A tip to skyguard scrubs to avoid lib deaths

It does, we have all the problems of ground, but we're priority targets for other air, we get hit from outside render distance, there's guns made to specially kill us over ******edly long distances. We die way faster. We have to be careful in 3D.
And the biggest, there is SO MANY MORE angles from which we can get shot from.

You had no issue with possible skewedness of the stats when claiming Lib has OP AKPH. However when VKPH and KPH don't support your arguing position then they suddenly become skewed.

You are just plain intellectually dishonest.

Just explain why Lib has lower KPH and less users than MBTs if it is so OP.

When weapon is OP it becomes very popular and has above-average KPH.
Lib has none of those markers.

Until you can explain why all your arguing and anedoctal evidence is moot. You don't even have any flying experience, how on Earth could you give unbiased assessment?

Just look at this

Have you ever even fired a Dalton or Tank Buster?

Overhead.

Overhead is the time it takes during a medical procedure to prepare something that cannot be prepared before the procedure. So sterilising everything can happen before, but the assembly of some components has to be done while the patient is on the table. This could be due to not knowing the size of something or other factors that change the way it needs to be assembled or work.

And that's how it is for Liberators and MBT's.

Where do people pull an MBT? They pull it at a base close to the front, perhaps take a little time to get a gunner and then they are fighting. The amount of overhead, the time needed before it can start killing, is tiny.

Now look at Liberators. When they start killing, especially killing ground units, they can kill quickly and often kill a few in a short time. But the amount of overhead is huge. They are pulled at warpgates most often, as it's easy and safe gathering there. Despite their speed this means more overhead, you need to fly to a frontline and engage something, keeping an eye on possible A2A ESF while you are at it. This means their KPH goes down as it takes longer for them to get to the killing. Also Liberators soak up a ton of damage, which means more downtime for repairs due to their much larger health-pool. Also, tank battles are self-feeding. By the time a few tanks are destroyed a few new one's have replaced them, that's because the MBT's can fight back other MBT's and having a tank superiority is immensely useful. But when a Liberator takes down an MBT people don't pull a new one because they can't fight back against a Lib, they go infantry, take AA or move somewhere else. This means the liberator needs to start moving to another base after leveling the ground units there. Also the Liberator users often fly to other bases if they think they receive too much AA and go for easier prey. This flying about costs more time, reduces KPH even more etc.

Another example I already mentioned was pistols. They work similar to MBTs and Liberators. The MBT's are the pistols (we are talking about usage, not power), Liberators are the primary weapons.
You run around with a primary weapon, this means the KPH goes down while you hold it. Pistols are only really carried as primaries by Stalker cloakers. This means that in most cases whenever a pistol is used it has only just been drawn because the primary weapon was empty. This means that they get a kill in the very short time they were pulled before switching back to the primary again.
And what do you see? The KPH of Pistols is skewed as hell! There's pistols with 40+KPH, which only the most OP weapons can equal, despite having worse accuracy, ammo, damage, DPS etc than most primaries.

And I said "most aircraft weapons". Keyword: Most. You can name the bellycanons all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that most aircraft weapons have no or less bullet drop than anything the ground has, also, bullet drop means less for each degree you aim vertically. At a perfect vertical you experience no bullet drop, as any bullet drop would cause the bullet/shell to accelerate to the ground.

Aaaaaand what will you take away from this? will you reply to the actual explanation or will you go nitpicking? Will you ignore it? Or will you just call it ******** (and subsequently ignore it)?
I would bet on the last one.

Ok this actually makes sense. Lets make some deductions.

So according to you Lib pilots will spend more of their time flying to objective than fighting. They will also have more usage time per user than MBTs because they will force MBT drivers to switch to infantry.

VS Dalton
Uniques:171
Play Time(h):45
Play Time per Unique:0.26h = 15.6 minutes

VS Saron
Uniques:776
Play Time(h):171.5
Play Time per Unique:22 min = 13 minutes

1)Average VS Lib Crew has about 20% more uptime than average VS MBT crew. In other words average Lib crew will spend 2 minutes more in their vehicle than MBT crew. First of all this disproves your theory that Libs force tank drivers to switch to infantry. As you can see both unit types see equal amount of usage per person. And if you think 20% is significant difference then I'd kindly recommend you acquaint yourself with concept of statistical significance. If you want to insist that 20% is large difference then I'll answer in separate post how to estimate standard deviation of the group and calculate probability that 20% difference is caused by random factors.

