So the Skyguard is seen as pretty weak. It's a terrible AA weapon in terms of actually getting kills, but for whatever reason has not been buffed. At the same time, that makes the Skyguard rather useless. It can't kill air, which is its main job. But the weak autocannon make it worthless against other vehicles, and the ridiculously huge CoF makes targeting infantry difficult. Instead of buffing the Skyguard's lethality, how about then increasing its utility? One way to do that is to give Skyguards a mobile version of the Skywall Shield found in bases. This would create a large dome over a Skyguard, blocking enemy fire coming in from above but allowing units under the shield to fire out. This gives the Skyguard individual defence against air (so no more Tankbusting) and also allows it to share that protection with nearby vehicles. It also would serve as a C4 shield, one of the main weaknesses of tanks. C4 would land and detonate on the shield itself, and any LA attempting to penetrate the shield from above would be instantly killed. In certain situations, the Skyguard would also protect friendly vehicles from fire from above, for instance in an Indar canyon. This would make the Skyguard useful in offensive sieges. Now the weakness would be that fire coming from a lower arc would not be blocked. So taking out the Skyguard through the usual means (virtually any ground vehicle) would still work as it always would. The shield would orient with the horizon, meaning that it could not be angled downwards. Thoughts?
I like the idea but I think it would be way too powerful under the proposed 'always on' category, instead I think it should be a utility. Make it similar to Vanguard Shield. 6-8 seconds duration, 60 seconds cooldown upgradable to 45 seconds at max rank, takes up the utility slot. Yes, that means no engagement radar. You get an iwin shield, it should have a downside and that is not having either engagement radar nor fire suppression.
I think the Skyguard should have to deploy to activate it shield. Well actually I think it should get to switch between 2 weapons; flak and high velocity bullets but I think that is even less likely to happen.
Like a nc max shield, i think it should go down after a certain amount of damage. And upgrades allow for more damage
a chingles suggestion that i agree with!? what is this madness! but yeah, skyguards sole purpose is to guard the skies, yet it utterly sucks against the majority of things in the sky... a personal skyshield would be awesome. i'd add that it should be fairly small and only protect the skyguard (so we won't have any tank columns running around with skyguards to be immune to air.)
This is not a bad idea but I think if they were to implement this then skyguards would need to have there other general resistances reduced a bit. Also if you found a really good hole in the ground or just parked between a couple of close buildings or tight rocks wouldn't that make you virtually indestructible? The shield should definitely have a recharge and duration timer so it's not just a set and forget but requires a judgement call to use and could leave you defenseless if you waste it or use it poorly. I have actually been thinking of an alternate weapons system for the lightning. What about a 6 barreled rocket launcher that uses the hornet/AVMana turret wire guided system with a decent velocity say 250m/s a refire time of 0.5s. it would be somewhat effective against armor, say 4 reloads vs MBT at 3s but would only require 6 direct hits vs ESF and 18 against Liberators. Hovering targets would be toast, rapidly moving targets would require a lot of practice and very good aim to lead and land shots. Give it a secondary air burst detonation that does much less damage and has a very large spread, say 10m but must be user triggered. Rockets burn out after 500m. Give it the same elevation as the basilisk and a minimum secondary fire mode arming range of 35' above horizon so you couldn't use it to AOE spam bases etc. Would have to tweak the numbers a bit so it wouldn't be super effective vs infantry and replace the viper.
are you serious?!? funny, how people hate op shields like with the heavy or the vanguard, but as soon as it's to be used against air it's suddenly a good idea? WTF? It's not like the actuall skyshield was a good idea, but that one at least is restricted to custom bases ... giving this kind of power to any unit is a very absurd suggestion, which i hope was conceived during a fit of rage due to a lib killing ops skyguard. Otherwise i realy have to worry about op's sanity.
Skyguards are a joke as they are right now. They suck at everything except annoying aircraft. Point of fact, a liberator tank buster can kill them in 1 clip. Hornets can kill them in one 2.5s reload. Galaxies can sit on them. So basically the 1 thing skyguards are designed to kill can still destroy them fairly easily by playing smart and having the right load out. Everything else in the game kills them with ease and without ever worrying about them being a threat. 350 nanites and potentially 5000+ certs to still be mostly useless. How do you not see they need SOMETHING. Maybe not a sky shield, I'm kind of on the fence of that being too much. But skyguard really needs some love.
