So I'm a bit confused about flak and missiles.



I got an event that spawns pirates. These pirates have 4x base missile per ship and have 12 ships, so 48 missiles per volley. I have specifically fit my ships with 7 of the rank 2 flak for each ship. Total base interception value per 1 of my ships is greater than the total missile evasion of one of theirs. Lastly my hero adds 39% defense to my ships.



The AI focus fires every time. They do this whether I have no flak defense or a lot of flak defense. This means that no matter what I do, I lose exactly 1 ship per battle. As far as I can tell there is no point to me using flak in this situation because they do the same focus fire regardless. I also read somewhere that all flak on a fleet work together, which would mean I should be shooting down all of their missiles. The base evasion rating for the rank 1 missiles is 28 and the base interception rating for my rank 2 flak is 17. 1344 evasion versus 1309 interception. Add in 39% defense for hero gives 1819 interception. Obviously they do not have a hero.



Last observation: I have almost no other defenses. I only have 2 modules for kinetic deflection on my ships. The enemy does light kinetic damage. Yet the after combat report shows that deflect was my best defense.

Thoughts on this. Because as is, I see no reason to use flak. I'd be better off accepting the loss of one ship than trying to make fleets of anti-flak ships.

According to my experience against pirates I believe (not 100% sure) that pirates are using "nosebraker" targeting option when your fleet is stronger, so what ever defense modules you have you'll always loose 1 ship since whole pirate fleet is targeting one single ship (not whole fleet) and thus over-damages that one ship.



You are right in your post about flak, that, all the flak's in the fleet are working together against all the missiles fired by the enemy fleet, however you probably miss understood how flak interception and missile evasion works.

flak interception is separate from flak defense, also a hero defense % boost has impact on flak defense but not on flak interception value.



ie. flak module has 17 interception value and missile has 28 evasion score value.

here is a formula:



Flak Interception >= Missile Evasion * (1+ Turn before Reach) * Random]0;1



that means missile has a probability of evading a flak projectile and hit the target, since missile need 3 turns to reach it's target, every turn a flak module has grater probability to shoot down a missile.

If a missile hits the target damage inflicted is reduced depending on flak defense value which is further modified with hero ability.

you can read about that here:

http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Combat_(Disharmony)





also each additional defense module on the ship in the end yields less and less protection in terms of damage % inflicted.



edit:

not sure but it looks that since disharmony missiles became more powerful since flak has not so big probability (as before) to shot down a missile, and damage inflicted is great since one missile deals approx 9x more damage than flak module defense value is.

however stacking more flak modules still diminishes missile effect.

Thank you very much It makes sense now.