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I have uploaded a game save to illustrate the point of the title of the thread. I have a seeker hero heading towards a Tikanen homeworld. They have two ships with missile modules equiped. 

From the attack rating I assume they are tier 2 missile modules, 2 on each ship, I have kinetic modules (flak) from a quest reward which have a dps value of 54 ing general and 240 damage versus missiles. 

If you load up the save and play through the battle you will see I lose very quickly and badly. 

I can only make sense of this by interpreting the range efficiency as affecting the flak, is this the case? (IF it is this needs fixing as that would be terrible balance) 

IF not why does the battle window at the start give me a large advantage? Are the numbers for attack and defence rating skewed on hero ships and arks? (I suspect they are from experience ingame.) 

Furthermore Flak appears to be very poor, if their 4 combined rocket modules can get through 3 flak modules of a higher tier (the stats of my flak modules are superior to tier 2 flak) is there currently any point to using flak modules against rockets?

As far as I can tell, unless you can close to short range, kinetics aren't really good versus missile fleets, because some missiles will still get through the flak, and at long range your weapons will hardly do any damage to the enemy ships.

JamesHarrison wrote:

Kinetic is meant to be the natural counter to missiles - and as such I would strongly expect flack cannons to take down the missiles - otherwise we are playing rock, soggy paper, sizzors.... and soggy paper doesn't beat anything.

It is. But long range is also the counter to short. 

It's best not to think of it in terms of rock paper scissors. That's a pretty dull game, and this one is more complicated.

Slashman wrote:

JamesHarrison wrote:

Kinetic is meant to be the natural counter to missiles - and as such I would strongly expect flack cannons to take down the missiles - otherwise we are playing rock, soggy paper, sizzors.... and soggy paper doesn't beat anything.

The opposing view is that making flak too strong (as was demonstrated previously) turns the missiles into the soggy paper. Flak cannot be a perfect missile screen because then missiles become pointless.

missiles were indeed made completely redundent by a few flak modules way back. I remember when a flak module could shoot down about 2x/3x the number of missiles modules so a change was needed indeed.

Dragar wrote:

JamesHarrison wrote:

Kinetic is meant to be the natural counter to missiles - and as such I would strongly expect flack cannons to take down the missiles - otherwise we are playing rock, soggy paper, sizzors.... and soggy paper doesn't beat anything.

It is. But long range is also the counter to short. 

It's best not to think of it in terms of rock paper scissors. That's a pretty dull game, and this one is more complicated.

Yes it is more complicated. Long range being a counter to short causes massive problems with the weapon modules as they are, you see that don't you? 

Every battle will start at long range if one player picks long range. If flak is so poor at long range against missiles and it is so easy to guarantee long range for the first round every space battle why ever bother with kinetic modules?

Further more at medium range missile modules lose %50 efficiency sooo when is flak needed? 

The natural period for flak to be useful is to survive long range against missiles, now I dont want flak to be as overpowered as it was in the past. However the balance between too strong and too weak appears to me to be in the too weak category. 

Take my save game example, I had 3 flak modules of a higher tier than the four missile modules on the Tikanen ships. Now I died so quickly that 4 modules of flak would still have lost quite comfortably. How much flak is needed to counter, say, the majority of the incoming missiles so only 1 or 2 get through each firing? 

It seems currently you need to outnumber the missile modules by a hefty number or out tier by multiple tiers?

The problem is of course I need an answer to my original questions in this thread from a Dev. 

Does range affect flak efficiency? How much effect is flak having at long and medium ranges?

At short range flak is obviously unneccesary because missiles become so weak at that range. To be honest missiles actually become fairly poor by medium, which is why I am struggling to see where flak fits in all this.

If medium counters missiles (which it seems to do in my games) then lasers modules with physical armour plating is THE counter to missiles fleets as I can see it. Maybe that is fine, but then the question arises what is the point of flak? When is it useful?