Skygaurd, way to weak.

Skygaurd is way to weak.

There should be no way an enemy fighter should be able to take out a Skygaurd Lightening going head to head. IMO something needs to be balanced out here. It is just makes no sense that an armored tank is being taken out in one pass by an anti personnel weapon (which a rocket is), and a weapon system that is designed to take out air power needs a full magazine and another reload to take out a fighter which has hardly any armor.

Guard*

Yeah but according to many pod/zeph wh0res its totally balanced..... rofl

Completely agree. The dev decision on this one is utterly deluded. And sustainably so which is particularly worrying.

Give it access to a new defensive modification called an Umbrella Shield. Which would project a half dome shield above the tank leaving ground level trajectory attacks unimpeded but provides strong protection from the air.

Don't simply buff the gun which is already pretty strong.

Agree- If someone has put a specific AA gun on their tank it should be deadly to aircraft if the aircraft gets caught by it.

Because of the infantry render distance issues, I have to agree. As an A2A mossie pilot, I have yet to die to skyguards. I do, instead, die to unrendered maxes shooting me from who knows where.
Pulling a lightning is a significantly larger commitment to the anti- air offensive than a MAX. Maxes cost less (correct me if I'm wrong, but 100 infantry resources?) and are more flexible than a skyguard lightning. If a bunch of enemy tanks show up, you are helpless as a skyguard, while as a max you can go back inside and switch to a Heavy Assault at no cost. If you get out of your lightning, you just wasted 200 vehicle resources, a significantly more valuable resource than infantry resources.
The lightning, in my experience, is much more likely to die to A2G attacks than MAXes as the lightning is a larger target, has a lower DPS, and has a significantly harder time finding air-cover.

In my uneducated opinion, the Skyguard needs a significant buff to its cone of fire and clip size, and maybe a slight buff to damage. The only way this thing should die from solo/small team air is if a pilot sneeks up behind it and empties a salvo of rockets into its tailpipe, otherwise this thing should clear the air of ESFs and scare away libs. Liberators should still be able to kill it, but such contests should be determined by accuracy, if the lib misses any of its shots, it should die to a skyguard barrage (assuming most of the flack hits the lib-the contests devolves into how far away the lib can get while still landing shells on the skygaurd)

MAXes, on the other hand, should receive a small nerf to their cone of fire. To compensate for the nerf, small amounts of XP should be rewarded to those who do damage to aircraft. It isn't fun to play as AA as you don't earn certs at any reliable rate, and dying to AA isn't fun as oftentimes, you don't have a chance to react (read: not fun gameplay).

AA should normally be a deterrence to aircraft and should only kill anyone stupid enough to hover while rocketspamming. To make it up to AA players, make the venture very lucrative, make every hit from dedicated AA give 5XP and every hit from small arms fire grant 3XP. The problem of everyone and their dog playing AA solves itself, as once you kill/ chase off immediate air threats, the rate of XP gain drops significantly and players who have switched would very likely just go back to their normal classes so they can be useful. the devs could tweak the XP gain to make sure that there is always at least 1 AA player defending important points while there very rarely are more than 5.

TL;DR: Nerf MAX AA, Buff Skyguard, add XP to AA damage.

I tried out the Skyguard. Lots of half-HP or third-HP damages, no takedowns.

You just gotta join an outfit...errr uhh...just pull an esf to counter...umm...I'm out of generic responses for why AA is fine.

You left out Teamwork.

*too

Why pull a skygaurd if there is an option to pull a MAX with better surviveability, likelihood of killing your target? The three things that motivate players in this game are completing goals, having fun, and grinding. You cannot have fun or grind in a skyguard, and you accomplish your goal with less efficiency than a MAX. I play A2A ESF because I can accomplish all three of these things; the ground variant should be just as rewarding, if not a little less due to what should be increased survivability. Skyguard is currently not rewarding and therefore something needs to be done to it without ruining the air game.

This. I can scare off aircraft just fine in a Skyguard now due to the increased projectile speed and tighter cone meaning I can actually hit them.

Problem is that that's all I do usually. Meaning I spend the entire battle repeatedly swatting away the same pilots, for a net gain of **** all experience.

EXP per hit man, EXP per hit
(and larger rewards for assists/kills)

I'm fine with that. As it currently stands, I'd have more use buying... I don't know... a HORN than the Skyguard.

as a pilot i find skyguards weak but max's strong

imo AA max's should get a nerf but the G30 (formerly called A30) Walker and the Skyguard should be buffed

Agreed, the supposed buffs to the Walker and Skyguard in the last update made hardly any difference to them.

Skyguards are really horrible right now, I personally fell in love with the things way back in beta before they fixed the screen shaking and changed the way 3rd person view worked.
Had to compensate for drop, enemy movement speed etc.
It was great at close range and could kill anything that flew in a straight line at 300M if it was a ESF and even more if it was a Liberator.
The only reason nobody complained was because very few people had the skyguard or knew how to use it.

Then they removed screenshake, then the cries about OP came... and now the skyguard sucks.

It's highly visible from range unlike the Max suits and has no choice when it comes to taking cover when overwhelmed.
The giant COF makes it impossible to hit high flying Liberators that can bomb you with their Dalton, and all you can do is run.

The mouse smoothing makes quick reactions in first person hard, shooting an ESF passing right over you requires the mouse to be moved across the room.
Third person in not a solution either since the camera completely blocks your view upwards now.

ESF can easily escape you even if you have the advantage and can easily take you out if they surprise you.
Liberators outrange the Skyguard and got more then enough tank to survive it or even hang around and kill it.

And what does a skyguard get for all their work? Do they get kills, expl or even a pat on the shoulder from their team mates?
Nope, not at all.


For the cert price of the Skyguard you can easily get rocket pods, get a rotary if you save some more and you will be 10x as effective against air and get tons and tons of certs for killing Infantry and Tanks when the airspace is clear.



It doesn't matter how much they buff the damage of the skyguard or it's Clip size, as long as the CoF and horrible mouse smoothing stays they will never be effective at their only purpose.

Maybe make top armor a little more robust, I thinks its what ? 10% lol

I tried flying around as an ESF today, with no certs or extra weapons. Yep, no flares. At all. I didn't find Skyguards overpowered at all. Hell, the only anti-air that actually scared me was lockons from enemy aircraft. G2A launchers could just be outrun by working out the logical direction they were fired from / working out where they were fired from by what didn't break Line of Sight, and zip away. If it's a particularly persistant lock, find a big tower, afterburn to the other side of the tower, and watch as the missile lock dissapears as it slams into the tower. For anything that actually uses flak, just fly your aircraft like it's infantry - drop it out of line of sight behind a hill.

Just make sure that when you fly, you've already worked out your exit route - what terrain you will pop behind. True, I didn't kill much at all (default weaponry is kinda bad... except for hunting infantry), but - as long as I planned ahead - nothing was a threat.

Locked on missiles? Fly away as fast as possible and pop behind some sort of hard cover so it slams into said cover.
Anti Aircraft flak? Fly low and fast behind a hill.