"The role of MAX AA should not be region-wide denial, instead, it should be point defense ..."

Meanwhile, skyguards have no role today.
Should the skyguard be improved significantly, while the MAX AA's abilities limited so that it has a much smaller effective range?

Currently, MAX AA is difficult to wipe out without taking a base over with infantry first - it's like trying to kill a swarm of cockroaches hiding in your room. That's not healthy metagame wise - currently, in order to eliminate one facet of the enemy's defense, you have to defeat the enemy first.
Upgraded skyguards will "concentrate" the power of a few burster MAXes into one large, more visible unit.
Pre-emptive sabotage will become a very viable possibility for a massive aerial insertion via for example galaxies (very common once, until the power of flak made this method highly unreliable)

What do you guys think?

I suggest drastically reducing the muzzle velocity of burster shots from MAX AA. This will be a soft-cap to the effective range, and will still reward skilled players by letting them extend their reach slightly. Will also allow MAX AA to hit idiotic pilots.

Also, decrease CoF and increase muzzle velocity for skyguards. Increase the damage potential and sustained fire capability (maybe increase mag size?) while making the turret traverse slightly slower? This will make using the skyguard still not as easy as using a DB to perfectly lead an ESF. ESFs deserve some ability to be harder to hit with flak, simply because they now barely pose a threat to armour.

This is what annoys me the most. Max AA makes all other options completely useless. Very easy and effective solution: Swap the accuracy stats of skyguard and dual bursters. Also, AA turrets on bases needed a bit better accuracy, they can't hit for crap past 20 meters :<

Yeah, skyguards you can at least take out once you´ve overrun the outer perimeter of a base. MAX´s, like you said, can´t be taken out until the fight is won anyway. MAX units are harder to hit, to spot, to render and they can be ressed when they die. They can also hide behind spawnshields and swap between AI/AV/AA on the fly.
Thats imho a few advantages too many for also having the best AA ingame atm. Shorter range for the Bursters would go a long way in reviving the airgame.

I've been pointing this out since the game launched, but shocker, most of the people playing this game don't care and want it that way because it means they don't have to look up and pay attention to whether they have air superiority, so expect plenty of baddies coming here insisting max aa is fine.

this is actually the 3rd thread on the same topic that i've made.
been getting flamed, but if you know my posting history, I usually only make sensible requests and posts... and idgaf if they're of the unpopular opinion.
I only hope that the devs read all forum threads.

Try Reddit. I know Higby is aware of all these already but hasn't got any plans to fix it.

Been there.
Only my funny posts made it to the top.
Why?
Unpopular opinion.
At least on the forums, "downvotes" in the form of flaming actually become "upvotes" by constantly bumping.

Once again, AA MAX isn't region-wide.
It can't kill an ESF from 100 to 0 past 300m


But it certainly does the job in the small contested areas this game has, which is precisely that 300 radius around bases.


The issue with bursters is certainly not the range.
I'd rather say, the issue comes from aircraft:


Liberators are SEVERLY gimped by render distance.
If the projectile hit regardless of render, a slight CoF and Damage degradation would just balance it easily.

ESFs ?
8 months of balancing around rocket pods.

Was a case a month ago, but a big pool of the people have come to their senses and I see the same suggestion every single day with upvotes.

Region wide it is - so much so that no average ESF pilot can possibly affect the outcome of a battle outside of killing libs. But wait, libs don't even matter nowadays.

Basically, right now because of all the AA, Air is fighting its own battle completely uninvolved with the battle on the ground.
Ironic.

You're mistaken if you think bursters do **** at longer ranges.

I don't deny Flak can get heavy to the point aircraft has to face no-fly zones, but it's not like a single burster covers half of the map.

Never had problems with AA MAXs other than the stupid invisible flak at ridiculous ranges, but that's a problem with most AA in the game.

I think the main problem besides dual bursters being way better than the other options is scaling. You can put 100 of them on a single landing pad, but try putting 50 skyguards on landing pad (Same resource cost)

And anyone who says anything about mobility, there are sunderer everywhere. You obviously haven't had a 12/12 suddenly drop out 8 dual burster maxes that start pounding you before they even appear to you.

Yes, I don't usually call things op, but burster maxes are, period. And skyguards are just a little up, so yeah I'm in for the swapping idea. Then please remove the possibility to fire flak through spawn shields and I'm happy There'll be more skyguards and less bursters, so I finally get the AA forces rendered before it's too late.

The MAX's role should be reduced to point defense, Skyguard should remain point defense for armored columns.

Air superiority should be achieved by pilots flying in the sky, not ground plodders with noob weapons.

But this won't happen.

A poorly positioned skyguard will fall to air power in the form of rocketpods long before it has the chance to do anything deadly.
With a low turret traversal speed it won't be able to keep up with the quick angle changes against a close-in ESF circle strafing and doing the usual A2G spiral dance spraying pods/rotary.

Anyway, I don't mean region wide as in crown skyguard controls all of the sky up to allatum.
I mean more of if there's a skyguard here, a lib can't come in and hoverspam until it's gone.

We have the same ideas. Just misunderstanding each other.

Infantry being more of a point defense role until you can get dedicated AV/AA options in the area has always seemed to make sense to me. Increasing lock on times for HA launchers basically pushes them in the opposite direction, though... so that change was a bit strange when it happened to the Annihilator.

I actually don't have any major problems with the Skyguard's offensive ability from using it on and off. It can be tricky to hit ESFs flying at full speed, but Galaxies and Libs are much easier at the same range. Too much added velocity/tightening of the cone of fire and it becomes far more dangerous at long range... keeping in mind that AA is supposed to be a deterrent, not evaporate all air within render distance.

The Skyguard can reposition -way- faster than a Burster, which can actually come into play at times. It feels like a reasonable trade off in exchange for being way more visible/easy to spot compared to a Burster (or HA, for that matter). A Burster requires more support, but can be rezzed as well giving it longevity even under heavy fire. The extra power of a Burster and how easily they can be stacked just doesn't seem to have any obvious counter points.


My personal Skyguard wishlist is a magazine size cert line, because it just makes sense (practically every other multi-round vehicle weapon has magazine size cert line, including other AA weapons), and better innate top armor than a normal Lightning when a Skyguard is equipped so that it isn't quite so easy to kill with air when they actually get around to attacking the Skyguard. If air wants to risk flying low enough to hit non-top armor and can get away with it, more power to 'em. There's very little cert investment that can be made to improve a Skyguard over how it performs out of the box right now, which is a shame.

AA kinda needs range to be able to compete with something that can traverse the continent quickly and packs the fire power to engage any target.

The thing is AA 1 on 1 will lose to air. Which is ridiculous to think.
It is only when there are multiple AA sources that air won't be able to just overwhelm or escape AA.
But this is your problem, AA is everywhere now, everyone has an AA launcher/dual burster max.
The reason for this is the threat air represents is so high.

Air cannot have mobility, fire power and survivability.
We have been there and Air dominated all, it was not fun for anyone else.
Air needs to employ hit and run tactics and it needs to be forced into using them.

the power of AA Max now is ridiculous as 2 or 3 of them can fight any number of ESFs , while the main AA is Skyguard is completely useless , damage of AA Max should be decreased as well as increasing their CoF

No it wouldn't.

Burster maxes with flak (read: all of them) can take an absurd amount of dalton shots, meaning that even if a liberator can see them, it still can barely out dps a single max unless it's running the shredder, which then makes it significantly less useful in every other situation.