[Vehicle] Accuracy of Skyguard AA cannon.

Any solution that brings Skyguard lethality against air to the same effectiveness as air kills other and are that air kills ground is okay.

In my opinion not making the Skyguard kill air but allowing it to be slightly better against ground units is not a sufficient solution. If I wanted to be effective against ground units, I wouldn't be pulling a Skyguard in the first place. The entire point of pulling a Skyguard is to kill air before it can damage my buddies on the ground or get away.

In short, air just needs to die more against ground units. That's all there is to it.

Getting farmed by Mossys for hours with lolpod spam is exactly the reason that the Skyguard was the first vehicle I got entirely Certed up and any degree of proficiency with. The fact that I don't seem to find it half as boring as most people do kinda helps as well.

Yeah, it takes a certain type to be a Skyguarder, which is why I find it laughable when these pilots come around and claim to Skyguard. Playing as a Skyguard is the polar opposite to piloting an attack aircraft... there's tons of boredom, you're always playing reactively, etc. I assume that when most people play as a Skyguard, it means they spawn a Skyguard when a Mossie ball flies overhead, but quickly ditch the Skyguard when the threat is over.

But a true Skyguarder stays in their Skyguard on the off chance that aircraft might show up. They act as part of an armoured or mechanised squad, providing that meager defense to their squad so other people can have fun. Skyguarders are not in it for certs, for K/D, or even for recognition because most of the time your squad doesn't even notice that you're there.

This is why Skyguards should be made extremely powerful... it's about the least rewarding form of gameplay there is. At least the Skyguarders should be getting kills for their troubles.

You have to realize you're in a very, very small minority if you're happy spending much more time waiting than playing, which is why I suggest making in a little better against ground, I feel it would be best for the community in general. It's not like halving it's COF would make it a ground killer either, it would just be a little better at normal base fighting ranges.

The air/ground relationship is pretty unique, in that air just doesn't have the same amount of cover that ground does. 1v1, a Skyguard doesn't stand a chance against a Lib. Two good Skyguards spread apart in the open not only deal with the Lib, but also shut down an entire air squad from the whole hex. I really like my direct hit damage increase idea over anything else because it leaves the current deterrent power where it's at, while buffing it's 1v1 survivability. Accuracy upgrades, damage increase, velocity increase... Any of those things and now 1 Skyguard is completely shutting down an entire air squad, which is more than a little messed up. But right now, a Skygyard is a challenge in my ESF or a free snack to my Lib, and that's just not right.

Anytime I pull a Skyguard I never plan to be in it for less than an hour or so. I've learned the hard way that you can't just blow an ESF up one time and be good. That pilot has likely been in the air a long time and recovered all of his nanites, and is likely to be back 90 seconds later, looking for revenge. I don't want to be insulting to any particular demographic of the game, but I've found that pilots in general and ESF pilots in particular (Of all factions mind you) tend to be way more short-fused and easily discouraged than most. And it's entirely possible to use this against them. Unlike infantry fights where most players are cool with dying 25 times in the course of a base capture, if you shoot the same pilot down 4 times in one area he's going to be soundly pissed and probably go away. You don't even have to actually kill them most of the time to be effective. Simply do enough damage to them quickly enough after their arrival to make it clear they can't just hang around for minutes at a time wracking up kill streaks and that's usually enough. And if you're able to kill or irritate enough enemy pilots in one area for long enough, the word will get around that the area is a bad place to fly.

One of my favorite places to do this kind of thing is on Esamir in the frozen river basins, at a few spots in particular. The incredibly long sight lines there means that most ESFs aren't fast enough to get away and break line of sight if they try to swoop in and pick off what they think is an easy lightning kill.

I know it sounds insane, but it's one of my favorite things ever when the TR on Emerald locks Indar. TR on that server already pull what feels like 5x the air of both VS and NC put together do, and when they get Indar, the sky turns absolutely black with them. It's good times with a Skyguard who can lead targets at a long range.

