When are you going to put AA into the game?

I think everyone just got dumber from your comment.

And no HE tanker likes to have his HE tank get blown up by an AP tank. But it happens regardless of whether the HE tankers like it or not, because that results in a balanced game. No HE tank is going to sit there and trade shots with an AP tank, but when the HE tank attempts to flee it is still often destroyed.

The same is not true of an ESF. When an ESF attempts to flee a single Skyguard, there is a strong chance that the ESF will survive. The ESF should not, just as how the HE tank should not survive.

How then does an ESF deal with a Skyguard? Same as how the HE tank deals with an AP tank... either it brings along friends who are effective against its counter or it simply never enters the area.

A single Skyguard should shut down the immediate hex against a single ESF. After all, the Skyguard is built to counter the ESF and can do little else.

Two ESFs should be able to operate for a very limited time in a hex against a single Skyguard. But if there are two Skyguards, then again the ESFs should be killed upon entering the hex.

The solution? Use what is effective against Skyguards to take them out. Namely anything on the ground. ESFs should first have to knock out AA before they can operate, and the most effective way of doing this is to use ground units. This coordination is the crux of combined arms, which is what everyone in PS2 needs to practice.

So it's actually a good thing that AA should be lethal to aircraft. Likewise, aircraft should be more lethal to ground units. This not only gives AA a very important role, but also makes it an important target for the enemy. Destroy the AA, and you have access to highly lethal airstrikes against enemy armour and infantry. Leave the AA alive, and your aircraft will quickly become flaming wrecks.

What a Skyguard cannot do is effectively kill the unit that it is meant to counter. Sure it can chase a few air units away, but it does not kill them. The Skyguard needs to be buffed so that aircraft do not have the luxury of being able to retreat before they are shot down.

Did you really just delete the part of my post that was inconvenient to you?

Right, first off you're not talking balance you're talking fairness which is entirely subjective and not how you balance anything.

Second your average he tanker then escapes behind a rock and drives off rather than saying "oh, he brought AP, I deserve this" and facetanking all of the ap tanks shots. He backs up and retreats behind a rock unless he overcommitted. An overcommitted esf dies amazingly quickly. That's part of why you see so few new ESF pilots. You never see new esf pilots so the ones you do see tend to be at least competent. A competent player tends to over commit less.

Third there is no practical way for an esf in even a coordinated platoon to "bring ground units" to AA units nestled in or behind a ground zergs rear echelon. It was tried. Do not argue this one this has already been tried in this game as you described and no one enjoyed it. It was not "combined arms gameplay" it was endless columns of tanks which could not be stopped. No, nothing has changed which could affect that.

Keep in mind the libs of the day were far more lethal. Pinpoint accurate longer range tankbusters, explosive shell shredders of greater accuracy, Daltons that only vaguely resemble what we have now and zephyrs of ungodly killing potential. Better flight profiles, larger gun arcs, on and on and on. No one, not even me, not even the best lib crews could use them because they were not fieldable. You would die too quickly to AA firing from too many locations with too much effect that was untouchable by ground units.

Good games are not built on hard counters, they are built on soft ones. A good game is not strictly rock paper scissors and I invite you to find any good game that works on those mechanics.

And how does an HE Lightning outrun an AP Lightning? Can a tank really outrun another tank?
If I'm in an AP Lightning and I take a few shots at an HE Lightning which then moves to cower behind a rock, the only reason why I wouldn't go run down that enemy HE Lightning is if I know he's being backed up by hostile tanks. Otherwise that HE Lightning is as good as dead.

The difference is that there is no way a Skyguard can run down an ESF, so the logical solution is to increase Skyguard DPS so that the ESF is dead before it can run away. In that way tanks and aircraft are treated in a balanced manner.

There most definitely is, and it has been done. Heck, when platoons I'm in have a dedicated air squad and armour squad, it's as simple as telling the tanks that there is enemy AA to the northwest of the base or something like that. Those threats are quickly dispatched. Unless that AA is hiding behind enemy armour, in which case kudos to the enemy for protecting their AA. Still fairly easy to snipe with a Harasser strike or something similar.

Of course where that doesn't work is infantry or MAX AA, because those can just pop in and out of wherever. That would need to be balanced separately, so for my purposes I'm just referring to vehicle-carried AA.

