needs to empty 3 magazines or more to take down a liberator? I must have shoot at it for at least 30 sec. The idea of ground AA is to deter aircrafts from getting close. This is absolutely not the case if a liberator can hover for 30 sec and just absorb 3 magazines of flak and destroy the vehicle firing.

Whether I use Ranger or Walker, AA in very imbalanced imo and need to do more damage, otherwise they won't work as a deterrent, to deny airspace. As it is now an aircraft can go in and destroy a couple of tanks and then get away with half health left despite having a Walker/Ranger firing.

The skyguard, does do 200 damage, and I am sure it's better, but it costs 1000 cert points, something that will take a very long time to earn, assuming you don't spend any of it in that time. SoE need to make the other weapons better in the mean time. I bet you 95% that have skyguard, bought it with station cash. SoE seem to have intentionally made the best weapons the most expensive, forcing people to buy it if they ever want to even dream of competing against a liberator when on ground. The only thing that really deters an aircraft from entering enemy airspace is another aircraft.

While the ranger needs a buff, it doesn't need more damage, probably just increase the muzzle velocity and mag size a bit and it'd be fine, you have to stop thinking of this game as you vs that lib, in reality theres probably about 10 different people shooting that lib unless you're alone, in which case i'm pretty sure they intend for a lib to win that fight, but if you want to single handidly scare off aircraft you need to go dedicated AA with a Skyguard.

Aa is imbalanced, not because it it weak, but because it and air both scale very poorly. You shouldnt be trying to 1v1 a single lib, especially with a single ranger. Aa sundys are really only effective if both guns are manned, as it should be. Air is one of those things that imo you really need to have some exoerience using before you say that aa is too weak, because it certainly doesnt feel like that when you are up there.

Is this guy for real?

Ranger sucks. Basilisk owns. Trust me, I know.

I believe the weapon you're looking for is "Skyguard"

The problem in this situation is the Ranger. It is a piece of garbage, and always has been. Walkers on the other hand are pretty good.

Good luck trying to solo a lib with a skyguard. It might scare them away, but libs/galaxies have so much health they can just run, repair, then reset the encounter until they finally get the drop on you.

Good thing this isn't a single player game.

Scaring the planes away is the job of AA. Killing the planes is the job of the ESF.

Both of these statements are inaccurate.

My god this thread scares me.

Thanks for your constructive input.

I am calling for a buff of the Ranger, it only makes sense that a dedicated AA Flak cannon that is meant to deter liberators actually does so. Emptying multiple magazines on a liberator at 50m (150 feet) and having it survive is just silly. It's supposed to be the gun with the heaviest rounds (40mm), yet it is weaker than the 30mm Walker, which in turn is even weaker than the 20mm Basilisk. It's all backwards and up side down.

Then there is the lack of guided AA missile for vehicles, which is even more stupid. How hard can it be to mount one on the roof?