Let Flaking

[Dafydd]

Ok,

I'm by all accounts a n00b, so please be patient.

I'm attacking a pom, in the hopes of bribing some. Poms destory health based units, so I first bribe 500k Automotons, and buy myself 1million AC. Then, I get myself a number of health based units (RPG, Sniper, Ninja). So, my army looks along the lines of 1.5mill Amrour flak, 1mill health flak, and then, 750k bribers (500k cloners 250k RO's).

The Poms only stop about 800k units, yet all 800k units are the bribers, everything else fires.

I am tres confused.

Help? Without flaming, explain to me the mechanics of why the armour units don't effectively flak against the poms?

 

[Alcibiades]

The only reason i can think of is that the POMs block the weakest health based units which don't have a lot of armour, since POMs no longer do as much armour damage as they used to, they would leave the Autos/ACs untouched. But this still leaves me confused as to the LET flak theory. Surely the whole idea behind LET flak is provide squishy health units with Armoured 'flak'. *shrug*

I too have been confused by this, some more clarification would be wonderful.

 

[tobapopalos]

How many PoMs were there?

 

[Dafydd]

450k.

The only unit the dude had. Besides Yobs / Hippies and Gurus, which he had (or she) in small number.

 

[tobapopalos]

How very odd.

The PoMs should have fired on all the seperate units, meaning few bribers were targetted. I really can't think why they would choose to stop only the bribers, and ALL the bribers.

 

[CFalcon]

The PoMs don't have to eat through all your LET flak before they can fire on your bribers, and whether it's armour or health flak makes no difference to a single unit firing.

So you had 3.25m LETs there, of which 0.75m were bribers. So 23% were bribers, therefore 23% of the PoM fire was directed at your bribers. If there were 450k PoMs, then thats just over 100k PoMs firing at your bribers. 100k PoMs distracting 500k cloners and 250k ROs is a very impressive ratio for PoMs, but it's not stretching belief *too* far.

Are you sure you aren't exaggerating the troop numbers slightly, or leaving out some defending units? Because it wouldn't take much difference to push that into being a reasonable outcome.

 

[Dafydd]

Well, last tick the Cloners fired..not all, but some, but the Political Bribers (of which there were 200k or so) didn't get a look in.

Maybe I just suck, but its something Alci has encountered aswell.

Edit

CF's reply makes a lot of sense. The numbers were rounded up / rounded down in some cases, so yeah, your right. I'm just not used to playing against these uber health poms

 

[CFalcon]

Ah, now that's a bit more realistic. Political Bribers are fantastically weak, so even 20k PoMs firing at them would likely distract them all.

This looks pretty normal to me. Cloners and Political Bribers both have low armour and low-ish health. PoMs have had their health damage boosted alot, and PoM armour damage being reduced isn't really an issue here.

So I'd say the confusion here comes from being unfamiliar with the change to PoM damage, possibly coupled with a bit of luck with the random factor on the part of the defender.

EDIT: and it seems your edit agrees

 

[Souls]

Political Bribers are fantastically weak, so even 20k PoMs firing at them would likely distract them all.

This. The old poms got ~1:5, 1:6 on them, so the new poms would likely get much, much more.

 

[Davis]

This is exactly why I no longer believe in Let flak I and from the looks of it, Alci, and Iliard all were under the impression that let *flak* wasn't just a %age of units that took some of the heat but, that instead all of the units *'s were in a way clumped together into a pool of *'s so say you have one unit with **/**** and another with ****/** they would in effect flak eachother to each have approx. ****/**** but instead they each take the hit by them selves thus only flaking in the reguard of instead of 100% of the units firing at said unit 50% did and 50% fired at the other. IDK it just seems a lot less effective than what i had *always* thought.r

 

[CFalcon]

There's an interesting thread here on LET flak and how effective it actually is.

LET flak is often over-rated. In a single 1v1 engagement privates are just as effective flak as marines, the only difference being you'll probs have to buy back all those privates afterwards.

I can't remember the last time I used LET flak. I'm all about the firepower :twisted:

 

[Alcibiades]

I and from the looks of it, Alci, and Iliard all were under the impression that let *flak* wasn't just a %age of units that took some of the heat but, that instead all of the units *'s were in a way clumped together into a pool of *'s so say you have one unit with **/**** and another with ****/** they would in effect flak eachother to each have approx. ****/**** but instead they each take the hit by them selves thus only flaking in the reguard of instead of 100% of the units firing at said unit 50% did and 50% fired at the other. IDK it just seems a lot less effective than what i had *always* thought.

Exactly what i always thought. I guess it's just due to the way i think of flak as being used. Ah well, no point in buying ACs anymore i guess lol

 

[Steve_God]

As someone who has been extensively using the Puppet route this round, Political Bribers are very... VERY... weak!

Because of their weak strength, they simply take a larger brunt of any attacking (or distracting force).