[Vehicle] Accuracy of Skyguard AA cannon.

Top armor is actually not that useful, any aircraft that actually poses a threat will attack you from a lower angle. The only exception is a Liberator with a bellygun, who will murder you anyway. You are better off using stealth and picking unusual spots. This keeps you safer from enemy ground attacks as well.
Unloading instantly is a recipe for area denial, but reduces your chances of a kill. It's only useful against Liberators since those just need way too much damage to get killed. As others already mentioned, the best time to attack is when the ESF starts his attack-run and hope they are too greedy to escape instantly. Or if you are really in it for the kills the best time is when aircraft are damaged and on their return-trip for repairs or ammo and don't expect to be attacked.
Improved combat chassis is good for avoiding Liberator strafing runs, but if you really want to kill aircraft you have to make use of what little speed you have and chase them a little. I prefer racer chassis since it allows me to get to where I need away from the traditional "sit in the base and fire" method of Skyguarding and drive around the area I'm protecting, actually preventing attacks and picking off enemies after they did their attack run. At the same time the racer chassis allows me to avoid all those vehicles that like to murder a Skyguard.

I'm mostly talking about ESF btw since ESF have more than 4x the usage as all other aircraft combined.

Liberators are ridiculous, and it's basically an extended problem of how G2A works. With guaranteed hits you can't make the weapon too powerful since then you would get "you got within x range and are now auto-killed" scenario's. On the other hand making sure the aircraft can survive the attack means the G2A weapon is at a total loss.
The biggest problem here is that any weapon capable of hitting ESF enough to kill them will have no problem at all hitting a big aircraft like a Liberator. So you would need at least two categories: Light AA designed against ESF and heavy AA designed against big aircraft.
What's worse is that using cover is actually beneficial for the Liberator, since the Lib can use it to keep out of sight longer. The Lib only needs a short amount of time to completely annihilate you and it takes almost a full minute to kill the Lib in return. A good Liberator can take on 3 Skyguards, kill one of them, go away for repairs and then come back for the other two. This all because of the limitations on Skyguards which are designed to keep it "fair" for the Liberator.

Again, this all stems from the "G2A is deterrence" problem. You can't upgrade it too much or it becomes unfair and unenjoyable for the aircraft users, you can't keep it as it is since that's not fun for the G2A user.

I think I've covered all this already.
Skyguards disappear fast because there are few aircraft targets and the aircraft can simply move to a place with less to no G2A. The solutions would be making sure the air-game is filled with more aircraft at any one time and making sure every fight has some G2A weapons available. Then all G2A also needs to be something other than deterrence. Having a weapon category that, when properly used, prevents any aircraft from actually participating in the game (and all the G2A users from participating properly in the game) is a dumb idea from start to finish.

You're making less sense as this conversation progresses. AA sucks to play, you chase away air then you're left with jack **** to do. Having AA specific to a type of plane makes that situation even worse.

Here's the thing, the air game is what it is. It's clear that the meta will always be nosegun or bust. I don't imagine the population will grow, so what we have is what we get. long story short, no proposal should hinge on more people being in the air than we currently have. As for a counter to Libs, that's tanks. Max composite on a Lib gives only 10% reduction to flak. Maybe that could be removed and replaced with A2A missiles and ESF noseguns....

I should have clarified. I don't always unload the instant I see an aircraft. At least not against ESFs and Vals. I prefer to let them get close enough that at the very least I'm able to entertain the notion of killing him before he ducks and weaves his way out of my LoS. The exception to this with ESFs and Vals is when I see one doing something like lolpod spamming sundy spawns. Even if I'm at a distance I'll try to plink him enough to scare him off the sundy as fast as possible. Now Libs I will unload on the instant I have 'em in even semi effective range. Those things are just too damn lethal to tolerate having around, and too damn sturdy to make waiting for the very slim possibility of a kill more practical than just scaring him away. As for the top down armor being mostly useless, that's true. I've recently re-educated myself on the particulars of how tank directional armor works, and I'm going to have to reconsider what I want to use in the Defensive slot of my SG. Perhaps Fire suppression.

Edit: I do actually unload on Gals as soon as I see them too. Unless they're at extreme long range. Those things are so big and slow, and universally undeterred by SGs, that I just use them as giant XP pinatas to shoot a few certs out of before they're inevitably suicided after performing their GalDrop.

I think the bulk of the issue is probably most easily solved with Libs having a little less Flak armor. At least enough that they can't swoop in low, face-tank a whole mag from the SG, then wreck him in .5 seconds and still have 50% hp left. Maybe introduce Directional Armor for the Liberator. So if he's staying up high and raining down death, his armored underbelly is protecting him, but if he tries to go on Rambo ground runs, the sides, rear, and front of the aircraft don't hold up so well to Flak.

