Been away for a year... is Skyguard fixed?.

Ah so you want a sort of alpha strike weapon to kill or severely injure an aircraft? We have decis and default rocket launchers, if you don't have the skill to aim them that's where the easy flak peck damage comes in. Skyguards will not 1v1 libs, it's like lightnings taking on MBTs, unreasonable to assume you will win a straight up fight, that's simply how it is. To kill a sky tank you need a sky tank or MBT with a good setup.

Skyguards are actually really effective against ESFs, the instant the botch that first hit with hornets they are prone to dying right then and there. The thing is said ESF would have to have hornets in the first place to even make the attempt, it's a niche weapon. So then why are skyguards still decked? Well there is suck a thing as suprise factor, if a skyguard gets the drop on an ESF and the ambush is lead well the ESF will be lucky to come out with 25% hp left after FS, if the hornet ESF gets the drop on the skyguard and the hornets stick you can actually kill a skyguard with low to moderate damage, however this is niche weapon with niche scenario and suprise factor, otherwise an ESF would not beat a good skyguard.

Taking libs out is indeed annoying, but you can do it with a 3 man walker blockade bus, niche specialization that beats even lib speacialization against tanks. The thing about anti tank weapons is that tanks are incredibly weak in the armor department when it comes to a good sunderer crew, MBTs can be killed rather quickly by abusing weakspots and low resistance values to certain weapons, while sunderers can even heal through the harasser AV CQ weapons.


Simply put, get 2 friends and a walker bus if you want to deck libs, skyguards have a moderate portion of the damage however if solo.

Right now what I think would be idea for the skyguard is a modest increase in velocity (10 to 20 percent), and significant boost to ROF at trade off of reload speed. The second item I would highly advocate is adding the flash weapons (fury, basilisk, renagade, kobalt) as secondary weapon platform to provide a bit more flexibility for lightings.

As for Libs I have changed my tactics to always park near a large obstacles (trees work great). I usually do pretty well against Libs with the exception of Indar and Esamir were cover is sparse.

Been away for a year. Do I still have anything to cry about?

Evidently...yes. Plenty.

Adding my opinion to this. I have little experience as air pilot but do have a lot of G2A experience. Of all the things I've tried (Walker , lock ons have anti air) I must say that for me the skygaurd is the best. You want to have engagement radar so that you can see the planes coming. Then you can open fire before they do. In that case a fighter either breaks off or tries to continue and dies. Libs can still take you but they are rarely want to risk it and break of and try again later. The best setup I have had is one squad mate with skygaurd and then myself with harasser with enforcer( yes I'm NC) the skygaurd can take the efs on its own the harasser can discuss as he and destroy any opposing ground. And if a lib comes along the skyguard and the enforcer can deal with it.

Skyguard isn't that bad I managed to hold off and destroy 3 esf when they were attacking simultaneously. They kept coming back and eventually destroyed me but I did destroy several of the esfs.
The only improvement I want for anti air is that the phlanax AA guns be given engagement radar.

I will not lie, becoming a good a2afighter is a great way to get better at g2a.

Shame that ya don't have much experience flying. Might be force to be reckoned with.

I believe the best course of action if any should be made is buff rangers abit. They are rather poor compared to the walker in every aspect.
Secondly, tie engagement radar on skyguards so that it frees up a utility slot.

Nope. Skyguards still suck.

Dual Burster MAX with flak armor and charge is Ssssoooo much better and can be pulled from any equipment terminal. Engineers can resupply your ammo, repair you faster, you're harder to hit, easier to hide and you can get to lots of places a skyguard cannot.

Sunderer with a ranger or walker is harder to kill and brings the option of having a second weapon for AV or AI costs 40% less nanites and has extra utility like being a spawn point, a scout radar, vehicle repair or ammo supply and still accomplishes the exact same thing a skyguard does! Air deterrence.

Skyguard is in my oppinion the poorest use of nanites and certs in the game.

So players just bend over and continue to willingly get screwed by this fact instead of asking for a fix ?.

BUT MOM THE GAME ISN'T PLAYING ITSELF FOR ME, I ACTUALLY HAVE TO AIM! WHAT THE FUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SG hasent been changed much. Its been given an air-radar, thats pretty much it.
The radar makes it easier, but the SG still suffers from (mainly) velocity and cof issues.

Im not sure how long ago it was, but they did change the Walker. Its a lot better against ESFs now.
I think they buffed the velocity to 850 (or was it 1000?).

There has also been various other changes that seems to have made it easier against air.
Air is not nearly as annoying as it used to be. At least it feels that way, i may be wrong.