2)Now on to estimating real KPH average:
Lib has top speed of about 200KPH. This means it can fly over 3000m distance in one minute. It would take about 2 minutes on average for Lib to reach the battlefield from WG.

If out of those 15.6 minutes 2 are spent traveling towards the objective then that means Liberator is spending 13.6 minutes on frontline. This means that Liberator's true KPH is probably 15% higher. (I'll generously assume that MBTs don't have travel time and that they spawn right in the midst of battle so they don't need any KPH increase).

VS Dalton has about 20% higher VKPH than Saron. Multiply that with 1.15 correction and you would be tempted to say that Dalton has 40% higher VKPH and is thus OP.

Here is the kicker: Dalton is a kill finisher, it steals kills from tank buster. Tank buster has about 6.4, Dalton has 23.8 VKPH.
Magrider AP has about 11.73 and Saron has about 20.16 VKPH.

Total:
Lib: 30.2
Magrider: 31,9
This means that Magrider has about 5% higher VKPH.

With correction for overheads Lib has: 30.2*1.15 = 34.73 VKPH
This means that Liberator now has about 8% higher VKPH.

The difference is still not large enough to warrant A2G nerfs (We can discuss this further if you want). Liberator also has huge AKPH advantage but lower infantry KPH.

In conclusion I would only agree with A2A nerf. Lib should be less lethal against ESFs and perhaps other Libs. However A2A nerf could also lower A2G capability so devs should be ready to give it slight A2G buff (not necessarily damage buff).

I'm not sure this analogy helps your case. Those pistols have low number of users which skews their KPH. Libs also have few times lower number of users than MBTs. On the other hand those pistols also have low usage time per user. Tanks also have 20% lower usage time per user but that is hardly large enough difference.

Critical question is would Lib's average KPH drop even further if you increased number of users by forcing people to fly them. Somehow I have a feeling that it would.

Overhead, as you call it, is just another balancing factor. If Libs were spawned right next to battle like tanks then they would simply die more and would have even lower SPH.

If Libs were totally dominating tank drivers up to the point that they were forcing them to switch to infantry then somehow I think difference in average uptime between the two would be larger than 20%.

You talk about statistical significance below, but here you already make a mistake yourself. You are implying that any tank pilot that doesn't pull a new tank means less play time per Unique. But this is ofcourse false, pulling a tank and having it destroyed before the average is reached will drag the average down (such as pulling a tank near Libs), not pulling a tank will leave the average stable. Pulling a tank anywhere else will keep the average as it is as 13 minutes is the standard survival time of a Saron.
And are you ignoring the fact that they have almost 7x more users now? That's pretty significant in the whole discussion (aside from the fact that the correlation wasn't right, which is also a part of statistical significance). Because there's a lot fewer times a Lib that destroys several tanks there's also a lot less times people go for infantry, different vehicles or move somewhere else to tank there (hey, just because they don't pull it at the fight they were on doesn't mean they don't pull it at antoher fight, reducing the amount of non-play time due to a Lib).

You did compare the most used secondary weapon to the least used Dalton. Seeing the standard deviation between the 3 Daltons the VS version could be used a lot more in a few days. This also correlates to the relatively low variation between amount of users. Just look at the amount of user time the TR get, they get 18 minutes per dalton user, which is pretty significantly more.
You also seem to be implying that a 20% difference isn't big in statistics. But you seem to be missing that 20% difference with 95% accuracy! Seeing the difference between all 3 Dalton users together, I would estimate that you could only say it's 20% difference with 40% accuracy or less, and 20% is the minimum amount of difference in this little trawl through statistical land. Seeing that the Saron is the most used Secondary, the whole comparison only shows that the difference will be greater the more secondary weapons you start to add to the equation, in favor of the Liberator crews.

You are missing the things like repair time, which is longer for Liberators as you need to get out, find a spot, decelerate, land, repair and get back up to speed.
And your generosity isn't that generous, seeing the amount of time it takes most tanks to get into battle I would estimate about 30 seconds of overhead, give or take.

Hey, that last part was sense! Making the Liberator a more specialised A2G weapon would allow it to keep more power against ground units, as the omniversatility of the weapons are reduced and thus the total power and threat it can cash out. And that's all I wanted, a more balanced gameplay for all. I do need to say this: any weapon that allows, through skill, to destroy something without the chance of being killed simply because there's not enough of something is bad design. So something that can fight back on equal ground would be needed: That still means that the AA side needs to be looked at. Being either too weak or too powerful depending solely on amount of players using it is simply bad design. Getting specialities such as MBT Primary canon AA and a different Lightning weapon specifically for destroying big aircraft, but lacking the ability to properly hit and destroy ESF at the same time, would be a favorite of mine. aircraft being the counter to aircraft is bad design when ground doesn't get a real counter.

