[Suggestion] A new Long range vehicle AA weapon

I suppose the fact that you can't shoot throw a spawn room shield annoys you too....

Fact of the matter is that with a tankbuster, fire suppress dalton lib, I can kill a deployment shield walker sunderer - I will probably die too, but it can be done. Now if their is a repair sunderer there too or any engineer repairing, well then that is impossible - for 1 liberator.

But there should be impossibles for air. Liberators are invulnerable to small arms fire and so are tanks. Frankly, in this game the only thing aircraft really need to fear is better pilots. A2G and they can escape - even if they are ambushed. They might have to go fight elsewhere, but the A2G that was pulled is now wasted and the aircraft has won the nanites battle.

How about.... NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hell no, Go to hell. You think flying is so easy? Go fly over Esamir sometime during prime time, and tell me there isn't enough G2A fire already.

IMO it's G2A lockons and Flares that need to be changed.
Right now it's too easy to fire-and-forget in open areas and dive into a spawnroom, but too difficult to fire off a proper shot when not using Swarm because the other launchers are STILL bugged into firing sideways.
I'd make lockons require maintaining a lock with ADS, the missile's maneuverability drastically lowered if not assisted so.
Let Flares be partially ignored if a lock is maintained manually, downgrading performance to an unassisted lock.
Remove ability to establish lockon through door shields, fix straight firing trajectory.
This way pilots assess if the G2A user is assisting their missiles or not based on the terrain, evade/Flare/attack accordingly.
No win-buttons, no hiding behind shield. Intuitive and skill based.

They could really change the air game by raising the flight ceiling and giving G2A AA a bigger punch. Remove Infantry lock ons and design new AA specific units with radar. This way you can allow for more A2A combat and have hunter killer units .

Perhaps the low flight ceiling is there to keep air IN the fight. The problem with air could be its high visibility at range. Against the backdrop of nothingness that is the sky air stands out like a sore thumb. Often if a planetman sees a plane they may take pot shots at it way beyond reasonable engagement range. Be it a sky-guard or basilisks, I've even watched infantry full auto smgs at libs in the distance. Just Because you can physically see does not mean that 1 its an immediate threat or 2 it should be kill-able at that range.

I think a anti air cannon would be cool. I love it when I get a tank shell on an aircraft. Sometimes I park my lightning on a hill and specifically try to be AA. The most satisfying moment of my PS2 career was when some flyer was **** talking me and I saw him hovering a few hexes away, so I took a quick shot at him. He descended a bit, and I saw my shell above him. I thought I had missed, but apparently the shell had just reached it's max height, it flew a bit more and POP, one less whiny flyer.

I don't think just copy-pasting the AP viper is the way to go. Make a version that can aim high, has a little higher velocity shells, lower damage (light an ESF on fire in one shot I think), and reloads a bit faster. Give it a highly visible vapor trail to ruin any chance of staying hidden, and that's a good start. The last tweak I would do is to give it a manual flak detonation. Not a lot of damage, but a large area, sharp falloff, and you need to guess when the time is right. I think that would fill the skill gap between the viper AP, and walker/skyguard.

As for larger AAA, I think it should work how I heard artillery would be working for construction. Once it's active it's marked on the map. Maybe have a notification say "We have detected a skylance battery in the area, proceed with caution!" Maybe add in some things to sweeten up the game. SAMs in real life have limited energy. And you can do maneuvers to make them waste it and reduce their range. Maybe whatever radar guides the missile has ****** ground scanning properties, so if you are near terrain it loses you. This would reward players skilled enough to "fly under the radar." Personally I would think the best option would be to have the missiles piloted by players, like the phoenix. in addition to being able to shoot the missiles down, it adds more fun as the attacker gets to fly something, and the defender isn't just beating some algorithm.

I can't tell you how many libs i've taken out with a walker/deploy sunderer gunning alone as a heavy. 95 rounds from the walker gets depleted at just about the same time the lib gets greedy and hovers overhead for a simple deci finish.

Hornets only kill in 4 shots to the rear, i.e. 2 volleys. Backing up or turning after taking damage will almost always save you. Remember that a single flak turret, while it doesn't seem to do much damage, can very easily deter aircraft, to the point where they have very limited opportunities to engage and can't stick around at all. Getting those rear shots is risky because you often fly low and close, where even tanks can shoot back.

Ap lightnings already can do 90% damage or whatever to esf's, unless in a vacuum that's as good as a death sentence. Vanguards are already a pain to deal with, I feel like a dedicated AA gun is not needed, air already has enough threats. If you want to shoot down aircraft, pull your own. That way it's balanced.

not really there are are the problems of learning to fly and not everyone wanting to fly at all. And thus we instead now have ground units amassing AA and making sure no one can fly instead so everyone is unhappy in the end. Thus there is a problem with the system. And alas if there would be a third AA option made available i think the entire AA system would be rebalanced to incorporate it. As it right now is simply broken with severely unbalanced power scaling per gun added.

No one can fly? I'm not sure this is serious.

I mean, this is not an observable reality in the cases you are describing, and when the enemy masses 3-4 skyguards in close proximity, nothing SHOULD be able to fly exceptionally close to them.When you say "Can't fly because of too many skyguards." are you referring to "I can't fly within 200m of them" or "I'm getting plinked for 1% at the 750m range?

In a 96+ fight, the amount of ground fire should be overwhelming by default, simply as a question of numbers. The solution here is to bring more air to overwhelm them, or to harass them and keep them from bringing in more sundies from outside the area, by coordinating with your team.

