A tip to skyguard scrubs to avoid lib deaths

The MBT's play time and KPH will be static, which means it doesn't change. Relatively speaking nothing changes. If only one MBT were pulled in a whole month, and after 13 minutes the MBT is destroyed by a Lib. Then that's the 13 minutes and KPH that will show on the Oracle of Death. The static playtime doesn't do anything. The only thing it does is reduce the total amount of uniques that is pulled.

They are skewing the data.
Refusing to spawn does not affect it.
Reducing score by using travel time, repair time etc are not exactly balancing factors. You can balance small differences, but not big one's like the incredible TTK that the Liberator has as a whole.

Hey, an oversight of me.
Still, this only makes it even worse for your point I guess. You compared the very lowest and worst of the Daltons to the best and highest MBT secondary. If we were to, say, compare all 3 faction best secondary MBT weapons to the 3 faction Dalton, which is a much better comparison, the difference between them would become huge.

The problem here is: they can't really avoid confrontation.
Let's redefine the original statement.
Instead of 'Liberators are OP', let's go with 'Liberators give unfun confrontations due to the extreme power they can field in seconds and the lack of proper ground-based AA'. It comes down to the same thing: when you fight a Liberator as a ground unit, there's barely anything you can do unless you happened to equip AA at the time, at which point the Liberator still kills you and you have to hope someone else finishes what you started.

What I want is not just balanced gameplay, otherwise increasing the time between kills etc would already be enough of a balancing factor. But imagine if a weapon was introduced that could insta-kill someone regardless of cover every minute or so, including any vehicle they might be occupying. It would be balanced, in half a minute you can get more kills, right? But would it be fun for anyone? People would be able to use it from spawnrooms, killing people anywhere in the hex without repercussions. The Liberator isn't that bad, but all aircraft in the end have such an effect on ground units: either pull a large enough bunch or don't bother trying to fight back.
Let's look at the latest UT's for example. You've got anything from a pistol to tanks and even a goddamn handheld nuke. Still that's balanced and fair, as the game offers enough ways to fight back through the weapons abilities, environment, movement capabilities and weapon pickups.
Planetside doesn't offer that properly. This in part is a good thing as it promotes right weapon choice and logistics to bring the right stuff with you during an attack. But due to the lack of good ground-based AA, which scales bad and becomes too good too quickly (similar to Liberator skill giving too much power for skill). This means that AA needs to change, and some of the Liberator stuff needs to change with it to prevent it from becoming bad or remaining too powerful depending on the actual changes.

The Liberators highest killers are all ESF weapons. Avoiding confrontation with too much ESF is wise. A single ESF they can probably handle.

yeah! 100 extra resources should allow you to go toe-to-toe with 2 Skyguards! While also being able to kill tons of aircraft? And having the lowest TTK against vehicles? And being one of better vehicles against itself after ESF.

Or, or, and here's an idea, you think of the posibilities of a different AA system that improves the overall gameplay?

I am not scared of many Lib crews but nerfing dalton would only affect statistics. If it wasn't a 1 shot people would probably bail most of the time.

I don't think the skyguards role/job is to KILL aircraft. It's job is to PROTECT friendlies from aircraft. That's why you get EXP for just damaging aircraft to make up for the skyguard's supposed lack of kills.

Its not a 100% fault proof AA killing machine and it should not be. Whenever I have used a Skyguard, I've always been more successful when attacking aircraft engaging other targets. In 1 on 1 fights in the middle of nowhere, the fight is not always in your favor.

also run into where the lib fire is coming from. drive towards the lib.

You can't comprehend elementary school level math. I'm astounded.

When player A spawns a tank and 10 minutes later gets destroyed, total MBT play time per unique will be 10.
If player A decides to spawn another tank the very same day and gets destroyed 10 minutes later then total play time will be (10+10) / (1) = 20.

We are not dividing total play time with number of spawned tanks. We are dividing it with number of players.

If tank driver A stops spawning tanks, and pilot B keeps spawning Libs then that means Lib play time per unique will grow relatively to MBT play time. Or you can reverse it and say that MBT play time will become lower relative to Lib play time. You don't seem to understand what word relative means in context of movement/changes. Maybe you should look it up.

How much simpler do I need to make it?

