Welp.. Skyguards are useless now...

Much easier with burster MAX or HA.


There is no point unlocking it when there are plain better options

As one of my friends put it "using AA makes you feel like an NPC. You're just a challenge for the real player to overcome and you don't feel like an equal."

and thats how it should be....

your not an equal when you are up in the air you have to worry about the following:

Enemy ESF's
Enemy Libs/Gal's
Friendly Air (because most people dont watch where they are flying)
Skyguards
Burster Maxes
Ground Lock ons
Random deci/faction standard launcher fire
Terrain

Try having all that **** shoot at you.

In regards to the libs. A single ESF can chase a lib off its bombing run and take 2/3 people out of the fight(they may or may not kill the lib but its still 2/3 people off the fight).

AA is problematic enough right now as it is especially considering a few people working together can force a larger airforce back.

Wow, that sounds horrible.

I think I'll just stay on the ground, where none of those things ever try to shoot me.

That is a rather short list (and you forgot AA base turrets). Lets look at what is a threat to tanks/sundies

EFS's
Libs/Gals
Lightnings (and unlike the Skyguard they have more than 1 weapon that is useful against armor)
MBTs both secondary and primary weapons (and unlike the AA gun mounts the AV ones are very deadly)
MAXs (each faction has access to 2 variants of AV weapons)
Ground Lock ons
Dumbfires
Engie turrets
Terrain (can flip your vehicle, get it stuck, throw off your aim, or block your escape)
Base AV turrets
Tank mines
C4 (carried by nearly every class but infil and MAXs)
Sundies (against dedicated AV MBTs they are not much of a threat but to a Lighting or Harasser they can be quite deadly)
Stealth Flashes with C4 on them (you don't see them very often but they can instantly kill your tank).

Unlike a lot of the ones for the AA list a few on this list will instantly kill you with little to no warning.

As for air: An ESF is the only one that can be realistically killed instantly from being hit by deci or a tank round (anything else and you can save yourself by using fire supp. if you are quick) and even then it has to put itself in that situation for that to happen. While a MBT can get killed instantly with no warning the moment it is pulled, simply because the driver didn't check the vehicle pad for tank mines.

So air not only has fewer threats but they are not even as deadly.

Doesn't happen. I've been in an armoured column with 2-3 skyguards plus many available weapons to deter air attack and the flying blocks of steel that still somehow defy gravity simply ignore the damage and rip the land units up.

Crew count is unimportant. By that reasoning there should be available a 4+ crew land vehicle that simple because it has more crew can defeat any air target.

Ok Ima bring a 747 to the match and beat everyone.

You guys are only discussing half of the problem with the Skyguard.

Main problem: Skyguard's only role is to guard the skies however is ineffective in that role. It cannot maneuver and fire accurately as its main opponent the Liberator can.

You can employ various strategies to increase your survivability and effectiveness but these almost never result in actual kills and only act as a deterrent. For each player that chooses to employ a specific vehicle to counter air power land anti vehicle power is reduced.

FIX: Add a gunner to the skyguard who can fire as the driver maneuvers or give him 1-2 ground to air missiles or thicker armour. At the very LEAST give him the ability to switch ammo to armour piercing to be effective against armoured targets. Currently pilots who imagine that they are skilled fly directly into battle with no regard whatever to anti air fire and need not employ Nap of the Earth or Terrain following strategies to increase their survivability.

Secondary problem: The skyguard player has sacrificed everything to bring some protection to his friendly players. Everything. The main gun does no damage to any other target and has no ability to compensate. The 4 barreled cannon is uselessly inaccurate and inexplicably multiple hits to a lone infantry man does not result in a kill but rather yours as the heavy simply ignores the fact he's been struck with the energy required to deliver a payload to high altitude.

FIX: Vastly increase the damage dealt by the Skyguard weapon system to infantry upon direct hit.

Planetside 2 is a GAME it's supposed to be fun I know. Personally I don't find it fun when game mechanics fly in the face of what is now common knowledge regarding physics. I kow the infanty man wants to have a good time and not be mowed down. I know the gunship pilot wants to have fun. These players would just have to be more careful like everyone else in the game.

Lastly there is a baseless argument being employed here that goes along the lines of a vehicle has more crew so for some reason needs to defy all logic and reason to protect those players interests. Those vehicles which have been buffed to safeguard those player concentrations regardless of any sense posses the ability to nearly instantly regenerate their armour with all the crew being engineers and repping the vehicle. That alone is advantage enough.

YES I SPECIFICALLY SOUGHT OUT THIS FORUM TO POST ABOUT THIS ONE TOPIC AS IT IS THE ONLY PROBLEM THAT I HAVE FOUND IN THE GAME SO FAR.

I still want a 2nd identical skyguard cannon.

BRING ON THE DAKKA

servers are going to be awfully quiet if people log out each time they get owned by a liberator

Getting sick and tired of seeing the same broken record argument for Liberator Pilots thinking they deserve to win against everything. Number of people in a vehicle DOES NOT mean jack squat when determining who should win in different situations. As I and several others have noted DAILY the following. IF you think that a 2/3 or 3/3 liberator should ALWAYS win against a skyguard THEN by the same idiotic argument a 3/3 Sunderer with AA weapons should ALWAYS win against a liberator. Does it? Hell no is doesn't, that situation leaves a dead Sunderbus and a barely scratched Liberator. So the argument is broken. Also it should mean that a galaxy with all a pilot and 4 gunners should win against everything, and while very powerful will lose to a liberator with a half decent belly gunner.

