Flak Cannons

Flak Cannons are a type of weapon used purely for defense. When a ship is not using it's Plasma Shields or just doesn't have any, they may use their Flak Cannons. These cannons work by firing short range explosives and detonating them to destroy incoming fire. They can be used on all kinds of ballistic weapons from small bullets, up to nuclear missiles, but are ineffective against beam, or energy weapons (which are thankfully rare). When the flak shells detonate, they create a cloud of shrapnel designed to damage and destroy shots fired by an enemy vessel before they hit the defending craft, called a flak cloud. The issue with this flak cloud is that it sometimes causes damage to the defending craft as the shrapnel will be moving in all directions.

Almost all capital ships will have some form of Flak Cannon, but few small craft have them as they are too bulky, however there are small craft variants that are fairly costly.

This basic Flak cannon is one of many variants, the others will be listed below.

Chaff Cannon
Similar to a Flak Cannon, a Chaff Cannon is designed to fire a small explosive that detonates a small distance away from the capital ship to create a defensive screen of some sort, but these ones are mostly ineffective against ballistic rounds and instead of creating a large explosion to destroy incoming fire, they instead spray little highly reflective flakes to redirect lasers. When a laser is shot towards a ship, it gets reflected off the chaff so very little of the original beam can hit the capital ship. Ways to get past the Chaff are as simple as firing a wider beam, but the cost of this is more heat is produced onboard the firing ship and loss of effectiveness (these are further explained on the Laser Weapons page).

Guided Anti-Missile Rounds
Another form of Flak Cannon is a Guided Anti-Missile Round (aka a GAM). GAM is designed to be fired out of a guided missile slot on a capital ship and will fly itself to a target locked on by a tactical officer in the CIC or Bridge of the starship. Once the missile is within effective range of the target, it detonates creating the normal flak cloud. These are not the same as Guided Missiles though, they have nowhere near the explosive power of a guided missile and so are used to destroy incoming missiles if they will do extensive damage (like a nuclear missile) to the defending craft and need to be taken out at a far longer range than the standard flak cloud. Just like regular flak cannons, GAM is completely ineffective against Laser Weapons and DEW.