go pick an esf and kill a skyguard ... then come back and tell us again how easy it was. I am not saying that skyguards aren't lackluster, but making any unit completly immune to what they fight is a very dumb idea. If it were any other unit than libs/esfs suggesting anything like that would result in laughter at best. But when it comes to air, well people are at this point aparently fine with anything that hurts it. Already almost all g2a is basically immune to esfs and this would make it even worse. Turrets: It takes several clips and hornets to kill a base turret (and those suckers repair themselfs now too), while it could kill you in a fraction of that time. And you get them for free. Lockons: Since from the pilots point of view every infantry unit on the ground could be the one that is locking onto them it's like winning the lottery to pick the right one out. (Altough it helps that people don't seem to bother stepping more than 2m away from their spawnpoint when doing g2a stuff) Again a nanite free option that puts all the risk on the pilots side (sorry but i don't count kd ratio as a worthwhile risk) Skyguards: Sure on paper it looks like the esf has a fighting chance, but try it for yourself. There is a reason why esfs winning vs skyguards are montage material and not something you see every day. Burster maxes: Now those guys could use some help ... as it stands they are currently the only g2a option that can be overcome by good piloting (or using an airhammer) My point is, that already at least for esfs it is not a choice of fight or flight but flight or die. And then people complain how little they have to do, when on g2a duty.
I like the initial idea, as long as some of the balancing factors from some other players are added. Such as making it a short-burst ability like the Vanguard shield or making the Lightning deploy itself and giving the Lightning health. However the idea isn't going to help the gameplay experience. Pilots are already plagued by feeling helpless when there's G2A weapons around, since G2A weapons can't be dodged (in the light of the other thread I'm engaged in, with the exception of Walkers ofcourse). The Vanguard shield itself is already hated because it makes people attacking it feel powerless, as if all their efforts are instantly negated during the time the shield is active. This air-shield for the Skyguard (which in the current idea would be available to any Lightning loadout, not just the Skyguard) would make aircraft feel even more powerless. The reason why the Skyguard hasn't received lethality buffs is because it's too easy to hit enemy aircraft with it. If you upgrade Skyguard damage you get situations of "the aircraft came within X distance, now the aircraft is automatically dead". That's bad for the game. This is why the damage of all G2A weapons was calibrated so they wouldn't be able to kill aircraft solo no matter how close you start. The obvious workaround of "just pull more of them" seemed lost on the developers, and thus the cesspool of G2A weapons that no one really wants was born! The only way to increase the lethality of the Skyguard and other G2A weapons would be to reduce the ease with which they can hit enemy aircraft. IE nerf the hell out of flak detonation range for starters. Only then can the damage be increased. As for the usual moping about C4 fairies. Grow a pair. Skyguards should be the perfect vehicles to spot C4 fairies in the first place and be virtually invulnerable to them. However they, like almost any other tank player, tunnel vision a lot. So you can just approach them from a different angle, they wouldn't notice the C4 fairy and boom bye bye Skyguard with Skywall. The current Skywall doesn't insta-kill infantry, and that giant skyshield would be the perfect beacon screaming "Come and kill me!". Hell it would probably increase the ease with which you can C4 it since the shield would reduce the vision somewhat.
I like the idea, but it would have to have some balancing measure to them. 1. Projectile specific shielding. Prevents a2g rockets and other noseguns. In my experience, a lot of vehicle locks often goes up before it goes for the target, while it does look badass I would prefer it if the shielding was not a countermeasure against other vehicles or ground to ground counters no matter how good the positioning is. 2. The skyguard would have to deploy. Trading mobility for shielding. 3. It would have to be locked to the skyguard. In some aspects, lightnings would be better than MBTs if that was not the case. Having protection against a major counter and being cheaper and slimmer and etc etc. I wouldn't want MBTs to be even more dwarfed by other vehicles. 4. The shield would have a lot of HP. But! It would be destructible eventually. Like a skywall. It wouldn't be fair if 3 libs all did divebombs on one lightning and didn't even scratch the shield. While I hate libs being rather mostly immune to retaliation of tanks by flying, I'd also hate it to be the other way around. However 3 tank busts within 50 meters sounds like a fair amount of HP. Maxxed mags.... ofc. Beyond those 4, I'd love something that makes the skyguard shine just as well as a double walker bus. Seriously. Those things are a libs worst nightmare.
Skyguards just need their resistances to A2G weapons/air weapons buffed by a reasonable amount. I don't mind having a vehicle that's trash against enemy ground or infantry, just let the skyguard be half-decent at it's job. It needs a little love, after all, air can always leave the area the skyguard is in so it doesn't need to be able to tank skyguard rounds so much (especially considering the skewed TTK between the two). If air doesn't like skyguards then get your faction mans to suppress and take them out. Combined arms/rock-paper-scissors.
Normally should the Skyguard be the Shield itself due to superior firepower and accuracy....but it just lacks at accuracy... They should buff it so that it is more accurate than a AA Turret