So according to you:
1)Libs flying above the base, tank drivers afraid to spawn tanks, Libs have low VKPH

is the same category of data skew as

2)Libs are unable to attack tanks because anti-air is too powerful and therefore Libs will have low VKPH

This is same to you? Really? How dense do you have to be not to realize that in first case Libs have low VKPH BECAUSE THEY ARE TOO OP AND THEREFORE VKPH IS SKEWED.

In second case Libs have low VKPH BECAUSE ANTI-AIR IS TOO STRONG AND NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE OP.

CAN YOU REALLY NOT SEE THE DIFFERENCE?

Not true. NC and VS Dalton have almost identical play time per unique. And Saron has like 5% higher play time per unique than Enforcer. You could switch them and my point would still remain. Can you even read the stats or do I need to do everything for you?

Libs can't avoid confrontation? Lib is much faster than MBT, of course it can avoid confrontation. Not flying straight into AA nest is called avoiding confrontation. WTF is wrong with you?

Seems I made a really good point because you have decided to completely ignore it.

Yeah lets open up another discussion. Like we don't have enough walls of text already.

What are you talking about? I said Liberator should lose to 2 Skyguards but win against 1 Skyguard. I never said Lib should be able to go toe-to-toe with 2 Skyguards.

Uniques - Daily sum of unique killers of the particular weapon - i.e to be a unique, at least one kill has been made with that weapon.

Well I'll be damned, I always read that as if the player uses the same weapon in a next life it counts as a new unique. This has something to do with definition, not math btw.
Also, this doesn't make it better for you again. Relatively compared to the Lib the time stops, but seeing as the total death pool gets the most used Saron on 13 minutes of play time and you compared this to the least used Dalton, it's not exaclty changing anything.
Also you forget that someone might pull the tank somewhere else, which was an option I included.

And even when you have a glimmer of truth you use more hostile degrading arguments than actual truth. Great going!

You are twisting stuff. When there's AA, they can survive and go somewhere with easier prey, but the travel takes time, as they need to avoid the best AA in the game: other aircraft. It's not for nothing that ESF nosecanons and Liberator Tank Busters score better than AA at killing Liberators. Hell, greed scores more kills due to the Lib suiciding through hitting friendly Libs and Galaxies than AA. So AA is not OP, it's a simple matter of "this prey is a little bit more dangerous, I'll go somewhere else where it's easier". And Liberators have that option due to their flying and speed, but it does take time, reducing KPH.
Liberators killing tanks because they have the unfun and OP mechanic of being able to crush tanks faster than anything else in the game. This causes people to stop taking tanks in that area untill they leave (or get their *** kicked repeatedly).

It is true, if you compare the total play time of all 3 ES MBT weapons compared to the 3 faction Daltons you would get a better results, and simply ignoring the "almost identical" play time per unique is detrimental.

Just look at what it is today:
VS Dalton: 169 Uniques, 45,3 hours, 16,08 minutes per unique (3% increase since last time)
NC Dalton: 203 Uniques, 54,1 hours, 15,99 minutes per unique (slight increase since last time)
TR Dalton: 190 Uniques, 59,4 hours, 18,75 minutes per unique (about the same as last time)

Saron: 783 Uniques, 172,4 hours, 13,21 minutes per unique, (1,5% increase since last time)
Enforcer: 669 Uniques, 142,1 hours, 12,74 minutes per unique
Vulcan: 476 Uniques, 88,7 hours, 11,18 minutes per unique.

See how the amount of minutes gets progressively higher for Daltons and lower for MBT Secondaries?

The MBT can't avoid the Liberator confrontation, not the other way around.

Seems like I have different opinions and I don't just think that the Liberator is OP. You focus only on the power aspect, while the truth is that any weapon that can kill you, at any point, without you being able to counter it even if you carry specific weapons "designed" to counter them, is simply a detriment to the game.

No, not another discussion, you made it about Liberators specifcally, while I was discussing about the whole of AA and aircraft in the game. That you had a much narrower view and discussion topic (even though this is a thread about the Skyguard specifically and not the Liberator, which was just used as an example as to why the Skyguard actually isn't good at it's job) doesn't matter.

but it can go toe-to-toe with 2 skyguards.
Since you just admitted that you don't want it to go toe-to-toe with 2 Skyguards, here's an idea: Either the Lib is too powerful, or AA is not adequate enough, or both. I go with both. A severe change to AA could solve it without changing the Liberator (too much). Just read the idea's I've already given for fair and balanced AA, and don't just attack a single thing out of the whole idea.

