The Skyguard Is Not a Viable Deterrent

I solo MBT's and it is not because they are incompetent. Lightning is a highly mobile paper tank, not a throw away taxi. You just need to play smarter to kill them. Always get the jump on everyone by approaching from unexpected angles with stealth, plink away at 2/2 AV MBT's to make them chase you splitting them from the herd and then baiting them into AT mines in places they won't expect whilst chasing what they believe to be free certs and just straight up owning the silly infantry farm/heat loadouts. The lightning has one of the highest DPS tank cannons in the game from memory and it goes 86km/h on flat roads, when you figure out how to drive the thing it is amazing.

With the terrain of Indar and Amerish it is easy to fly behind a mountain, a cliff or through a canyon to get the jump on skyguards so after you know their approximate location it really isn't hard to pop on over and insta-gib one of them before pulling out to repair and repeat. The only flak that is a serious problem is AA maxes and that is because they are typically spawn room warriors who no-one can kill. If somebody pulls a specialty loadout on a paper tank to deal with a one-loadout suits all farm chariot then you bet your *** they should be giving them a run for their money.

If you want the skyguard to go away then ask a tank to do it, just like MBT requires an ESF at our beck and call in order to deal with a liberator. I would be happy to flank around to go and deal with the skyguard for you and I usually already do without anyone needing to ask me to, they are close to defenseless and have a very distinctive sound making them easy to flank and pick out from a crowd. Teamwork is not one vehicle.

If you are killing a 2/2 MBT with a lightning, the MBT is incompetent.
If you have to tell yourself they are not, so you can feel good about yourself, I feel sorry for you.

I have tanked for a long time and unlike libs they require specialized loadouts so making a generalized statement like that shows your inexperience with this area of the game. I could only be killing VPC/HE and PPA/marauder/cannister(lol) tanks for all you know and I would still be solo'ing MBT's and they would not be incompetent, they just came across the wrong tank with the wrong loadout.

The fact that you resort to petty insults such as that really shows who you are both as a player and a person. If you need an all-powerful vehicle to make yourself feel better as you slaughter all the filthy peasants on the ground whilst telling yourself that it requires plenty of skill then I really feel sorry for you.

How's about this? You have a minimum arming range for skyguard rounds. Beyond this range they carry on as normal. Within this range they will not explode in proximity of enemy aircraft. In other words, direct hits only. Then you can tweak damage and resistance values so it is relatively unchanged against ESF (does more damage, but harder to hit), but would absolutely wreck liberators.

What sort of range? I was thinking optimum tankbuster range.

The idea being, if you get close enough to a skyguard to use the tankbuster, you would definitely die if the skyguard fired on you first. High risk/reward tactic.

Full support.

What's on your defensive slot? I run top armor on my skyguard along with racer frame for juking.

NaniteAutoRepair and RacerFrame.

Lib is a hard counter for tanks, skyguard is a deterrant for air. 1vs1 the lib will win if the skyguard fails to deter it from getting into TB range. If you want to be a hard counter for libs, you have to fly an ESF as hard counter means you need to be able to chase your prey down and kill it in 1vs1 scenarios.

The problem is that a skyguard will never deter a lib, because they know they can win every single time. Anybody going against a lib 1v1 in an ESF will get Dalton'd, shredded, TBed, Walkered, or Rammed.

Skyguards can deter libs in 1 on 1 by positioning. You can't give a lib a dead angle to approach you from, they will use it and if you both start firing from 100 meters away, the result is moot. If you start shooting at a lib that is 700 meters away heading towards you, they will turn away. If they don't, they will die. It also doesn't hurt to move a little and make a TB run miss.

ESFs are a hard counter against liberators. A 3/3 lib will almost always lose against 2 ESFs. Don't let those lib videos fool you, they're mostly against beginner ESF pilots flying in a straight line. Hard counter doesn't always mean you sit still and point and click and win, it's the performance of the machines and how their strengths and weakness mesh against eachother. The lib's powerful weapons mean little against a nimble ESF (that is not flying in a straight line), their tough armor is reduced to pieces by the weak but fast and precise ESF weapons, and their speed pales to that of an ESF. For good pilots of equal skill, 3/3 liberator crews will fall to pieces against a single ESF pilot in 1vs1 situations.

Often hear in squad chat "it's xxx, we're boned" and 1min later their lib blows up, it's inevitable and a lib can fight valiantly but there is nothing a lib crew fears more than an ESF pilot that knows a lib's weaknesses.

The whole nerf / buff anti air debate seems to typically center around a singular heavy / flak tower / skyguard versus a singular aircraft. This is certainly an easy situation to crunch numbers and make yourself an argument, but I'm sorry, you're wrong, this is not the case in game and I'm not going to waste more text trying to convince you otherwise.

Figure it out yourselves

Just wrong, every decent ESF pilot will tell you that this isnt the case.

It might lose, but it takes a really long ******* time when you have to AB off whenever the Lib looks at you or flips onto its belly.
If the ESF is the Counter for the Lib as the Lib is to ground units, it's only fair that the Lib is completely powerless against the ESF.

Said this on another thread... Skyguard should come with top armor.. it should be part of the package
if you cert into skyguard turret to the lightning, it should automatically add the top armor..

Before they erroneously moved the proxy radar to defense..(still makes no sense at all).. I used to run top armor
Now, after the change, i have fire suppression , proxy radar (to fend of fairies) and racer max..
Fire suppression saved my hide numerous times.. not sure if top armor would have been as effective..

As far as i understand it.. top armor adds 10% resistance ? please correct if I'm wrong
and fire suppression can get me back to 12% health.. if activated in the red....

Got a few ESFs that thought I was ready to die.. since I was smoking badly.. then hit fire suppression, put a full volley into the ESF, got my kill, and my skyguard was still rolling.. not sure top armor could have done that for me..

I think you just gotta be smart and careful when engaging Libs and you can wreck the sh*t out of them. You aren't going to win a dps duel if he's onto you, or hits you from behind.

Wait till they are pre-occupied with something else before engaging, don't just open up on them the second you spot them in the distance especially if they are flying towards you, better to let them pass over you without letting them know what you are eh. I think a lot of Skyguarders go wrong just firing the second they spot them..

Do this and by the time they have swung around at you again you will have put two mags into them before they can TB and they have to make a quick decision whether or not you are worth it.

except for the part where good pilots shreck llibs

Somebody really needs to make a montage of ESFs' killing libs to help dispel all the damage that montages of libs killing ESF's has done.

...

i made one a while back, killing some above average, but no great crews( sorry for the **** quality I rendered the wrong file type and was too lazy to reupload

also the very last clip in the video in my sig is me beating one of the top crews on waterson

8/10, made me chuckle. Would read again.

Why not make the skyguard's ttk towards libs the same as the tankbusters ttk against tanks?

I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING AND I HAVE BURN OINTMENT READY

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