Regardless, this change would elevate organized play over disorganized play. Which is a good thing, because it encourages combined arms organization and communication skills.

Ummm... pretty much most of the successful RTS games? Anything that involves strategy will involve counters, often hard counters. And PS2 is lacking in spades when it comes to strategy.

It would be nice if my tank that can only do one thing would be atleast decent at doing it.

At the moment, the best way to kill an ESF is another AA ESF.

Still arguing fairness. Not a realistic depiction of tank warfare in ps2 either.
Let me simplify this down for you. It was done, it didn't work. No one could get to the AA. No one. Regardless of who and what. I was in heavily organized platoons and the availability, range, and efficacy meant nothing could fly. No one had a good time. Armor couldn't get anywhere, air simply died. Infantry got screwed a dozen ways to Sunday.

Name one rts which relies on hard counters.

I think tank work fine, problem is the guner... lightning with skyguard get nerf for good reason: you could shoot from top of palisate up to north techplant and make it no air zone with one skyguard.
New sky guard still work fine on 300m so every one from 1-300m can die ( its just harder ). If you dont hiting on long distance its not about weapon. If you have problem aim in front of target on longer distance spawn second skyguard and 2 will make enought dmg to shoot it down for sure ( even with bad guners )

+consider how many hp lightning have... lightning with skyguard dont risk much vs air.

Starcraft
Warcraft
The good CnCs
WH40K
Wargame
World in Conflict
Supreme Commander

The list goes on and on. The reason why hard counters promote strategy is that:
1) They are very specific and easily counterable. They can only do one thing really well, but on the other hand are highly vulnerable to other things. This means that no unit is ever "on top" as they can be countered by other things.
2) They require a plan of action to use. Simply spamming one type of unit will not work, as they enemy can spend much fewer resources and manpower to knock your units out quickly. This promotes thinking and planning ahead of time.
3) They require support. Sending in one type of unit is sure to have it crushed by a hard counter, so you need to send and manage a mixture of units.

Are there soft counters in these games as well? Sure. Send enough light tanks against a heavy tanks and eventually it will be dead. Run in circles around a unit so they can't maintain a line of fire. Flanking might give a soft advantage.

But there are plenty of hard counters in these games. Mutalisks against Firebats. SAMs against helicopters. Magic freezing spells against slow, singular, and powerful units. Flamethrowers on a Dreadnought against Shoota Boyz. In these cases, one type of unit can completely dominate another type.

2xSkyguard and you have what you want... insta kill on ESF, 2x70% magazine on LIB... and new topic about nerf skyguard on forum

All the games you listed are based on soft counters. All of them. Do they have hard counters? You could make an argument they are never seen in an average game.

A big part of starcraft's success is that it does not have hard counters. It has soft counters, places where a unit has a non-absolute advantage over another.

But you really are just discarding the majority of my statements to focus on individual places where you think you can win a point. I'm out.

So tell me then, how many Firebats does it take to kill a Mutalisk?

i'd like them to make lock ons much harder to use but make skill based AA like walker MUCH more effective
also switch skyguard from "FLAKING useless" to something that works like a buffed walker.

flak is absolutely useless now, previously it was terribly inaccurate with hilariously bad damage, its one and only perk was that it gave the pilot blinding explosions if they were looking your direction.
the devs removed that perk recently, so now its just inaccurate, weak and useless.

I know skyguards are crap when I can unload my tank buster lib into front armor then land right on top of it and switch to my zephyr to finish it off. It's just stupid that I can do that against a skyguard that sees me coming.

I hope you do realize the average skyguard is garbage aim. Why? Because he doesn't lead or predict properly, and sure sometimes he gets away, but if you are and you should be aware enough to shoot ahead of time as he slows down to effectively make him do nothing and take damage. People don't even realize how much of a pain skyguards can be to air, as wrel had put it before it is a support platform, you aren't going to be a fly swatting god with it.
Also, just for the record, HE is garbage, the tank risked getting ganked by AP in your example, gets ganked, no shock there but he wasn't helpless to his own decisions for not using AP and counting that other tank.
So advantages of skyguards:
Can respond to and effectively damage air significantly
Long range enough to poke air to prevent nan
Engagement radars to prevent fly bys better
Creates a field of damage for air

Also has little to no risk of being ever ganked by air except by the gunship which is countered by ESFs which you support by being a skyguard
It's a teamwork cycle, frankly skyguard doesn't need a buff when it decks ESFs rather well, you're risking incredibly little when the advantages are quite significant, no one is ever mad at people pulling a skyguard for that reason.