Edit:
Oh, I think I owe you at least one apology for the fact that you actually came with a good reply, even though I disagreed with most in it.

Maybe you should think that through little bit better. If tank driver doesn't pull new tank then that will mean less play time per Unique compared to Liberators.

Lib destroys a tank and flies away -> Tank play time stops ticking, Lib play time continues ticking.

Liberators can quickly move along the frontline and hunt for new tanks. If tank drivers decide to tank elsewhere they will still have to deal with Libs. So having 7x users doesn't reduce the amount of non-play time due to a Lib. If anything 7x users is a proof that your original claim is wrong.

You claimed that Libs have lower KPH because they can't find targets to shoot. Well that apparently isn't the case because there are 7 tanks for every one Lib. Reason why Libs don't have huge VKPH is not because they don't have any tanks to shoot but because they aren't that powerful after all.

We are not dealing with experimental data. You can explain 20% difference with whole set of other factors which aren't related to weapon balance.

For example TR Dalton has 30% higher usage time per unique than VS Dalton. Does it mean that we need to nerf TR Dalton?

Repair time doesn't skew the data. It is valid balancing factor which forces pilots to waste time. Same with travel time. If Libs didn't bother repairing in safe places or if they weren't spawned at the warpgates then they would be destroyed more often and they would have even worse KPH and play time.

No lol. We went through this: Only aspect of Lib's KPH that needs to be balanced is AKPH. Buffing ground AA is wrong way to go about it. We simply need to increase aircraft's resistance to Lib weapons and that is it.

Buffing AA would just lead to even lower Lib A2G KPH and that is unwarranted.

Why so much hate for the skyguard? It's little lightning tank, it will not stand up to face to face meeting with a lib, you gotta flank or ambush enemy air, or even better, sit at the escape path of enemy air, so when they swoop back into cover behind that hill or ridge; suprise, suprise there is a skyguard covering that side, boom, no more aircraft.

Low skill skyguards tend to sit still, often inside the base being attacked by air, they are sitting ducks. Just one skyguard sitting off to the side flanking the main entry and/or exit points of enemy aircraft into the engagement area will rack up kills or at least seriously gently caress any airplane.

And lets reverse this...

The same pathetic argument could be used in the other direction, moron. Get a ******* brain. Your attitude sucks. Digital schlong-waving doesn't do anything useful.

Not really, if aircraft was OP and easy to use then more people would fly.

All other OP weapons such as ZOE MAXes and Vulcan Harassers were spammed back in their heyday yet for some strange reason people have moral qualms about using the Liberator?

lol

2 Skyguards not a threat to a competent crew? I'm dissapointed, Currently, disinformation is unbecoming of you.

In all fairness, my comment was not so much about the game, but rather about that particular individual and his/her way of presenting an argument.

Yelling "Get good scrub" is not an acceptable way of conducting oneself. It's rude, boring, tedious and repetative. It assumes a position of superiority without necessarily having any particular grounds for making that assumption. It is an argument that can be repeated endlessly by all sides of a disagreement without any analysis of fact, statistics and so on. One does not have to think in order to use that particular line.

You can absolutely guarantee that if there was an option in this game to cert into tact, decency and communication skills, it would be the most underused cert line in the game.

The same counts for getting C4red, driving over tank mines, getting shot by rockets/missiles, getting shelled etc. The reason why a tank dies doesn't matter for the statistics: the complete package of all death causes means that the Saron is used for about 13 minutes in the end.
If they pull anything else than a tank after death, the only thing that is really affected is the amount of uniques. But that still doesn't mean that the amount of overhead is changed for either the Lib or the MBT.

Or, or, and here's a thing: They take longer to get to a target, as I explained before? And they have longer downtime due to repair runs, need to actually find resupply pads occasionally which take more time than with tanks, need to watchout for other aircraft and change their location if too much aircraft are already present etc etc.

No, it means that the relative small sample size and RNG have a huge effect on the statistics of the Dalton, which is what the whole "standard deviation" is about. One lucky or unlucky event has a much large impact on the statistics of the Dalton due to that small sample size. It's like asking one guy who he's going to vote for and then telling the world "100% of the people are going to vote for ...". Now even with 100% of the sample size it's small for the Liberator, and it has a big effect.

Valid balancing factor or not, the longer time needed for repair-runs means less KPH. What were we talking about? How more actions and overhead lead to lower KPH? So yeah, it does skew the data.