That's a really cool proposal, as the tankbuster is really what the whole fuss is about.

I see the "restrict range" idea alot, and I'm against it because the ESF is already stronger against the Skyguard at render range than the Skyguard is against the ESF. It's not even in my personal best interest, as I'm trying to find my niche in the air, but in the best interest of the game. That imbalance is a tactic I use against Skyguards and MBTs in their current state and I don't want to see it become worse, which it absolutely would if they couldn't even fight back at all. It's not a substantial amount of damage, but when 2 or 3 ESF start plinking, it really adds up. Even as a solo pilot I'm able to make MBTs back up to cover or stop chasing a wounded friendly on the ground. It's really surprising how effective it actually is. It doesn't work so well against Magriders, but it's no problem to land consistent hits on Vanguards and Prowlers at 800m.

The Skyguard is already usable against ground, but really just barely. I'm not asking for it to be truely multi-purpose, just have half of it's cof. It'll still be straight **** compared to other options, just slightly less **** than it is now.

I am making sense.
AA sucks to play right now. However imagine if we did update all current AA to be skillful weapons that can kill ESF. Then Valkyries, Liberators and Galaxies would still be easy to hit. So when engaging these aircraft you would have the exact same situation we have now: You are guaranteed hits and damage and these aircraft would have a health and resistance to allow them to escape every single time.
So you would need to split it up between anti-ESF AA and anti-big-aircraft AA. There is ofcourse a great potential here to just give all AA 2 attack modes, one specific for anti-ESF and one specific for anti-big-aircraft.

The air-game isn't just "what it is", and the current developers have shown that they aren't afraid to try and change the game radically with additions like the construction system and large-scale rebalances for weapons and they actually already tried to change the air-game itself with the Coyote+lock-on update.
Long story short, the developers should be focusing on making sure more players are in the air at any one time, as it indicates a fun and engaging air-game that people want to play which is good for the game in general. One of the ways to do that is to change G2A weapons into skillful weapons.
And tanks aren't a counter to Libs. They don't have the elevation and a Liberator is going to need to be attacked by multiple tank sources to die before he annihilates a single vehicle. If the Liberator is smarter he just hovers above the tanks and lets his bellygun finish off each tank without the danger of getting shot during the attack run.
You could make tanks a counter to Libs by, for instance, increasing the elevation range of HE and HEAT canons. These canons can't OHK ESF and don't have extremely much range against aircraft due to the low magazine size and muzzle velocity, but that would allow these weapons to damage and potentially counter a Lib before it starts it's full attack run, at the same time it allows the HE and HEAT a leg-up against infantry like C4 fairies so that AP isn't the supreme ultra-king of tanking anymore.

Restrict range doesn't mean "can't hit a thing at range X". It would mean something more on the lines of "you can deal as much damage as a nosegun vs a tank could". Besides you could add a second damage falloff after a certain extreme distance so that noseguns don't deal that much damage anymore when shot at those ranges.

As you say the Skyguard is barely useable against ground, time to amp that up isn't it? You have to basically poke the eye out of whoever you are trying to hit before you can be assured of a kill against infantry.

Of course we all want there to be some skill with G2A. But I still think that having a different AA weapon for each type of aircraft is a big mistake. No matter how fun you try to make AA, it's still going to suck once aircraft are gone. Even if the Skyguard gets a ground buff, it still needs to loose to pure ground fighters. All you really have to do to compensate for Libs and Gals being easier to hit is give them appropriate resistances. No need to make it complicated.

But in the end, it's still RM/HF & nosegun or go home. I wasn't here for it but as soon as there was the threat of a meta shift it was promptly nerfed to the floor.

The only real way to kill tank with a Lib is the Tankbuster, and at that elevation you do get wrecked by tanks. Most of composite's benefits are against tank rounds for a reason. While the lib can take a considerable amount of damage, hovering over a tank while your belly gun picks it apart is how noobs die. I'm not saying tanks SHOULD be the counter to Libs, but that's what it is, that and ESFs picking them apart from 400m-500m where the Lib can't retaliate.

The secondary damage falloff on stock noseguns would be great. Between the higher accuracy and fire rate there's really no reason to take the long range gun, so that change would be cool. As for the Skyguard, tighter accuracy might put it in a decent place against ground. It's already decent up close, and with half the COF you're basically doubling it's range.

I think there should be AI controlled ESFs that deliberately seek out skyguards to get themselves killed.

If you're that bored you could always hunt pumpkins.... At least for another month.