Skyguards are cheaper than Liberators and require 1 person to pilot. This "lib can kill skyguard in 1 hit" thing is only in reference to the Dalton, which requires 2 people inside the Lib to use effectively.

likewise 2 AA gun sunderers should out perform a skyguard, as you need at minimum 1 extra person to pilot it effectively.

I love my skyguard and think it's incredibly powerful. The mobility of a lightning on an AA platform like the Skyguard is ridiculous.

You can also less than 1 clip ESFs so I don't understand all these weird people posting here complaining that it isn't effective at AA. I have sprayed in the middle of air zergs at random and have picked up kills.





It does not take 1 minute of firing to kill a liberator. You can cause them to flame with a single clip if they aren't running composite armor. If they decide to kill you instead of flee, that's a huge gamble. Not to mention that being on the ground provides you in a skyguard with COVER which air units are unable to effectively make use of.

These vehicles are well balanced. People pull skyguards and expect 9000 kills or something I guess- it's a support vehicle.

A 3,000 HP ESF takes +60% flak damage, which means that the Skyguard does 96 damage per shot (up from 60). It takes 32 hits to kill a ESF. Assuming 100% accuracy, that's 4 solid seconds of firing. Assuming the best player accuracy of 49.5%, that's 65 shots to kill and 8.125 seconds of firing. Assuming the average accuracy of 28.6%, that's 112 shots to kill and 14 seconds of firing.

Given how ESF speeds are probably no slower than 200m/s, Skyguards have a very short engagement window against ESFs. 4 solid seconds of exposure only happens with the worst of pilots who do not know how to use terrain or evasive tactics, and assumes an unnatural 100% accuracy. Seeing as how the average player needs to fire over 100 shots to kill a ESF, it's no wonder why Skyguards are so terrible.

Skyguards only account for 3.3% of ESF deaths. 35.94% of ESF deaths are from crashes, so Skyguards are only 1/10 as effective at killing ESF pilots as ESF pilots are at killing themselves. 6.04% of ESF deaths are due to hostile collisions, so if you climb in an aircraft and just attempt to ram enemy ESFs you have about twice the success rate as a Skyguard. Friendly collisions account for 3.05% of ESF deaths, meaning that friendly pilots are almost more of a threat than Skyguards (and probably are more dangerous once you take into account that only two factions of Skyguards are firing at you).

To reiterate, things that are more dangerous than Skyguards:
Pilots themselves
Enemy aircraft crashing into you
Friendly aircraft crashing into you

That's how bad Skyguards are.

That ground provides the Liberator with cover as well. If I can't see the Liberator, I can't exactly shoot it, can I? Not to mention that as a vehicle that can operate in a 3D space, the Liberator is much better able to use and negate cover than a Skyguard. If you don't know how to effectively make use of cover as a pilot, you're just not a good pilot.

Anyhow, a Liberator has a whopping 5,000 HP (more than a MBT, mind you) and also a 35% resistance to flak. A Skyguard's 60 damage shell is reduced to 39 damage, meaning it takes 129 hits to kill a stock Liberator. At 8 rounds per second, a Skyguard with 100% accuracy will take 16.125 seconds of firing plus a 3 second reload.

Now Skyguards never have 100% accuracy. At the best accuracy out of any recorded player in PS2, the Skyguard requires 261 shots to kill a Liberator (32.625 seconds of firing and 9 seconds of reloading), while the average Skyguarder requires 452 shots to kill a Liberator (56.5 seconds of firing and 18 seconds of reloading).

Which explains why Liberators almost never die to Skyguards, at 2.71%. Heck, other Liberators get far more Liberator kills than Skyguards, at 8.75%. Liberators are over 3 times as dangerous to other Liberators as Skyguards are, and Liberators are supposed to be A2G aircraft!

Can Liberators be support vehicles too then? How about Liberator weapons stop doing damage to a ground target once that ground target only has 20% health. That forces the ground vehicle to drive off and repair, removing it temporarily from the fight. Maybe we can toss Liberator crews some measly ground deterrence EXP for their troubles.

Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Best post ever... In your face Devs !... Do your job - balance the Skyguard.

Skyguards are still easy meat for a Gal stomp.

Well, look at that. Thanks for taking the time to prove my premise that it does not take a whole minute to kill a Liberator.

As well, if in fact 30% of flight deaths are from the pilot, this also puts flight deaths at a higher kill rate than any other weapon in the game. No weapon breaks that 30% mark.

So if the argument is:

Flight deaths outweighing Skyguard kills means that Skyguard sucks
Then,
By that logic every other form of AA which falls below 30% of total pilot kills sucks as well.

So by your own argument,

"All AA sucks." ~ Dreez

Bravo.

"But they don't KILL them"

Yes, my friends, this is why you get points just for shooting at air vehicles, while they only get points if they kill you.

