Liberators owning my Vanguard with pinpoint accuracy

You cant even really roll with a single Skyguard as a good Lib crew will own a single Skyguard easily before he even gets halfway though the second mag. You need two Skyguards focusing fire to kill a good Lib crew. If you can see him coming a Titan Ap round might make them think twice before engaging.

I like slapping them with AP rounds personally.

Dedicated liberator crews tend to have pretty good aim -if you've ever tried attacking a dalton liberator with the nosegun of a fighter you'll know what I mean. I've seen VS and TR liberators (maybe NC too I just don't notice it) on Cobalt take out 4 or 5 ESFs that were attacking them and still coming out alive (smoking, but still) using the dalton alone.

Compared to that, hitting your vanguard is a walk in the park. They are almost certainly not hacking. That said, I don't even tend to get 2-shotted by the monsters we face on Cobalt though. I guess you could be unlucky if he's far enough back that it catches your rear armour rather than your top.

In my view when you spot a lib there are 2 courses of action:
- Try to kill it (2 shots with your main cannon)
- Hope it doesn't spot you (i.e. don't engage)

If it does spot you and start attacking, you are basically screwed unless you are saved by your team or you manage to find cover (inside wall towers or large bases). A liberator should defeat a tank in a straight fight.

Pretty much this.
My biggest defense against libs overhead is to pop the shield, use that 8 seconds to find cover/formation of rocks to climb, get your cannon angled upwards and go to town on them while your gunner sits under the arch of your tank/rocks and repairs you. They'll usually haul it if you manage one round, which is fairly easy with the AP Titan.

Frankly the most reliable counter to Lib is.....your own Lib. Most of the time you can't find appropriate rocks to put your Vanguard on. And if you do it's among the easiest things to fly just behind you forcing you to completely change inclination.

Liberators are supposed to own ground vehicles, it's their job

Only Skyguards give them a run for their money in my experience.

This is a frustrating part of MBTing. Fortunately I usually roll on Esamir, so bunches of Tree's, the Bridges over the Glaciers, the giant Stalagmites - there's a few options to hide under and like others said; burn your shield to get to them.

It's frustrating the Walker doesn't seem to do enough damage, despite constant Red tick markers showing the bullets are hitting at various ranges. Even with ESF's, it seems pointless to use. A dedicated AA weapon incapable of destroying AA if you are 1v1, I guess it's purpose is intended to be part of group AA defense?

Indeed, Air is the pain in the ***, so be ready to run back to your Zerg or for cover. Sometimes the positioning on an embankment and shooting works, but naturally you become a sitting target. Just gotta make the judgement call, just always be aware of your surroundings and develop a habit of identifying safe spots to run to.

Vanguards are really weak against air. You're a large target from above, slow and not very manoeuverable, and Vanguard AA secondaries are small arms and do little damage against a well armoured liberator.

You need to roll with AA support, either Skyguard Lightnings (one should be enough if you're in the periphery of a battle), burster MAXes, AA ESFs or lock on heavies. Lock ons don't work any more if the lib's at high altitude but all the other counters are still effective.

C'on, tanks are just dead meat when they are alone. Rolling without any cover was a bad idea from the start. A single tank is food even for a single non-upgraded ESF.

Yep, Liberator is a hard counter to tanks. Skyguards, however, can create a no-fly zone and two of them can even kill a Lib.

Liberator is big, it suffers from the rendering distance issues (he can't see things that can see him and damage him), it is not capable of fighting against big enemy rush, but shines in small to medium engagements.

I think it's important to be clear, a single Skyguard is not an anti-Liberator tool if the Liberator crew is competent purely because the Liberator will have a higher time to kill than you. You need SkyguardS, plural, to do the job. Hopefully that'll be more common after the 1SC members sale on them during the holiday period.

Worst case scenario (No other Skyguards to team up with & lock ons have insufficient range), I'll pull an ESF, stay as far away from the Liberator as possible so I can't get 1-shot by belly guns and can flee if it tries to go after me and I'll just plink away at it with the ESF nose gun. I don't stand much chance of getting a kill, but pilots aren't exactly known for bravery and sticking around in areas where they're taking regular repeated damage, so by plinking away at range I might scare them away from our ground forces and give them some breathing room in which to push out and retake the capture point.

I wouldn't mind the effectiveness of aircraft in this game: if they hadn't made so many facilities just a cluster of exposed buildings, with a single tiny spawn building (Or two) that effectively turn into a killzone should a sufficiently large number of enemy aircraft show up.

Interesting aside, the Walker AA machine gun you can fit on the top of tanks & sunderers is pretty decent versus Liberators due to the high upgradeable ammo capacity and the large body shape of Liberators. I'm coming to the opinion that the Walker AA gun is better for anti-Liberator work than the Skyguard but need to experiment more to be sure.

Unfortunately at this point if I am roaming/flanking in a vanguard and get instakilled by a Liberator I simply accept it and move on. In a 1v1 with a fully crewed MBT and Lib, the Lib should win every time, even if the MBT has an AA gun. The lib is simply the hard counter to the MBT. If the pilot is good enough and hits you with tank buster then you have no chance. If they use belly gun only you may be able to survive by running to the nearest form of cover, driving unpredictably, or finding an incline to shoot back at them.

Good luck.

We can't balance things 1v1 in this game.

That is not how things work.

This is Planetside 2 - Combined Arms is the name of the game.

If you're an MBT getting owned by libs, you need support. Skyguard support. ESF support. Burster support. Infantry support.

Yes, infantry. Spam those lockons. Spam the **** out of them. Put the fear of Jesus in those lib crews.

Actually if Lib goes for Tankbuster, consider yourself lucky Vanguard driver. They need to get low. You can pop shield and have easy opportunity to put AP shell in the Lib.

In super lucky case you can even kill a Lib. Shooting it once on approach and the second time after the pass before it gets above your turret elevation.

There is only one thing you should be doing in open terrain: getting out of it. That goes for all vehicles, infantry, anything. Open terrain combined with little or no friendly support means death more often than not.

Considering Liberators is a direct counter to MBTs, this doesent surprise me.

Vanguard kills Skyguard, Skyguard kills Liberator, Liberator kills Vanguard. Rock Paper Scissors.
Roll with other vehicles or infantry. On your own in the open is the worst possible place to be versus a Liberator.

How dare you fire at the elusive sky whale?

Edit: Not my video.

Take away hovering from liberators.
/thread

Oh don't give me that. Liberators have some of the most powerful guns in the game, on one of the most mobile platforms in the game, with one of the toughest hides in the game.

Roving around in an AP MBT killing other vehicles makes for a high score, but it does usually end with getting killed by aircraft you can't respond to. Run stealth, stay near cover, and try to spot aircraft before it spots you so you can hide behind something. That will minimize the air deaths but it's still an occupational hazard of that play style.

Get a gunner in one of the AA vanny guns or have a skyguard run with you, nothing you can do by yourself really. Unless you hop in your aa secondary maybe

A single manned MBT, even a Vanguard, will NOT win against an experience Liberator Crew. The problem is that you are over extending yourself and your lack of experience as an MBT driver is hurting you and the fact that your constantly getting killed out in the open proves it.

Whoever gave you advice to roam away from an armor column is stupid and you should just forget whatever they said. Better advice would be to watch videos on YouTube of people driving the Vanguard and how they work the field and how they communicate with their gunner. While your survivability as a lone Vanguard in the field is 0%, an experienced solo Vanguard team have a 99% chance of surviving.