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I'm thinking of adding a squad of Havoks to my list with (2) autocannons and (2) missile launchers with flakk missiles. What is your experiance with the flakk missiles? Are they worth it for reliably putting down fliers and FMCs or are they over costed points wise and worthless?

Four Havocs with flakk missiles have about a 20% chance of taking down AV10, and about a 7% chance against AV12. This is assuming none of your Havocs are killed, which is actually a safe assumption because they are so ineffective that nobody is going to care about them. Each Havoc with flakk missiles costs more than a terminator, and they don't even have interceptor.

So basically, flakk Havocs are laughably bad AA. I have also used them personally and can attest to this.

I have better luck with Lascannon havocs. My experience with flakk missiles is uniformly bad.

4 ac is better than any missile flakk.

But flakk missiles have the skyfire rule, if i were to use autocannons or lascannons i would only be firing at BS1 due to snapshot rules.

The single biggest problem is that while flak missiles are actually average AA firepower, the krak and frag modes both suck. And flak costs extra, so you have to buy a crappy weapon to get average AA output.

Pick up some dice and roll 4 flakk missiles vs a av12 flyer.

You will quickly find out how poor Str7 flakk missiles are for how much your paying for them.

sub-zero wrote:But flakk missiles have the skyfire rule

So?

Just run the numbers real quick. Compare 4x lascannons, autocannons, and flakk missiles. Against AV12, the lascannons cause .11 glances and .33 pens, to the autocannons' .22 glances and .22 pens to the flakk missiles' .44 glances and .44 pens.

Yes, the flakk missiles are clearly better than autocannons, which are always rubbish, but against lascannons, the story is a bit more complicated by the fact that lascannons are Ap2. This gives the lascannons .10 vehicle destroyed results to the missiles .07. In this case, a lascannon is BETTER at picking an aircraft out of the sky with a single volley.

As such, the lascannon havocs approach flakk missile havocs in quality against fliers, but then the two vastly diverge from each other. While flakk missiles aren't good against anything but aircraft, lascannons are good against monstrous creatures of all types, and are much better against non-flying vehicles, and can break 2+ saves. Lascannons are always useful, and can even do stuff against fliers. Flakk missiles can do stuff against fliers... and nothing else.

To add insult to injury, they're even more expensive than lascannons...

In any case, if what you want is AA, then ally in some traitor guard, or take a fortification. If what you want is havocs, then stick to lascannons.

4 ac is superior, from what I have seen lately.

If you're going to use a str 7 gun on a flyer, you're better off taking Auto Cannons as they fire more shots. 4 v 8 Id take the 8 all day.

Not to mention it gives you a better and cheaper amount of firepower than the bloody missile launcher, allows you to also have a purpose in game once said flyers are off and destroyed.

I love mathammer! So I ran some numbers. The following are percents, rounded to the nearest one percent of getting the result listed a long the top using the shots listed on the left (corresponding to 4 autocannon havocs, a forgefiend, 4 lascannon havocs, and finally 4 flakk havocs). keep in mind that some results overlap with the others so take care when trying to combine these percents in any way. I also did other AV's if anyone is interested but the story is pretty much the same.

vs AV 12: 1hp 2hp 3hp 1pen 2pen 3pen Explode
8 shots at S7 BS1 ap- 37 7 1 20 2 0 4
8 shots at S8 BS1 ap- 50 14 2 37 7 1 7
4 shots at S9 BS1 ap2 38 6 1 29 4 0 11
4 shots at S7 BS4 ap- 63 22 4 38 6 1 7

None of them are ultra promising but one has to factor in cost and use for things other than fliers.

Afterthought: The heldrake with hades will be similar to 4 flakk missles. +1S -1BS will largely even out

[EDIT] table looks horrible, any good way to post better tables?

GoliothOnline wrote:If you're going to use a str 7 gun on a flyer, you're better off taking Auto Cannons as they fire more shots.

You fire twice as many shots with the autocannon, but you hit four times as often with the missiles.

The end result is that you get twice as many hits against fliers with the flakk missiles than with the autocannons. You're much worse off with the autocannons.

Maybe my luck has just been favorable as of late.. =/

Everytime I take Flakk-Missiles I miss 1-2 when firing at a flyer (thats hitting on 3s) Where I shoot 8 shots with my autocannons and manage 2-3 6s =/ I can see where the Flakks come in handy being skyfire and all.. But my experience with them simply doesn't follow logic of numbers O.o

 Ailaros wrote:

You fire twice as many shots with the autocannon, but you hit four times as often with the missiles.

The end result is that you get twice as many hits against fliers with the flakk missiles than with the autocannons.

This is not true but is a common misconception. It is only true with a large number of shots. Talking about 4 to 8 shots significantly changes your average number. For instance, using averages assuming large numbers of shots you get 4 shots * 2/3 toHit * 1/3 toRemoveHP = 0.89 HP removed on average for 4 flakk. However referring to the exact probabilities above (not assuming large numbers) you'll actually find an average of 1.63 compared to the AC average of 0.68. Well over twice as much!!!

You're much worse off with the autocannons.

