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

so we both agree that the current system is flawed.
our definitions of "regional" are different.
that's all there is to our disagreement. I won't bother with continuing this rather childish argument
bottom of the fact is that bursters are not supposed to be better at controlling skies than the skyguard at longer ranges.
close-in, the burster should be better. Otherwise, no.

2 Skyguards would do that, just not one. And given the higher cost of the Lib and that really it can only bring 1 weapon system on target with 2-3 onboard most times, this seems well balanced.

Skyguards are fine, unless you're lone rangering it.

But cert-wise, I could see giving the Skyguard a mag size upgrade like most other weapons have. Just don't touch the projectile speed, then you would be encroaching on what should be done by air vs. air.

Was it any surprise that Daltons, a Anti-vehicle weapon, has trouble dealing with something the size of a gorilla, and equipped with Flak armor ?

I don't know about you, but when they used to kill MAXes in 3 splash shot it kinda felt broken.

They have enough dps, but not enough projectile velocity
Look here, SOE has tried to make air be the counter for air and it has already failed, as demonstrated by the initial stages of the game.
Noobs pull ESFs and lose half of them to accidents. The other half get eaten up by experienced pilots who have been in the sky for the last hour or so. And podspammers and such go unchecked because going in for a pod run doesn't really put you at risk of being shot down by enemy ESF as long as you're listening closely for sounds.
What happens is that air does kill air quickly but it doesn't deter air from going a2g because a2g is so much more productive than a2a. So if every ESF and his mum is trying to pod tanks and a few pilots are going around trying to do a2a and all the noobs are out of the question, you get a messed up airgame that can't really keep itself in control.

That's the entire reason SOE overbuffed flak to the point where it is today.
I don't want the earlier days of unchecked air to come back
Sure we all have romantic ideals of air countering air, doing fighter sweeps and whatnot, but remember that more than half of the game is comprised of lone-wolfers who play short amounts of time per session and can't really form a "backbone" for an empire's air force.
And if the entire air force doesn't care if their own tanks die because they can kill other tanks
The airgame is messed up. So until A2G is less productive/fun than A2A for lower BRs, then nobody will really fly much.
Besides, until you get the rotary (or M30AH if you're OP NC like me), you're quite helpless against a good pilot.

So G2A should be able to ward off basic amounts of fighters and bombers. Only when an air zerg comes in does A2A combat start to be an issue.

Briggs has hosted many "Events" recently. We had contacted almost every outfit possible in all 3 factions and had a "dogfight fest" over amerish. There were so many planes in the sky at the same time and yet it ended up leaving the regular aces up and everyone else dead and burning.

Not sure switching the profiles is the right step. AA MAX just needs to be rebalanced (not nerfed, just made more specific) significantly, whist Skyguard needs a slight COF buff; otherwise it's fine. Everyone misses that AA that travels at 85kph is filling a niche all of its own.

Wish we could do another of those events and get more VS and NC to show up.

Time to make a skyguard montage.
-ACE AA max.

I remember endless whines about A2Am on the forums, now that they've been nerfed and are complete garbage, I don't remember being taken down by one in my mosquito ever since the nerf.

no offense but hope your flying has improved ROFL
anyway i do see you around often. but you probably don't, because i'm a ninja.
ok, shh, now that only you know.

p.s. get out of that zergfit

A sunderer with 2 dual burster MAXes in it (so very common) fills a very similar role whilst being able to do much more anyway.
AA MAXes scale too well. It's like trying to fight a swarm of ants with giant chopsticks; the ants scale well but your giant chopsticks don't really do well no matter how "1-hit" you make them.

But if the ants travel in tight groups with correspondingly increased firepower (like in the form of a skyguard for example) the possibility of eliminating such AA as a strategic denial tactic becomes possible.

IMO this makes AA MAXes OP in the sense of having no practical counter other than simply taking the base over in the first place.
So they should be relegated to point defense. Halving the current velocities will drastically lower their range but maintain their deadliness against anything that tries to come in and podspam a sunderer for example. It'll also affect the ability to damage libs at range less than if it were an outright range nerf or damage degradation nerf.

Am I the only one that thinks the biggest threat to aircraft, should be other aircraft, giving A2A aircraft worth using. When I am in a platoon, I never hear people calling for air support to help rid the area of aircraft, they just tell one or two people to pull bursters, and thats all you have to do.

Yeah - cause people whined and didn't learn to fly. And SOE gave in to them. But whatever. Higby's already stated there will be no Burster nerf... so anyways, if we made Skyguards at least as good as Bursters, why not? At least Skyguards would be more useful then.