It seems like some of what you suggested could be accomplished by attaching Skyguard turrets to MBTs instead of lightnings. That idea just bounced into my head so I've not given it any serious amount of thought. It could be that's a wholesale TERRIBLE idea.

With Ranger buffs that might be a thing I think the lightning is the perfect fit for the weapon. It can defend itself against light vehicles and can hopefully outrun bigger tanks. Plus it has resistances to air that the MBT doesn't, so it takes as many A2G hits as a MBT even though it has less HP. Which is cool. I think flak is a problem with the game. There's at least one source in ever hex, that reaches to the next hex, so in the air you're constantly getting hit, all the time, over then entire map. I don't want to limit flak range, because ESF noseguns are accurate enough to land consistent hits at render range on tanks. I just want to make it harder to plink a random ESF flying more than a hex away. All while leaving mid range deterrent alone and buffing close range 1v1 Skyguard effectiveness. It's a difficult thing to balance, especially when most people from either side just want their personal toy buffed to OP levels. I really think a great solution is a direct hit damage buff against air, with a falloff of 200m or so.

Right, so unless you are firing at people flying in a completely straight line for several seconds, you are only going to hit by getting lucky. Gotcha.

If you have to lead a full screen away, you aren't going to be able to make minute adjustments to correct your leading easily, and, any random movements by the pilot at such ranges will throw off the aim by quite a bit. Meaning you are relying mostly on luck to land your shots. Sure, if it's closer ranges where you don't have to lead a full screen then you are correct, but not in the aforementioned scenario.

Are you telling me 2 Skyguards can deter 6x 2/3 Libs from roaming in the area? Really? Or 12 ESF's with Hornets? Sorry, but your claim seems pretty far-fetched, like the Skyguards would have to be coordinating heavily, whilst the aircraft (in an air "squad") would not be coordinating their assaults at all. For the love of God, they could just spread out evenly, 6 ESFs with Hornets targeting each Skyguard. No chance whatsoever.

Oh, and the thing about "the whole hex" is only relevant in certain terrain, far from everywhere.

Buffing direct hits on Flak weapons only does 2 things:

1. Increases damage dealt to friendly aircraft (due to no auto-detonation range)
2. Increases damage dealt to ground targets (due to no auto-detonation at all)

So it won't actually help dealing with enemy aircraft, just saying.

Exaggeration and hyperbole, nothing more. There isn't AA in every hex, and AA doesn't always reach to the next hex (often the very same AA doesn't even protect you if you are just 50-100m away from said AA). And air isn't constantly getting hit all over the entire map. Exaggeration doesn't help your arguments one bit.

It can happen, sure, but it doesn't. I routinely lock down fights as a single skyguard or burster max. And I'm not even good, and definitely don't have those two units upgraded. If two professional Skyguards were to work together, I haven't seen any air with enough coordination to take them down. You can keep talking about hypothetical A2G death squads, but that's just not what's out there, and definitely not the norm. Maybe because most of the good pilots stick to AA.

If you're playing during peak times, any important fight is going to have AA. And if you're actively going around form small fight to small fight, after 15 minutes every smaller fight on the front lines will have AA. This is all assuming you're being effective at A2G. And yeah, terrain definitely has a lot to do with it. I've mentioned that specifically in some other posts on here. In some fights it's an exaggeration, but depending on where the battle lines are on Indar or Esamir, it's not.

1. Fine. Don't shoot friendly planes.
2. I mentioned when I first proposed that plan to only give increased direct damage against aircraft, I just didn't repeat that part. As for not helping against enemy aircraft... I think it would be a huge help. Take ESFs for example. Hornets have a 460m range and at best it takes 4 missiles over about 4 seconds of time to kill any tank from the rear. At 460m you can land some serious direct hits on an ESF that has to hold his reticle on you. Libs have to Tankbest you, so they're well within 100m. Unless you're in a bad place where a Lib can just peek up from behind a hill, there's no way you're not getting at least half direct hits. The only other option he has it to Dalton you from max altitude, but if you die from that as a Skyguard you got what you deserved for sitting still for that long. Anyway, I still think it's an awesome idea. It helps against aircraft that are directly trying to kill you without buffing Skyguards ability to deter air from an entire fight, which is in a good place I feel.

