[Suggestion] Give the Skyguard Passive EXP Income

It was a giant afterthought. The problem is the original design of the skyguard from Ps1 Was it's own vehicle. It was an extremely fast buggy vehicle capable of almost keeping pace with air units in game. It did really good damage and really had tight cone of fire. It also had a machine gun on it for dealing with nearly dead planes or nearby infantry. It was balanced by the fact it required two people to use, one driver one gunner and it was very fragile. They tended to be very successful in PS1 and the attack aircraft in that game all had afterburners. The skyguard got plenty of exp.

Basically it was a harasser with a flak cannon on it. I honestly think they should just take the skyguard away from the lighting and give it to the harasser and it would solve most of the problems people have with it. It would be fast, maneuverable, able to give short chase to aircraft, and with the gunner and driver separated the driver can focus on avoiding attacks well the gunner focus on fighting back. It's really everything the fireing platform needs. As someone who both owns a fully certed skyguard, and a fully certed Liberator, I can tell you the biggest problem with the skyguard is having to split your attention between driving and aiming up in the sky. Most people tend to have the problem of not staying mobile. They find someplace...park...and shoot. Then they piss off a lib who sneaks up and kills them. Or attract another tank eager for an easy kill when they see/hear that flak flying. A harasser could get it self out of these situations far quicker and thus increase both the life and lethal nature of the weapon.

As to the OP's idea...naa I just can't get behind the idea of being able to pull a vehicle to get EXP for nothing.

Excuse me while I put this down in the tower spawn room and afk during the battle.

LOL true....very true, and I never understood why they got put in either. I would be ok with them if they were like the engineer's spitfire. You get one till you resupply. Or it has a lifespan of 1 min.

Biolab bro, if they are coming in from a teleported just plunk one down behind the wall nearest to it, free so for hours. Even better if its the teleporter near B point, you can sit in stalker cloak near the cap point getting objective defense xp while getting motion spotting xp from the sensor.

I like the skyguard for what it is although I would love to see a harasser variant but am I dreaming or do the flak cannons on a sunderer do more damage?

Think of it as added skill factor, the closer the enemy is to your skyguard the easier it is to kill him, bonus points if it is a C4 Fairy in the air that you've swatted.

Tanks need to be able to change loadout at the ammotower like in PS1. Especially Lightnings.
I think it would solve a lot of frustration with pulling a skyguard that never gets used.

Also, engagement radar for the Lightning would be nice. And velocity/COF buffs for the SG.

To be fair, changing loadouts for tanks in PlanetSide Classic was more about what else was in your trunk besides vehicle ammunition and how you distributed the ammuntion if your Vehicle had multiple weapons. A Lightning A's weapon system was always the same as a Lightning B's weapon system which was always the same as a Lightning C's weapon system. What you'd be asking for is a bit different.

How about just giving a small chunk of XP on a hit, regardless of what is being hit? I'm not expecting a redesign or added features any time sooner, but this seems simple enough to implement which gives an immediate and tangible return. When air is your target, you can get hit XP, air deterrence XP, ribbon XP, and assist/kill XP. When ground targets are around, you can minimally get hit XP without worrying about whether you did enough damage to get assist XP.

its called walker, and i already prefer my walker harasser over my skyguard
the bullets go where i'm aiming, woo!

you know what i'm hearing here?

1. i could be using these nanites to farm infantry/my KDR instead i'm only deterring all enemy aircraft.

2. i barely get any xp from skyguard and i could be farming infantry right now instead of helping my team.

my point is, why does every weapon have to be capable of cert farming or stat padding? if you want the best certs with zero consideration for your team, do something else. the skyguard performs really well as a support unit for Sunderers, MBTs, and light ground squads, and is a fantastic long range deterrent for air units. pull one for your armor group today for immediate benefits. solo at your own risk, flak is high visibility and will put you on high priority for A2G players. be sneaky, be with friends, or prepare your butth*le.

also, let's finally put away that old chestnut about Dalton air kills. the skyguard is like a wide bristled broom that sweeps ESFs away from an area, while a Dalton is more like a high speed vacuum nozzle that pulls in 4 man gank squads from a 1500m render sweep and hopes to knock down 2 of them before being shot down. the average numbers are high because the frequency of interactions is high, and the number of inexperienced pilots who fly right into a Dalton lib never seems to decrease over time.

Sure... but what happens to the inexperienced pilot who flies into a Skyguard range?

They just leave. That's it.

The Skyguard is incapable of being lethal to even slightly awake aircraft simply because of a low DPS, low velocity, and high CoF. That the Dalton is overperforming the Skyguard in an AA role is insane, because the Skyguard is meant to be an A2G aircraft.

I mean take even the Vanguard MBT, which has a similar cannon to the Dalton yet only manages a fraction of the aircraft kills.

The Liberator should be dead meat when confronted by actual fighter craft unless it can pull in its own A2A or G2A escorts. The fact that it is overperforming against other aircraft is a serious design flaw.

So if you don't want to buff the Skyguard against aircraft, at least nerf the Dalton against aircraft so it's not so embarrassing that a specialized A2G cannon outperforms a dedicated G2A weapon at killing aircraft.

Often times I treat the Skyguard as a derpy TR MAX that can't go inside bases that just happens to also do damage to vehicles.
As a result I have on DA's stat tracker a M** head shot rate and A++ kills per hour.