Takes 3 clips o skyguard to finish a lib, however skyguards should be near other tanks for support, no way the lib would've tried it with tanks around to give it a kiss.

The Skyguard is hardcoded to be terrible. No amount of user skill makes it a lethal threat.

First, it has a ridiculous CoF, one of the worst out of vehicle-mounted weapons in the game. It starts of with a 1.25 CoF, which is pretty much only surpassed by the Ranger (another poor flak weapon) and the Duster (which is generally seen as a carpet bombing weapon, not a precision weapon). So even if you were aiming and leading properly, there is a very good chance that your shots will fly everywhere except the target.

Second, velocity is only 400m/s, which is pretty low for an AA weapon. This makes it slower than velocity against the Basilisk or even the Liberator's Shredder. It's reasonable to have slower velocities against ground units, but against the physically-impossible turns and banks that PS2 aircraft can make that slow velocity starts to really hurt.

Third, DPS is pretty terrible against aircraft. The Skyguard only does a raw 60 damage per hit, and only the ESF has a vulnerability to flak. These are the STKs and TTKs of the Skyguard against normal air targets:
ESF- 32 hits, 4 seconds
Valk- 67 hits, 8.375 seconds
Liberator- 129 hits, 19.125 seconds
Galaxy- 195 hits, 30.275 seconds

And that's assuming 100% accuracy, which as pointed out is hardcoded to be poor in a Skyguard. In terms of practical accuracy, on average Skyguards clock in at around 28%. The most accurate Skyguard user in all servers can only claim a 48% accuracy.

This leaves Skyguards as extremely poor AA weapons, and the stats show it.
Air Kills Per Hour
Skyguard- 5.39-6
Dalton- 9.84-11.21
ESF noseguns (not counting AI)- 5.46-8.28

The Skyguard underperforms as compared to the Liberator (supposedly an A2G vehicle) as well as the ESF (which also has secondary weapons to deal with enemy air).

Why should Skyguards be a support platform? Why not make ESFs or Liberators a support platform? Why should AA get the short stick and pilots be given every unfair advantage?

Why should the entire game be groundside?
You don't even mention the flaks AoE, that it would be completely unfair that an ESF gets instagibbed in less than 4 seconds just because he didn't see one lighting in the distance, tanks actually have time to react, support to move with, vehicles from other angles to support, ESFs and libs only have the other guy to help focus downone target, ESFs do not do sustained combat at all, they have the burst they need to get something done and if they can't even get in without taking damage they simply leave. It's the equivalent of pulling a lightning and then dying instantly to a prowler just because he was over 400 meters out from you which is unfun in of itself.

Let's also not forget, every single weapon in the game does damage to air, there is no excuse that something isn't damaging it. A skyguard isn't the only thing that can do something, maxes, sundis, tanks with walkers, infantry, other esfs, built in flak turrets. If there is someone manning an effective AA platform sonewhere, esfs will avoid x place, for damn good reason.

A Skyguard falls more into the area of a HA rocket launcher to an ESF.

If under fire from Rocket Launchers, a tank retreats, and lives to fight another day. If it gets chased by a tank, it usually dies.

If an ESF takes fire from a Skyguard, it retreats, and lives to fight another day. If it gets chased by another ESF or Lib, it usually dies.



You shouldn't really expect a motionless or slow vehicle to be able to instantly take out a highly mobile craft by filling the sky with explosive bullets.That would be one of the few things I would cry about being OP.

Although, being a pilot, everyone would ignore me and call for more nerfs against the sky.

Since the current skyguard is best / toned down for lock on ranges and such , i want a large version of the walker to mash into a second skyguard variant , all the power and precision without the flak ,it wouldn't have walker velocity to balance being a heavier hitter than its smaller cousin ,its genius.

suggestions aside , the skyguard is actually pretty effective at what it does which is denying air , much like other methods of anti air combating this requires pulling more of it , even 1 skyguard will force esf's to run (which is what you want) , add this on top of stray fire / lock ons its generally hell for the aircraft . In spite of my liking of the skyguard i've preferred going the harasser walker approach , the range over flak just helps.