Well it does make some sort of sense though, despite its technical unfeasibility. For the majority of skyguard users to be happy requires an unrealistic number of planes to be shot down.

I think with better accuracy a Skyguard would be able to contribute to the ground fight and not be so bored. It wouldn't be able to take on tanks, but infantry and light vehicles would be good targets. Which is what most tanks need protection from anyway. It would be the perfect fire support vehicle. But right now it's range is just way to short for the average ground engagement.

and "unrealistic number of planes" equals "any at all" you mean?
Being forced to use teamwork for the basic capability to kill something without a guaranteed enemy escaping is a pretty steep price for any weapon, especially one from a category that no one gets for free and isn't really useable against anything else.

I'm totally okay with shooting down the number of aircraft that Liberators get to shoot down. That's hardly "unrealistic". Just nerf Liberator Dalton A2A capabilities and buff Skyguard G2A capabilities. If the Liberator Dalton's 10-11 AKPH is added to the Skyguard's measly 5-6 AKPH, the Skyguard would have a 15-17 AKPH, which translates to an air kill every 3.5-4 minutes. To me, that would be completely satisfactory, versus the ~10 minutes in between air kills for Skyguards currently.

In short, there are no shortages of aircraft for Skyguards to shoot down. In PS2, over 48,000 ESFs die per day... the problem is that Skyguards only account for 3.3% of those kills. Most ESFs just kill themselves, crash into enemy vehicles, or get hit by friendly vehicles. So buffing Skyguard lethality by 500% would really just be having pilots die by enemy fire instead of their own stupidity, and would only result in Skyguards taking in 16.5% of ESF kills (which would still be worse than the identically expensive ESF, at 17.34%).

Well...yes. Because of the DPS nature of the skyguard, there aren't really that many factors influencing a shootdown so there basically isn't an "any at all". It's either able to shoot down most ESFs it encounters or it's not able to shoot down most ESFs it encounters.

The main reason why liberators get so many kills compared to skyguards is that ESFs usually keep trying to kill the lib even though they're firing daltons. It's basically risk: it can go either way regardless of who shoots first. Whereas against a skyguard, ESFs basically have a death countdown once it starts firing, so if they aren't already lolpodding it they have no other option but to flee.

I'm not saying there's a shortage of aircraft for skyguards to shoot down. I just think that if it were to be buffed to the point where it is able to consistently get kills, there won't be a realistic situation where it would be able to, because air would just keep away from it.

Including new pilots learning to fly and crashing in to trees in to the equation is just silly. And like I said below, it doesn't matter how powerful a Skyguard gets, it'll always be a deterrent. ESF will just leave if they can't compete, and you're still stuck with nothing to shoot at. That's why I say let it do better against ground while you're waiting for air targets.

This. Aircraft will always have the option whether to engage or not. AA will forever be a deterrent. They Skyguard's current lethality keeps air in check, but still lets the Skyguard shoot stuff. If it's buffed to kill ESF, it just won't have any targets.

Still believe other skyguards aren't doing it right. I keep seeing other guards screw up in terms of aim and leading, I even lured ESFs into a pair of skyguards, it was incredible, both had their barrels on the esf I was bringing back NOT A SINGLE HIT. TWO SKYGUARDS. Then I hop on a skyguard because maybe I'm just being hard on them, NOPE, 5 ESFs AND A LIB DOWN, before getting decked by a vulcan harasser. I'd like to know how many people actually know how to use the skyguard instead of shooting early, missing every shot and being completely unaware of libs or high priority targets.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. At 60 damage it takes 50 hits to kill an ESF without fire suppression, 62 hits with. Magazine size is 70 rounds. Fire rate is 480, 8 shots a second. So an ESF needs to let you shoot it (I say let because they pick when and where they engage) for a minimum of 6.25 seconds if you're 100% accurate. I'm sorry but those pilots your bragging about killing are just ****, and shouldn't be a stat for a balance argument. I still think the Skyguard is a great deterrent, but it's just not the killing machine you make it out to me.

Not really. Hypothetically speaking, say Skyguards did 5,000 damage per flak explosion, killing just about any ESF in a single hit. Air units would not "keep away" from Skyguards, because they would be dead before they could get away.

This would transform the Skyguard from a deterrent into an air killer. Now a OHK against ESFs would be a little harsh, so a reasonable balance would be 4HK against ESFs, Liberators, and Galaxies.

ESFs take an extra 60% damage from flak, so it should be around 4 seconds with 100% accuracy.

Still of course not a killing machine, as the stats easily show.

Still a deterrent, Skyguards would deter pilots to another game. You still wouldn't have targets.