Everyone wants their vehicle to be able to RamboWTFPWN#**** everything that moves and forget that they are a piece in a giant war machine.

Please, answer me this very fundamental question,

Why should a Skyguard and Liberator have equal chance at killing each other?

Well of course. What fun is it playing a game where your vehicle is not designed to kill anything? What would happen if we reduced Liberator or ESF damage by 99% against ground targets? Would those vehicles still be fun?

It's ridiculous that air vehicles are allowed to get solo air-to-ground kills while you need a mob of Skyguards to even chase off aircraft. That's the imbalance that any rational person would find crazy.

Liberators are effective anti-everything weapons. They can kill things that walk, things that drive, and things that fly.

A Skyguard is a specialist weapon. The huge CoF makes it difficult to kill things that walk. The poor damage makes it difficult to kill things that drive.

So the logical thing would be that the Skyguard would be really, really good at killing things that fly. The Skyguard should be able to easily kill a Liberator before the Liberator kills the Skyguard.

Otherwise, if the Skyguard can't kill infantry, ground vehicles, or aircraft, what is the point of such a vehicle?

This is why a Skyguard should kill a Liberator (and any aircraft) in under 2 seconds or so (to match Liberator TTK against a Skyguard).

Easy way to fix the Skyguard in two phases.
Phase 1:
Boost Projectile speed from 300m/s to 800m/s or at the very least its projectile speed it had at launch, 600m/s.
Decrease Cone of Fire back to its original size.

Phase 2:
Any further refinement.

Now hang on a second, why should a smaller tank be able to deck a sky tank? Why should HE shells only have one meter of kill potential against a small target? Why should sky tank be able to kill everything?
EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE NOW.
Its all broken.

Also, under two seconds? That's way too short, even tanks can't kill other tanks that fast. Plus you'd have to compensate entry verses time to get to objective area and exposure time. Two seconds is like no one would ever pull air ever.

You forgot to answer the question. You answered "Can a Liberator kill a Skyguard as easily as a Skyguard can kill a Liberator?".

A liberator costs more nanites, and requires 3 people to use to it's full capacity. It is not an "effective anti-everything" unless you have a squad. A lib can also be pulled from limited locations while a Skyguard can be pulled from literally every vehicle pad on the map.

The skyguard is not intended to 1v1 Liberators, but can EASILY 1v1 ESFs...which I might be throwing out some crazy numbers you might not realize, but....an ESF and a Skyguard cost the same amount of nanites. WHOA! MINDBLOW!

It would be like releasing a giant floating fortress that costs 10 players 500 nanites a piece to spawn and then complaining a single Skyguard can't 1v1 it on the basis that "Well the skyguard is anti-air, so why can't it kill the floating fortress as easily as the fortress can kill the skyguard?"

Because it costs 5000 nanites and requires 10 people to pilot to it's fullest while the Skyguard costs 350 and can be pulled by a single person anywhere on the continent. If the logic doesn't work for the flying fortress, it doesn't work for the Liberator. It's literally the same principle but we would just be arguing about scale.

2 Skyguards mean no Liberators in the air...but 2 skyguards cost more nanites than a liberator and aren't nearly as flexible, we call this balance.

There's this weird idea on this site that balances means every weapon and vehicle has the same number of kills

Why should there even be a sky tank in the first place? There's this things called gravity, and heavily armoured things just can't fly.

The TTK of a Liberator against a Skyguard is roughly that. As a Liberator is already effective against all targets, the Skyguard should have an even shorter TTK than a Liberator against a Skyguard.

As for transit time, are you really going to try and argue that a fast-moving Liberator would have more transit time than it takes to drive a Skyguard around terrain to get into position?

Stop joking around. 3/3 Liberators are extremely rare, and I've done the math to show that a good portion of the time a Liberator is just running around as 1/3. To say that a Liberator "requires" three people is nonsense. In that sense it takes just as many people to operate a Liberator as a Skyguard.

Sure... a Skyguard can easily 1v1 a ESF... if the ESF stands absolutely still and lets the Skyguard land 100% hits for 4 seconds. Which again, the evidence still shows that Skyguards are terrible against ESFs, accounting for fewer kills than friendly air crashes. You can't seriously argue that Skyguards are strong versus ESFs.

What's so strange that a dedicated anti-air weapon should be more effective at killing air than an air-to-ground weapon?

Air Kills Per Hour
Dalton- 9.84-11.21
Skyguard- 5.39-6.00

Is it not reasonable to expect that a dedicated anti-air tank kills more aircraft than an anti-ground cannon? Especially when that anti-ground cannon easily outperforms the anti-air tank in all other respects? Only the most biased of pilots would think otherwise.