Flak is quite bugged.

Flak has felt funny for a while as a liberator pilot.

So went into VR to test and see whats going on.

First i tested the Harrasser with Ranger.

I found some strange things going on with this weapon.

It's listed as doing 100 damage at 50 meters and 20 at 200 meters.

I placed a waypoint on the lib in VR and started shooting.

At 100m it took me 60 rnds to blow up the lib.

At 200m it took 55 which means i must have missed more at 100m lol.

At 300m it took 62 rnds.

At 400m i did it with 80 rnds once and 75 a second time.

At point blank range, the only range i could test in VR, i shot the bottom of the lib and it took 192 rnds.

This is odd. The lib is supposed to have 50% bottom armor. But it took a little over 3x as many rnds to blow it up. Either the lib is taking too much damage to the sides, or not enough to the bottom.


Next i tested the skyguard.

This weapon is listed as doing 200 damage at 100m and 150 at 300m.

So i began at 300m. I did it once with a full clip and once with 69 rnds.

At 200m 64 rnds and 63 rnds.

At 100m 63 rnds.

Next i tested the bottom armor at point blank range and it took 63 rnds.


From this test i have determined 2 things.

1) The damage drop-off is not working on either of these weapons.

2) The skyguard is ignoring bottom armor completely.

The question is, were you firing at "enemy" or "friendly" Liberators in the VR?

flak damage does not drop based on range,only direct hit damage does

Exactly.

Wow, i just tested harrasser ranger vs ESF and its totally broken.

The strangest thing happened. I started my test vs a reaver. At 300m i did it 3 times 42 40 and 38 rnds.

At 200m it was 30 and 28 rnds. Cof was the difference between those ranges.

At 100m 27 and 27 rnds.

Now here is the REALLY crazy thing. At Point Blank range it took 120 rnds ONE HUNDRED TWENTY!

Something is very wrong here!

Well thats not what the stats of the gun say.

The ranger harrasser says that it does 100 damage at 50m and 20 damage at 200m. For the indirect damage it says 40 at 5m and 1 at 8m.

Skyguard is listed as 200 damage at 100m and 150 at 300m while its indirect damage is listed as 35 at 5m and 1 at 8m.

You do realize flak has an arming distance, right? It only applies the listed damage then.

Up close, it will apply weak direct damage. Past that, it only applies indirect damage.

when a flak projectile comes within flak distance of an aircraft it ceases to exist and triggers an explosion on the aircraft. that explosion always does max AoE damage, the drop off and size is purely for hitting infantry that is standing ontop/in/next to aircraft.

Ok so i went back and tested again. This time i was a bit further bac, didnt occur to me to look fo rexplosions from the flak. This time it took 60 rounds to blow the lib with the ranger aiming at the bottom.

What is the point of 50% bottom armor if it doesnt work against the one thing you need bottom armor for and that is flak?

Liberator has directional armor? It's that new? Valkyrie was the only aircraft with directional armor I thought.

Also how are you testing hitting the bottom? Direction is based entirely on position in relation to the target not where you hit the target. If you're beneath the target you are hitting its bottom even if your shot hits the top of the target. Same thing if you're on the side of the target, all hits will hit the side armor, even if you're hitting the top or bottom of the model.



That's an old video so not everything still applies but how directional armor is applied is still the same. Unless you're underneath the liberator you arent hitting "bottom armor"

I just tested an AP tank. Shooting the lib in the side it took 4 hits to kill. Shooting the lib in the bottom 4 hits to kill.

Perhaps libs in vr don't have bottom armor, but it seems to me as someone who flies libs, somewhat unwillingly, that the bottom armor isnt working.

The lib in vr sits on a hill with its tail sticking out. I'm sitting under the tail on the road below.

Liberator Armor
Like the Valkyrie, the Liberator now has a 50% armor boost when taking damage from below. This buff works in conjunction with a more clear focus on sustained damage over time, instead of burst. We’ll talk more about this later.

Remember that directional armour only applies based on your position to the vehicle. Shooting the "bottom" is still a side hit unless you are actually underneath it.

Yeah, if you go into VR there is only 1 lib in there. An NC lib and it sits on a little hill with a sheer side and its tail sticks out over the road and you can drive under the tail and be 6 or 8 feet lower in altitude than the bottom of the lib.

You don't seem to understand how it works.

Flak has a direct damage and indirect damage. Indirect damage for flak is only used when it uses a flak detonation. Since a flak detonation always happens at the same distance from the plane, the damage is consistent as the detonation always happens within a certain distance from the plane, IE within 5m of the plane so it deals 35 damage but this is multiplied by any flak resistance, which is often a negative value so it deals more damage against aircraft (Galaxy has -120% so receives more than double damage, ESF receives -180% and almost triple damage). Should anyone or anything else be nearby, such as infantry or another aircraft, they can potentially receive damage as well because of it dealing damage in an 8m radius (16m from edge to edge of the explosion).

If you get too close to an aircraft, the flak won't "activate" and will hit the aircraft directly. Aircraft overall have pretty insane damage resistances against direct damage. For example against a Walker the ESF already sports a whopping 75% damage, meaning it only deals 1/4rth of it's damage. The Skyguard is listed as a Heavy Machine Gun and has a 75% damage modifier against all aircraft except the Galaxy (67% damage), meaning it deals 1/4rth against those as well and 1/3rd against a Galaxy.

Exactly. I think the bottom armor cannot be tested unless you a friend actually piloting a Lib. As long as it is on the ground the belly armor won't apply.

I'm not sure how flak work with bottom armor. Its the gunner position or the center of the explosion that count for the directionnal armor ?
Anyway, if you want to test it, ask a friend to land on the airpad of the watchtower (1km away from the vr spawn) and place you AA weapon beneth that airpad.

To add to this, indirect flak damage and direct damage are mutually exclusive. Whenever the flak detonation would occur, the physical projectile that would apply direct damage on impact is despawned. Flak damage is not triggered if such a weapon that fires the projectile is trained against against an ally target (friendly fire).