You're telling me that 12 people in aircraft have never stood up to 2 Skyguards and won? Right, I'll have whatever you are smoking, as my **** clearly isn't strong enough

And I do it while in a MBT at times when I'm on a roll, and the terrain is favorable. Doesn't mean I'm going to say the MBT is actually strong in that situation, rather that the opponents were awful, and I was on point with my aiming that day.

Perhaps. If this was the case, wouldn't it be likely that the targets you have been firing at have only been sub-par pilots? Now, don't me me wrong, as I'm not interested in saying this is neccesarily the case for this situation, but it is a general problem with anecdotal evidence (along with the abovementioned).

I see aircraft working together in taking out ground targets routinely, especially the pilots that seemingly have a grudge against me (maybe I've previously nailed them with an AP-shell, who knows ). But yes, just like I see many scrub players on the ground never even considering working together, I'm sure it happens in the air too. Doesn't mean that the scenario you portrayed is only possible if everything favors the Skyguards. Anything else requires extensive argumentation, and cannot simply be refuted by anecdotal evidence.

Suddenly, once provoked, the assumptions/criteria come into play. What happened to your statement "Two good Skyguards spread apart in the open not only deal with the Lib, but also shut down an entire air squad from the whole hex"? There weren't anything conditions that had to be met in that blanket-statement, which is what I was questioning.

Terrain has everything to do with it, especially regarding blanket-statements like you made. Making such a statement implies there aren't conditions (at least reasonably likely conditions) where the premise isn't valid, and terrain is just such a condition. It just so happens to play a major part in many of the battles, in how AA is/should be positioned, angles of attack (and escape) for aircraft. Things such as plenty low-cover allows ESFs to stay low longer without suffering a much increased risk etc etc.

If you don't mention it in the context of your statement (the part I quoted mostly), then you could've mentioned in a million times elsewhere, and it wouldn't make your statement any more correct, as the conditions still have to be met for it to be true. Your statement simply cannot stand alone. I never said it was never not an exaggeration, I was simply "asking" for you to not make blanket-statements that clearly have limitations/conditions that need to be met in order to be true.

Tell that to the NC I'm kidding of course (see below as to why I included friendly aircraft).

My point was, I think you are misunderstanding how the direct-hits regarding Flak works. Flak weapons, firing at enemy aircraft will only generate direct hits under ONE condition: You have to be firing at the aircraft within a VERY short range (there is a minimum range from where the auto-detonation can occur). Anything beyond that range, even if the bullet/projectile trajectory was RIGHT on the target, it would still auto-detonate prior to impacting the aircraft itself, meaning any direct damage simply isn't dealt to the enemy aircraft. Which is why I stated that such a change would only impact effectiveness against friendly air (as Flak doesn't auto-detonate against such targets) and to ground targets (again, no auto-detonation).

First I have to comment on “the Skyguard’s deterrence level is fine”.
We have weapons everywhere in the game. Every weapon is designed for a purpose, and that purpose is killing the opponent. You might make a case for HA rocketlaunchers for instance being deterrence weapons, but aside from those there are no dedicated weapons that only function for deterrence anywhere, meaning that the G2A weapons of PS2 are unique compared to everything else for no real good reason. Why should G2A weapons only be deterrence weapons? Why not put them on the same level as, you know, every single other weapon in the game and let them be normal weapons instead? Tanks deal with AV weapons in every single fight, they can do this because the weapons aren’t deterrence weapons and it’s just par of the course to have to deal with AV weapons. And they can! They can deal with AV weapons from infantry and other vehicles because they can use terrain, speed, maneuvers, tactics and strategy to their advantage and make sure they don’t just die when faced with AV weapons... Except when an AV aircraft swoops down ofcourse.