What do you think how large number of infantry uniques would have to be if every respawn counted as new unique?

And if you really thought that 'uniques' means number of vehicles spawned then you would try to spin an argument that MBT has more users simply because it gets killed more often by Libs.

It is not first time you fail to comprehend basic math which then lead to overly long posts explaining 2+2. If I point it out of course it will sound degrading.

VS Dalton is only 5% more used than NC Dalton and difference between Saron and Enforcer isn't large either ( I forgot exact number, you can look it up yourself).

And this doesn't skew data because at the end of the day AA are doing their job of keeping Liberators at bay. Low VKPH in this case is product of AA being effective at what they do, it isn't the product of Liberator's OPness.

Here is when low VKPH is product of Lib's OPness: When Liberators come in the fight, kill few tanks and then tank drivers stop bothering to spawn any new tanks. VKPH will be low because Liberator is OP. This is skewed data.

Be my guest and compare averages between weapons. But keep in mind that Vulcan is outlier because it has short range and is thus more niche and has lower life expectancy. You would have to include NS Halberds into the equation (or just replace TR Vulcan with TR Halberd).

This is so wrong

1) You have only one time interval, 'progressively' is a bad choice of word
2) Of course there will be slight variations between days. Some days Lib weapons will have higher play time, other days MBT weapons will.

Yes they can. They can avoid it by not getting spawned. That was your argument why Liberators have low VKPH.

I agree that rock-paper-scissor system is bad but that means we need entire combat revamp not just plain Lib nerf.

For example I'd prefer if Liberators weren't able to kill tanks but just bring them to 50% HP (or so). Ground AA should only be able to bring Libs down to 50% but not kill them.

That way Libs would be used for assisting friendly tanks, and ground AA would be used for assisting friendly aircraft rather than creating no-fly zones like it does now.

All anti-air weapons in the game influence Liberator's KPH. If the KPH isn't higher than MBT KPH then it means AA is doing its job well. Your gripe seems to be with the fact that Liberator's can avoid ground AA so they will not get destroyed by it very often. This is true but simple ground AA buff won't do it because Liberator's KPH can't afford further nerfs.

Liberator can't go toe-to-toe with 2 Skyguards if all sides are equally skilled. This is impossibility. If just one Skyguard starts shooting at the Liberator from render distance it will BADLY damage it before it comes within Tank buster range, if 2 Skyguards do it then Liberator will be destroyed.

Only way Liberator can go toe-to-toe with 2 Skyguard is if the difference between skill is immense which means
a)Skyguards will sit behind obstacle which will allow Liberator to come close before being spotted
b)Skyguards have tunnel vision and Lib is able to tank bust one Skyguard from behind and then finish off other one.

When discussing balance you have to use ceteris paribus principle which means users of both weapons will have identical skill level.

And if Liberator is so OP then more people would fly them. Its simple as that. You are conflating high skill floor with OPness. Liberator isn't accessible to noobs, tanks and Skyguards are.

I'll read them in detail later but I don't think it will change much. Ultimately you dislike current rate at which Liberators are killing tanks. Fact that Skyguards can't kill Libs(but they can keep them at bay) is just your secondary concern or perhaps just an excuse for Lib nerf.
Consequently any Lib counter-buff you propose probably won't be enough to keep Lib's KPH at current level (if you think Lib's kill rate is high as it is).

The reason why you say Lib's KPH is skewed can just as well apply to anti-air.
Reason why Skyguards have low AKPH is because aircraft are avoiding them.

And aircraft guns are best air killer simply because they can pursue their targets while Skyguards can't. Reason why Skyguards fail to kill air as much is because pilots are smart enough not to engage them any further when they start taking critical damage.

But at the end of the day they do keep Liberators at bay which is what Lib KPH clearly shows. That is why only Skyguard buff I can agree with is G2G buff.

Disinformation? Far from it. They are stupid easy to deal with. 4.5ish seconds is all you need to take one out at a time using cover between kills and rep. I'm surprised you disagree. Hell I would say 3 are easy to deal with but the terrain dependency on that one is far greater then 2 and it would require you to land a shot + normal human reaction time before taking damage. With 2 you just need to send the round before taking damage to have enough time to kill one.

I think its time for you to fly a Dalton lib more .

The best way to help the skygaurd is to give it walker bullets on top of the flack, It would improve it's effectiveness against infantry as well as close range aircraft.