You completely miss the fact that I don't just want to buff AA? You also missed the fact that I wouldn't mind a small buff to Liberators if they had less A2A capabilities?
In any battle, aircraft, tanks and infantry should be fighting each other. It shouldn't matter if the battle is big or small. The players should automatically pick different roles, and part of those roles should be AA. The AA should not just push the problem to another area (read; "deterrent"), it should be able to kill. For this to be balanced they need to have their skill-reducing factors removed or toned down (flak, lock-on). Just read the idea's I gave FBVanu for it as examples how it could be done.

if Libs had any less A2A they would be unplayable, "small buffs" or not. right now you have to be one of like maybe 30 people that play A2A Lib in the game to even stay up long enough to earn the nanites spent (9 minutes.) you're not one of those 30 people, it's clear. the skill floor for a Lib team to successfully defend itself in the air is already too high for most people. you literally have to be the best of the dedicated Lib teams to start breaking even up there. at this point the only thing holding up the playstyle is love of the playstyle, and the fact that no other game exists to provide the same kind of of pilot/crew dogfighting at this speed and intensity.

typical crews either quit after getting ganked by ESF teams or farmed by top ESFs or Libs without ever being able to target them effectively. the 5 or 6 best crews in the game are on equal footing with the best ESFs but 1 mediocre kill stealer at render distance or 1 G2A lock on user ruins that fight. you're clearly not one of the top ESFs either, but you might be one of the kill stealers, the DonAfraido type that can't face a Lib but shoots tomcats in its back when it's fighting someone good.

basically your crusade against Liberator A2A must be personal because it's definitely not an issue in live play. and it's funny because i've never once heard of a good Lib crew from Miller. so you must be getting crapped on by terrible players in the broad scheme of things, or else one of the small handful of teams is moonlighting there for the lols.

Again you are losing sight of what we were originally arguing about - and that is tanks don't get spawned again if they are destroyed by Liberators. If you get C4ed or tank mined you will just spawn another tank. On the other hand if there is Liberator flying around you won't bother spawning another tank even if you have enough res - or so you claim. That was your explanation why Liberators have low VKPH - because they don't have enough tanks to shoot.

And in case you still don't get it: not spawning a tank will reduce play time per unique relative to Liberator play time per unique. Liberator's play time will be increasing while tank's will be static. Relatively speaking tank's play time will be decreasing.

Repair and resupply are not skewing the data. Travel time is skewing data IF AND ONLY IF tank drivers refuse to spawn any more tanks when they get killed by Lib. Otherwise it is also valid balancing factor.

Are you joking? Those are Averaged daily weapon stats. Daily averages are re-calculated each day, from the previous 30 days data. If Dalton has 200 uniques per day that means we have 200*30=6000 data points!

OK I'll try to explain distinction between factors that skew data and factors which just influence it. Whether something skews data depends on conclusion you are trying to make. We are discussing whether Lib is OP.

Overpowered units usually have high KPH score. But in rarer instances they can force other units to actively avoid confrontation and this will artificially lower the KPH(you made me realize this, thanks btw). Do you get the distinction? KPH is lowered because others are actively avoiding confrontation because unit in question is too strong.

As far as repairing, resupplying and watching out for other aircraft is concerned, KPH is reduced because Liberator is avoiding confrontation. This doesn't skew the data because overpowered units don't avoid confrontation. In these instances confrontation is not avoided because Liberator is too strong.

I really don't want to open another discussion but... no, Skyguard is one-seater anti-aircraft vehicle, Lib is two-seater anti-vehicle aircraft. The two cancel each other out. It should take two Skyguards to kill 1 Liberator.

I can only agree with buffing Skyguard so it becomes viable anti-infantry gun, but no to AA buffs.

edit: or alternatively give Skyguard to Harasser, that would be even cooler (but it might have some unintended consequences)

But the Lib has 3 seats and 3 guns^^

I had similar impression but according to stats Liberator has similar KPH score as tanks. Your response made me check out BR100 stats for Lib/MBT weapons with highest number of users. If you add up KPH scores for driver and gunner you will find that most used Lib weapons tend to have 30-50% lower KPH than most used MBT weapons.

I'd just like to point out that PPA was nerfed for less than that.

Well yeah but it isn't relevant for the discussion. Most Libs don't have 3rd gunner and when they do it is usually used for A2A.

2 Skyguards should still destroy 3/3 Lib because nanite investment is higher on their part. (Unless you have LA commando in there who can jump out and c4 one of the Skyguards by himself)