Now deterrence in PS2 has only one function and against one target: Aircraft. This forces anyone who wants to combat aircraft to actually get into aircraft themselves since the deterrence weapons only keep them away, if you have enough deterrence weapons available that is. Deterrence weapons are also self-debilitating. By deterring your target you end up with nothing to do, especially since there aren’t that many aircraft to begin with and aircraft have more than enough speed and manoeuvrability to just get out of there and take their vehicle somewhere else, a luxury that ground vehicles and to some extend infantry do not have.

So why this disparity? Why force any G2A weapon to be a deterrent, only to allow aircraft to mercilessly murder anything that doesn’t have a G2A weapon available? There is practically no defense against aircraft that attack you, except firepower. Where infantry and vehicles can use a ton of maneuvers and smart usage of the environment and their allies to avoid getting killed by ground units they can only pray that friendly aircraft or deterrence weapons are nearby to keep them safe from aircraft.
This reveals a problem with aircraft weapons, since you can only sit around and take the hit praying something attacks the aircraft. The aircraft weapons are too accurate and have a ton of firepower to boot. There’s no drop on rocketpods, Hornets even have homing missiles so you can adjust your aim afterwards! The only way you can really react to a Liberator is driving underneath it as it charges, and then praying he’s greedy and wants to finish you with his nosegun instead of having his bellygunner finish you off or once again hoping someone else engages the aircraft.
This is bad gamedesign, being almost completely reliant on allies to scare off your assailant, especially since said assailant isn’t always around and the weapons to counter them are debilitating and often boring for the user. The weapons of aircraft need to require more skill when engaging ground units. I mean come on, you need far more skill to hit with an HE primary canon than with Rocketpods, yet Rocketpods are allowed to fire a dozen in one go and kill off multiple infantry while HE primaries are restricted to 1 shot at a time with a long reload in between.
Back to deterrents. Deterrents aren’t just bad design for the users, they are also bad design for their targets. Deterrents as they are in PS2 will eventually remove aircraft influence completely. In a supposed combined arms game any weapon system or weapon category designed to completely remove one part of the combined arms is completely nuts, and should be removed entirely.

For a conclusion on deterrents: They are the pinnacle of bad game design in PS2 and bad for both the user and the aircraft it’s used on. There’s no reason not to have G2A weapons that aren’t a deterrent in PS2, and there’s no reason not to make these multi-functional and widely available to everyone so that aircraft can’t pick fights based on how much G2A there is. G2A should be a given, a par of the course just like AI and AV weapons are.


Now your suggestion:
Halving COF and flak detonation range is a start, but not good enough I think.
Currently flak has the ludicrous flak detonation range of 8m. This means that even if the aircraft hitbox was a single point at the center of the aircraft, you could still hit it by getting any shot within a 16m distance of that point. This means that even if the aircraft hitbox was brought back to a single point they would still have a larger hitbox than conventional weapons have on the current hitbox.
With the halving of the COF and flak detonation range you do have a lot more leading to do, but it still won’t be very difficult to hit aircraft. At best you now have a way to actually hit long-range targets with a bit of consistency. Unfortunately this isn’t exactly good either, since too long a range prevents aircraft from entering the area safely and with a 4m flak detonation range you would still have guaranteed damage, and a high potential for “you are dead just because you came within X range of flak”.

Deterrents should be completely removed from the game, and the G2A weapons should have enough power to actually kill an aircraft outright if the skill of the user is high enough. All this “aim in the general vicinity and let RNG do the work” isn’t good for the game.
Flak detonation range should be 2m at maximum, and even that is pretty big already. 0,5m to 1m is what I would go for, with my preference being 0,5m. G2A weapons should mostly ditch large capacity magazines as well. A few rounds per magazine, then a reload. This gives aircraft more time to fly, rather than having to do a continuous dodging maneuver for 10 seconds, then having a 3 second window to counter-attack during the reload and then having to go back to a continuous dodge again.