This is definitely true, just more so. The real drawback to flakk is the inordinate cost and the fact they in no way help you vs non-flyer targets.

I think my head just exploded.

I think it depends on your local meta to some degree. I take two MLs and two ACs on my havocs. Kraks and frags have their uses, and autocannons, while not exceptionally strong, just pour out a lot of shots. I leave the lascannons on my predator, and used to have one on my chosen squad back when those were viable.

JubbJubbz wrote:However referring to the exact probabilities above (not assuming large numbers)

 Ailaros wrote:

JubbJubbz wrote:However referring to the exact probabilities above (not assuming large numbers)

Taking straight averages (i.e. #shots * chance to succeed) is only true for a large number of shots. I argue that 4 is not a large number of shots and the averge number of successes is in fact very different.

That just makes outliers more likely to dominate the four rolls. It doesn't change the average at all.

Yeah, it just means you have wider deviation bands, it says nothing about the averages.

Small numbers make it less likely that you'll roll the average, but it doesn't change what the average is.

Apologies, you guys are correct. What I said about the average is not the case here. The weighted average and the standard average are identical here as you noted.

What I should have said is that the flakk average being twice as high does not indicate that it it is twice as likely to kill the flyer (not that that was what you were claiming). The flakk is indeed more than twice as likely to kill the flyer with 4 havocs of either. 10% vs 4%. The same can be worked out any other desired outcome not just killing.

... except it's not. Lascannons are still better at causing a vehicle destroyed result (fewer hits, but more likely to cause a penetrating hit and twice as likely to cause a vehicle destroyed result on a pen). Unless you're talking about just hull point stripping to death, which yeah, the flakk missiles are definitely better at.

But this still sort of misses the point. You could either take flakk havocs to slowly peel the paint off of a flier over several turns, or you can have lascannon havocs which are cheaper, nearly the same against fliers, and are good against so much else besides.

I was comparing flakk and autocannons. Lascannons have 11% chance. The fact of the matter is that ANY of the weapons only have a low probability to actually kill a flyer in a given turn. The maximum being 11% from the lascannon (almost always explodes not 3HP). The flakk are nearly as likely to kill it in one turn (10% vs 11%) but are much more reliable in taking off HP so that during those 90% times you aren't killing it, you are getting more HPs off. Flakks are much better anti air by the numbers (I enjoy numbers).

That said I pretty well never take them because as you say, they are too expensive and are wasted vs everything but fliers. Lascannons and autocannons strip hullpoints at very similar efficiencies to each other and neither of them have a good enough chance to explode the flier to me to care. Comes down to what I need vs ground targets as to which of the two I choose.

[EDIT] oh and when referring to 'kill' I mean the condition of either 3HP or explodes... this is the tricky part to calculate.

JubbJubbz wrote:I was comparing flakk and autocannons.

Oh, nevermind then. Yeah, autocannons are rubbish in general, and they're certainly bad here. Were we talking about serious S7 spam like missileside tau or mass tesla, this might be different, but no, autocannon havocs are only really going to shine against DE skimmer spam and not much else.

Would they be worth taking in the flakk came free with the missile launcher? so 15 points over 25?

Perhaps. I don't know, though, missile launchers are pretty terrible. Just giving them a free -1S skyfire option doesn't make them suddenly good, it just gives them A reason to take instead of just taking autocannons or lascannons every time.

The problem with flakk missile launchers is the missile launchers. If you could fix the underlying problem, then the flakk part would likely resolve itself.

Like, if missile launchers in general were made 5 points more expensive but upgraded to heavy 2, then paying 30 points per model for what would effectively be an autocannon with skyfire would start to become worth considering.

I've just never really worried about being shot at by flakk missiles;1 in 3 will miss, and S7 isn't phenomenal against a AV12 3 hp flyer.
To me, they just seem way too expensive, for the price of 4 you can get the same number of S7 shots but twin-linked and with a 4+ cover save for half your army.

The biggest thing to remember is that for the cost of a flakk missile you could have bought 2 and a half Autocannons. That pretty much throws away any edge the flakk missiles may have had mathhammer-wise.

Plus Dakka/pt the Autocannon has 6 shots for 1 flakk shot, so it's already equally good at killing flyers.

Flakk missile has 66.67% to hit a flyer
Autocannon has 1/6 with every shot thus you have 2.78% for 2 hits and 30.56% for 1 hit.

Thus, ac is generally only 2 times worse vs a flyer and has a small chance of 2 hits. And it's often not worse vs ground targets.

Anywayz, i don't think you should rely on erither of them to be a reliable flyer hunter.

 koooaei wrote:
Flakk missile has 66.67% to hit a flyer
Autocannon has 1/6 with every shot thus you have 2.78% for 2 hits and 30.56% for 1 hit.

Thus, ac is generally only 2 times worse vs a flyer and has a small chance of 2 hits. And it's often not worse vs ground targets.

Anywayz, i don't think you should rely on erither of them to be a reliable flyer hunter.

I think your AC math is off, albeit not by much. The AC has a 25/36 chance of getting no hits. It also has a 1/36 chance of getting two. That leaves 10/36 or about 27.78% chance of 1 hit.