A single skyguard should ALWAYS deter (deter not destroy) a single liberator. 1 vehicle (thats SOLE PURPOSE is AA) worth roughly the same resources verse another vehicle that typically works well against ALL targets. Something needs brought back in line with the liberator. Either its ability to soak up ground based AA or its ability to defend against Air Based AA needs to be removed and make it a pure ground assault platform with its belly limited to fire when the liberator is mostly level.

C&C Gattling Tank
Role: AA / AI

Increase the velocity on "Skyguard" bullets, double the fire rate / add a second barrel.
maybe tighten the CoF.
Remove the flak, it is now just bullets, and only bullets.

Effects:
You now have a platform that is designed to take out air, and give you some other objective when air flees.
It increases the skill cap on AA by removing the 4-m auto detonate range (remember, no more flak) So the skyguards have to be more accurate to land their damage.
This will dig into the "TR feel" because dakkadakka. And for that, I'm not sorry. This is the most effective way to fix it.
The weapon could be adjusted to do zero damage to other tanks. AP tanks especially would gather up new skyguards like pacman pellets.
ESFs shouldn't be given insta-death status when wandering near one; the weapon is powerful but without that 4m-on all sides auto hit cloud being far away should leave enough time to react and re-position.
Libs; this thing is designed to eat you. You and Skywhales. Because lets face it; there is nothing out there designed to kill large air. Only deter, and that is just not effective.

i play heavy assault, and you are right 2x C4 alone won't kill a sunderer (it will be left burning), BUT an unarmored sunderer will instantly die to 2x C4 and a decimator rocket (i use the rocket to trigger the C4 charges). armored sunderers take an additional 3x AV grenades on top of the C4 and rocket for a complete kill. for reference i carry 2x C4 charges, 4x decimator rockets, 4x AV grenades, and 21x hunter QCX explosive crossbow bolts. i am specifically rigged for eliminating armor of all flavors as rapidly as possible.

i do play with a small group of friends on semi regular basis. it does help a lot for hunting vehicles, but generally i am told where the targets are and then it is mostly my job to end them. we do have a light assault that can drop C4 (i still believe light assaults should be given their own slightly weaker C4 charges), but we usually divvy up the targets any time there are more than one so that we can break armor more efficiently.

i did think about the vanguard i fought more and with proper timing or a macro the vanguard i hit might have popped his shield, because after the rocket blast hit's the C4 charge there is usually about a 1/4 to 1/2 second delay before the C4 detonates (while the game is figuring out what just happened). so it is possible that the shield popped just in time to soak the C4 hit (which is still high caliber BS), but the shield was not on long enough for me to see it. making it so that the vanguard effectively only took 2 rockets worth of damage to the rear armor.

agreed. in my experience my lone skyguard is enough to kill most ESF and the really stupid liberators, or the ones focused on killing me.

but you throw down 2 or more skyguards (THAT KNOW HOW TO USE THE DAMNED THING) and that will properly end any air force.

i don't entirely agree with the loadout in the video though. rival combat chassis is definitely great, but as far as the other two, smoke isn't an option because it just lets all the aircraft know exactly where you are, so fire suppression to aid repairing during / between fights is the only way to go for me and vehicle radar is the only way to go for defensive slots so you can readily catch and fight off C4 fairies. before the radar was moved to the defense slot i ran radar / nano repair, but nano repair does nothing if you get one shotted by a guy with C4.

also radar lets me know when the front lines are about to be overrun so i can get out and either help maintain the defense or join the next push.

if i am an NPC then i am the boss battle at 32:00 ish


you are right, i don't feel like an equal, i feel like a vengeful god smiting puny insects with righteous fire!

That boss was an extremely tough enemy raining instant death... you do know that Liberators are not technically AA units... and you died to gunpods.

just in case you weren't following the thread i drive skyguards and my flight time in a liberator is less than 1% of my total play time at a little over 7.5 hours (most of which has been spent in the tail gun fighting off aircraft) as a pilot i am generally terrible and die quickly in combat.

i have fought some highly skilled liberator pilots and as long as i am paying attention a lightning with the rival combat chassis can easily outmaneuver them forcing them into an impossible turn (they crash) or to give up their attack and run away (free shots). with over 1,000 kills in my skyguard (my SOE character page is linked in my signature if you want to check) you think i haven't faced down at least a few libs?

they are beefy, but as long as i don't just camp in an area and maintain good lines of sight (which despite what some people claim, can easily be done on EVERY continent and in almost every zone in each continent, there are a few amerish canyon bases that i have yet to find accessible positions with commanding views), i have very little fear of them when i am in my skyguard. they either run or die, unless they totally got the drop on me (usually because i was camping too much and not aware of my surroundings I.E. i screwed up) or they severely outnumber me at close range (3+ liberators within thermal range, again probably means i screwed up and wasn't paying enough attention).

I logged on just to do some skyguarding. Too many planes for a solitary AA unit. Took my ball and went home. Tried to get people to pull AA but I guess some are perfectly content being farmed.

Maybe not averyone wants to spend so many certs on something so situational & fragile.
Personally I tooned up burster max beacause it is more versatile & can switch to scats when there is no need for AA.
Skyguard require big initial investment (1k certs) with possibile upgrades + ~300 vehicle resource each time u spawn it with no ability to switch to other loadout. It is just NOT WORTH IT.