Look, if I want something that deters air while being decent against ground units, I'd pull this cheap, durable, multipurpose vehicle called *gasp* a Walker Sunderer, which is precisely what I've been doing for over a year now (when I'm playing that is) because the Skyguard is worthless.

The Skyguard will never be as versatile as a Walker-equipped Sunderer unless you make it blatantly OP against ground, which will never happen. The only solution to its current uselessness is to make this one-trick pony actually good at that trick.

I've got a fully certed out skyguard with the following specs:

-Maxed out Reload Speed
-Top side Armor Reinforcment
-Max tier Improved combat Chassis
-Night Vision Scope
-Maxed out Proximity Radar
-Maxed out Ammo capacity

Literally everything on that vehicle is geared for killing aircraft. Top down armor helps protects against air attacks since that's the only direction that aircraft are going to realistically be hitting me from. Proxy Radar helps me unload on unsuspecting aircraft the instant they expose themselves to my line of sight. Improved Combat Chassis helps me turn and evade strafing runs as much as possible. Night Scope can help me filter out the Rave-ish light shows that night battles can turn into which personally I find makes getting distracted easier to avoid. Reload speed and Ammo Cap help me keep my downtime as minimal as humanly possible. If you'll permit me a bit of ego, I'm not a bad shot with the thing either.

Now the reason I bother illustrating all this is to help me make my point: Libs aren't scared of me in the slightest. I can piss off ESFs and Valkaryies all day, Galaxies don't like me much because anyone can hit a Gal with a SG with their eyes closed, but Libs I Don't even slow down. On uncountable occasions I've seen a Lib approaching from behind a mountain with my proxy radar while I'm in a valley or field with long site lines. I've got the shot lined up and waiting for him so I begin hitting him the instant he exposes himself. Keep in mind I'm landing 90% or better of my shots with the SG through this whole exchange. He face-tanks every single round of my mag and comes in tank buster blazing. I drive into his approach to minimize the time and number of shots he can land on me. Then, before my upgraded weapon has reloaded, his gunner puts one round into me (almost always from the Dalton) and I'm dog food. Even with reinforced Top armor and minimizing contact with it, the TB nose gun will halve or better my HP, making me free lunch to the belly gunner. At the end of this exchange the Lib is still combat capable at 50% or better health too. To keep Libs from routinely shi**ing all over a SG, you have to pull them in groups of at least two at a time. Significantly more if you happen to encounter that group of 5-6 friends that like to wing-man libs with one another. I don't normally even consider staying near cover to be a realistic option for a SG to be effective. The TTK is pretty long on the things and being near a massive structure means any aircraft at all has a very quick, very easy way to break LoS with you, rendering you completely ineffectual.

Normally pulling Skyguards to keep away Libs wouldn't be a big deal. They're cheaper than Liberators are, and even a very plain vanilla SG has about 90% the effectiveness of a fully upgraded one. But most people don't even have the SG turret unlocked( or at least most don't use it). Add to that the fact that most people won't stay in a SG because they find it so boring, means that serious SG threats usually dissappear after 10 minutes. Giving the Libs and ESF lolpod spammers free reign again.

Admittedly I don't spend tons of time in the air, but from the SG perspective, it's got some pretty significant frustrations.

I think ESFs are the most powerful unit by a long shot. And I believe that a squad of 12 of them geared out appropriately and well flown is pretty unstoppable, maybe by anything but spawnrooms. But like I said, that's just not how this game plays out. That's why you can't balance a game with numbers alone, you need to see how players actually play to determine what the meta actually is, then adjust accordingly. So is it possible that I'm only going against bad pilots? Very likely yes, but it is what it is. My experience in a Skyguard isn't extensive but from everything I've seen it does it's job extremely well, it could just use a buff at close range for those 1v1 fights against air that I think it should win. I did completely miss that flak never gets direct hits on enemy air, so that idea is out the window. Maybe just a damage buff to flak under 200m?..... Because of Nanites....

Your stories are just way to long. I'll comment on a couple things.