The way AA works historically, once you network and coordinate it, as you add more guns its effectiveness begins to increase dramatically. As it does for every other gun, regardless of function. You add another prowler, your damage output increases. You add another LMG on a door, damage increases. I don't see Vanguards and Maggies complaining "TOO MANY PROWLERS, PROWLERS OP" (Ok, I do see them saying that, but thats not the point)

The biggest issue with air is ground units think they can deal with it using rocket launchers. Which is not true, unless you have three locking the same target.
Get a Skyguard and make A2G farmers cry. It's a holy mission and I love it

AA isn't fun for both parties. Air doesn't like to get into a zone of certain damage (and with some people certain FPS loss), AA feels it isn't powerful enough to kill and has relatively few targets to attack in comparison to AT and AI. They are also only effective against air and in only a few situations against infantry, making AA less engaging. The lock ons are even more boring. Hoping to just have a target long enough in your cross-hair and fire a homing missile? Neither parties can truly have a lot of fun with these mechanics.

So I've already proposed this before. Increase the skill floor by a bit. Increase the skill ceiling by a lot. Create guns that are actually engaging, have more roles than only AA and have the possibility to kill, not only deter.

Sniping aircraft with tanks takes skill. Hovering aircraft are relatively easy, while air flying by is hard. That is a good balance to me, as hovering around is like a tank getting too greedy. They make a mistake and should pay for it, increasing their chances of destruction a lot.
Sniping aircraft like a Vanguard is a little too much. The shots should be a bit more plentiful, but less powerful. So more a viper style cannon that can fire nearly vertical. Firing with high accuracy, small recoil and with a very small flak range (0.5-1m). Low skill floor, but the ceiling is much, much higher. One volley can destroy an ESF.
Hovering aircraft can now be dispatched in one mag if you have any aim. Other aircraft can be horribly damaged, or get away without any harm, depending on both the skill of the pilot and the skill of the AA. Together with the lesser effective range of this AA, aircraft can now participate in large fights, although they can still can suddenly be mauled by the AA.

Now lock ons. There is a bit of a conundrum. I would go for a RL with 2 functions. One is kind of a sniper function, where you will fire a high velocity magnetic beacon. This beacon will attach itself to an aircraft if shot within 1-2m of the aircraft. The second function is the normal dumbfire RL. If the RL has got a beacon on an aircraft, they will automatically lock onto the aircraft. This will eliminate the lock on warning, going straight to the missile in flight warning. There is skill needed to put the beacon on the aircraft, but as soon as you do, you can fire relatively quickly and in a large range, making the rockets follow your target.
Having a beacon on the target gives you a great many possibilities for firing. Curving around rocks, or firing in a direction so that the rocket is better able to avoid obstacles or simply so it has a better chance to catch up with the target. It is now possible as you don't need a visual lock.
Just like the other suggestion, this will make the "lock on" AA have less effective range for locking on and less effective against high speed targets. But when you do get a lock via beacon, you have a much more effective way of taking down the aircraft. No more boring lock on times, just a skill (or on hovering targets low skill) shot against an aircraft and quickly fire the missile.

There are many variants to make, ES or simply NS. I think this would improve the A2G airgame by giving bigger trade-offs, as misses will be much more frequent, but has much more damage potential. Air can move in with bigger fights without fear of death zones, but are still taking risks.

You are right, I just checked. I just assumed it was a OHK because every ESF I had hit with it died instantly. Bad sample, my bad.

"If you want to shoot down an aircraft, pull your own" isn't really something that can be done. It takes far too many hours to become competent enough to even have a chance against the air veterans. Hours that are spent getting trounced by those veterans, and all these G2A options.

Hence why people suggest it. It solves three birds with one stone:

They get more things to shoot down

They get to laugh at you

They aren't being realistically threatened.

Of course, there is the Myth of the Roc to balance these concerns.

The Roc is a 40% magical Scout Radar Valk with max vehicle stealth that appears out of the canyons, bridges, tunnels, and biolab entrances near your air pads. It will also nest in the cables under enemy biolabs. When you farm too long as a Libby or ESF, or kill too many Valks as any aircraft, the Roc can be summoned by anyone who has Auraxiumed the Valk.

It will proceed to either Ram, AT Mine, C4, or Pinwheel you off the air pad, ruining your killstreak and humiliating you in front of your skynight pals by posting the feed all over reddit with taglines such as "Your inflight movie is Dragonball: Evolution!" and "ZOOM! HEADSHOT!" or "LUGGAGE DETECTED!" or my favorite: "My 3 Ton Ninja Star Nerfed Your Awareness Certs!".

It may also ram-which your air crew against your aircraft while you repair/rearm.

It also eats your sundies if you put them in places you're not supposed to. This includes inside buildings.

There was also that one time someone pop-rammed that liberator that was almost to the warpgate and spooked it into crashing..

Wait... isn't this already what it is?

I'd like to point out -- if skyguards were 75% as strong against harassers as they are against ESFs, they would be the most often pulled vehicle to counter harassers. Their presence would increase significantly. Enough so that you would never see another lib or gal again...

And that's why they aren't good against harassers, which are a back line clearing vehicle

Generally a lot of pilots fly below the 400 meter mark of the map, either they're unaware or like me, bait out the AA nests so I know where to avoid/inform other pilots/inform tanks to start shelling for free certs. I'm talking about every single pilot staying at 850+ meters above to avoid any form of skyguard or long range AA shenanigans which is completely unfair since that one platform is preventing any sort of air interaction with the fight.

You obviously dont know harassers. They are an any line clearing vehicle....