Cause noobs will always be noobs unless they're forced into a situation where they have to learn. But whatever. No one ever got to become a better pilot by crutching with ground based AA weapons.

And that's what a combined arms metagame should bring... outfits need to organized A2A ESF squads as part of the overall strategy. But instead we just get people Gal dropping an AA squad outside people's WGs.

I'm a lone wolfer and I learned to fly and engage other ESFs and Libs. But unless you force them off the ground, most people are going to take the easy way out, not put in the time/effort, and just pull a Burster. The sad part that most people are missing is that air is one of the most satisfying and fun things to do in the game... but first you have to die a lot before you're any good at it.

Skyguards and 2nd Bursters cause more certs/SC than any rotary/AH. Doesn't stop low BRs from buying them up though. But yes, if they needed to get into the air, they'd actually have to put in some effort to learn how to play/fly. Imagine that! So we sell them crutches instead, and they NEVER learn.

Yup, cause players are noobs that don't want to learn to fly, so we give them crutches, and thus this is what you have out of G2A. Noobs crutching cause they don't need to learn to fly.

Hopefully some of them had fun and they'll continue to work on their air game then. And this perfectly tells you something, unlike most other things in the game, skill actually counts quite a bit while you're up in the air.

You've proven my point... noobs don't want to learn to fly cause its "too hard". Heck, I was such a player once upon a time myself. I'm thankful for all the great aces that posted videos of air, cause that inspired me, and I'm not a top ace in any way but I've truly enjoyed the journey and experience up in the air.

But since I don't have to get up in the air, and its tiresome somedays with all that AA/flak, I do it less now... instead I go harass enemy ESFs with Bursters, AA turrets and maybe when they go buff the Skyguard as you suggest, I'll start using that more too. And Striker/Annihilator/G2A lock-on spam, etc. Cuz, you know, why not? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Yeah that's a nice idea, in practice that was a complete disaster back in december.

AA MAX is slightly too good still - a CoF increase or more bloom for sustained fire would be a good thing and would make them more of a close-in weapon (200-300m). They should still have the option to hit 500-700m out, but just not be as accurate or effective. So you'd need maybe 50-60% more MAX units to have the same effect outside of 400m.

Skyguard is in a good spot, an AA platform that can go 85kph which means it can hang back and move around a lot. But it also still needs a bit of love through upgrade options to the Skyguard weapon. Such as:

- (6) level cert tree that boosts the magazine size up from 50 rounds, maybe by adding 5 or 6 rounds per level (max of 80 rounds)
- Some sort of barrel or ammo upgrade that lets you pick between damage-per-shot, rate-of-fire, cone-of-fire, each with downsides.
- Air-only scout RADAR option, focused in a cone in front of the turret

i keep thinking starcraft forum if only air was allowed to kill air.
hmph gonna suggest it i think, this is gonna be good.

you're probably an OK pilot so you should be able to understand it from my perspective.

Air superiority will only be the primary AA when rocketpods are removed. You can't delegate the AA, AV and AI role to ESFs. If liberators were the only ones who could tackle ground targets without serious threat to themselves then ESFs could be granted the AA role - which I think they should have.

CoF problem will be simply solved by spamming more AA maxes. This won't solve the problem of AA MAX units being like little ants that perfectly scale while you have to hunt down each as they scutter around hiding from you.

Reduce projectile velocity. They'll be just as powerful closer in, but they'll have to dream of hitting an ESF further out.
I'd say 1/2~2/3 the current velocity.

A sunderer with two dual burster MAXes inside fulfils all the roles of the skyguard while being tankier, easier to maintain, and having additional benefits like AMS, terminal, troop carrying, two guns. Of course it isnt a single man platform but it's way, way better and the bursters themselves hit aircraft better.

pods will never be removed.
only nerfed.
and then few low-BRs who still want to fly will pull ESFs and those that do will have their AI primaries equipped. No low-BR in their right minds will dream about going up against pilots way more experienced than them in a2a combat. Air is great for farming and will remain to be a large reason people even pull air for a long time to come.

this is an idealistic view that looks extremely pleasant in theory

...check december for details on practice

Actually, yes, it is very surprising that the giant, explosive, anti vehicle shell is completely useless versus a tiny max suit, which the liberator needs to be able to effectively counter in order to be viable.

...and it doesn't now that maxes can literally just stand there and tank the liberator shots to the point that one burster will force it to retreat after killing it without fancy flying, and two will counter it regardless?