• Skyguards need to hit at render range, the reason is that ESF can hit tanks at render range. A single stock gun is a joke to a tank, but gank squads are able to pick off Skyguards in the open from a good 800m.
• I still think the amount of units the Skyguard can deter makes up for it not killing any of those units. But yeah, personal preference. The one thing I think we all agree on is that it's severely lacking in 1v1 situations. It's just difficult to buff it in a 1v1 without buffing it's currently great area denial abilities.
• Mojo mentioned this point again, that most AA chases off air then twiddles their thumbs. No matter how much you change the weapon, decrease area denial while increasing lethality.... Air will bug off and find a fight with less AA. That's why I think it's anti-ground capabilities should be looked at. Not for those few AA purists, but for the other 90% of the playerbase.

1. Proximity Radar shows walking infantry, not vehicles.
2. Top armor. I've recently been learning more about this, and it's not spelled out in the game. It doesn't matter where someone shoots your tank, it matters where they're positioned when they take the shot. I've started using Hornets pretty heavily against armor and if you come up behind a tank at less than a 45 degree angle or so then it counts as a rear hit. Anything higher than that angle counts as a top hit. I'm not sure exactly when the angle switches from rear to top, but it seems pretty close to that and it's very easy to do. Whenever I Tankbust, I try to come in low and make sure it's a solid rear armor hit, which doesn't matter much for Lightnings, but is the only way to 1-clilp a MBT. So keep that in mind with your positioning. There really isn't much you can do once a Lib singles you out, it sucks that an AA tank can't win a duel against a single aircraft.

I misspoke then. My SG is upgrade with the Aircraft Detection Radar module. (the exact name escapes me at the moment) And recently I've been made aware of how Tank Armor works as well. It's kind of made me begin questioning what the best slot upgrade for the SG is.

That's default on all Skyguards. Maybe you haven't played in a while? Nothing else has changed.

I think there's some confusion. I can detect enemy aircraft that aren't using the stealth module from up to 600 meters away. That's a slot upgrade on my Skyguard that I had to cert into, not built in passive. At least I think so. I'll have to have a closer look when I get home because now I'm wondering....

If you're not running stealth on your skyguard, you are doing it wrong.

1. Stealth
2. Wait until they get close because they don't see you
3. Murder the **** out of them

I do agree it needs buff, but 90% of people I see use the skyguard wrong. You can look to see where enemy air is going to repair resupply, use your stealth skyguard to park between fights and said R&R station, and murder the **** out of them when they fly over you smoking, running away.

If anyone wants to learn the way of the skyguard, I'm more than willing to show them.

You're right, I'm wrong. You have to cert in to engagement radar.

So you don't have problems with Libs? I don't farm infantry so I typically go inbetween fights looking for lone tanks or small armor columns. What do you do about Harassers? I've been running Stealth and Racer so that I can run when I see a MBT or AP Lightning. But I typically stick with friendly armor. What server do you play on?

Skyguards don't need to hit at render range. Practically no single attack by ESF or aircraft in general is done from such extreme distances. Even the Liberator, who is best suited for long-range combat by hovering high above and firing downwards, is rarely used for this purpose. Mostly because even the aircraft weapons have too slow a velocity to reliably hit moving vehicles at those distances. "You see it you can hit it" only creates bad gameplay for the aircraft. The best you can ask for is "if it hangs still at long-range you can hit it".
G2A weapons are actually pretty bad at holding back groups. They can focus on a single target at a time and when the group is actually a group the constant switching and escaping of the aircraft mean that no kills are made and aircraft have an easier time getting away. I've been in a few rare occasions with 3 Skyguards, half a dozen Burster MAX's and assorted lock-on users and there was a distinct lack of "all these aircraft die now". The most deaths were caused by aircraft hitting each other, rather than the mass of dedicated AA. Most people think that G2A is supreme against aircraft groups because in most circumstances the aircraft come almost one at a time.
As for the last point, by making dedicated AA multi-functional for instance by making it useable against infantry you can make sure every fight has AA and aircraft don't have the luxury of picking a fight with less AA.