Skyguard Vs Liberator...

I'm just going off of what other pilots tell me, that the ESF is the counter to Liberators.

Statistically though the ESF is much more of a threat to Liberators than a Skyguard... Needler, SLCs and Mustangs are all the leading causes of Liberator deaths right after collisions. Skyguards account for about a quarter of the Liberator deaths that ESFs are responsible for.

At any rate, if the Liberator isn't scared enough of ESFs, then that's another balance problem. Liberators should be as helpless to ESFs as Skyguards are to MBTs. One big improvement for the Liberator in this respect would be to prevent it from being able to flip on its side without stalling and dropping like a rock. Keep the Liberator as a dedicated A2G aircraft that relies on ESF escorts to keep it alive against air threats.

Why are you looking at KPUs and not KPHs? KPUs are misleading because data is collected based on 24 hour periods. In other words KPU doesn't differentiate if a player plays 2 hours a day or 8 hours a day. If someone jumps in a Liberator, plays for 2 hours, and gets 20 kills they have a KPU of 20 but a KPH of 10. If another person jumps into a MBT for 8 hours and gets the same 20 kills, they also have a KPU of 20 but instead have a KPH of 2.5. This is why KPU is not a useful metric for measuring performance.

Instead, consider the KPHs instead.

VKPH= vehicles killed per hour of usage
AKPH= aircraft killed per hour of usage

Liberator Dalton-
VKPH- 12.84-13.32
AKPH- 11.12-12.35

Prowler AP Cannon-
VKPH- 12.86
AKPH- 1.3

Magrider FPC-
VKPH- 11.71
AKPH- 1.29

Vanguard AP Cannon-
VKPH- 10.3
AKPH- 1.99

Lighting AP Cannon-
VKPH- 12.31-13.06
AKPH- 1.08-1.17

Lightning Skyguard Cannon-
VKPH- 1.78-1.87
AKPH- 5.42-5.88

So we see that not only does the Liberator kill the most ground vehicles out of any of the primary weapons, at the same time it has an abnormally high anti-aircraft capability. This is a clear sign that not only is the Liberator over-performing when it comes to AV duties, it also has the unintended and harmful role of being more effective at AA than the dedicated AA vehicle.

ColonelChingles, you do make a good point.

If you are so unable to parse the wealth of information in this thread, I can only assume you're being asinine and further discussion only validates your trolling.

"You say the Liberator is OP. I would assume then that we are looking at the amount of kills that it is making, because what else could make it OP. So if the Liberator is killing X number of Vehicle and Y number of Infantry and you consider it OP, then why aren't MBT's which are a comparable ground vehicle not OP, when they are killing 2X the vehicles and 2Y Infantry..."

I'm not the only one who says it's OP. In fact the only people who aren't are those who have heavily certed into it. Funny that.

The number of kills are misleading. You're using statistics like a drunk uses a streetlight, for support rather than illumination. It's patently obvious that comparing Liberators kills to tank kills is Apples and Oranges. You've not proven the premise that the total number of kills correlates to relative strength of the vehicle. This logic leads to absurd conclusions, by definition, knife kills are comparatively rare, and therefore this must mean that the knife is unbalanced.

You are, of course, free to assume what you like, but your premise is thoroughly incorrect. You're begging the question.

Interestingly though, the Skyguard accounts for, on average, 0.9% of Liberator deaths (give or take), where vehicle suicide accounts for a whopping majority of Liberator deaths at (approx.) 30% of vehicle deaths. Is it not unreasonable to say that when the vast majority of deaths is pilot error and the supposed hard counter inflicts less than 1% of vehicle deaths, that the vehicle is perhaps too durable? Funny, because that assertion seems to be borne out directly in the self same statistics you yourself are using as well as the experience players are reporting here.

Their supposed counter maybe, e.g the Skyguard?

I do think the ESF is a good counter to the Liberator, it has all the same flight characteristics as the Liberator and it can use both lock-ons and the nose gun to damage the lib. I just did not want to go down the path you were making with comparing the Skyguard to the ESF....

I think the issue with the relationship between the ESF and the liberator is that the total ESF population out numbers Liberators in game by a very large margin, so if we make them more effective then they are, then the shear number of ESF's will create an imbalance and make it very difficult for liberators. 1 vs 1 it can be a good fight between the lib and ESF, with a slight edge going to the Lib in my opinion, but as soon as you add a second ESF, the lib is toast.

I don't have a problem comparing Libs with MBT's in average kills per hour either. But keep in mind those numbers are skewed because MBT's get pulled 4x's as much as liberators. We should look at all the different stats, it gives us a good over all feel for how the vehicles compare with on another and whether something is OP. It's not perfect as we all know, but either way the stats between MBT's and Liberators are pretty much equivalent. They are very similar vehicles, high damage/High Armor and multi-crewed.

Only reason I would want to look at KPU, is because more ground vehicles get pulled then Air units, and that can skew the numbers when we are looking at average kills. Regardless, the Liberator and the MBT for the most part are killing about the same amount of Vehicles and infantry.

I do not think the Skyguard needs to be more effective vs Liberators for a variety of reasons. I would rather see the MBT, be improved to deal with Liberators, since they are closer comparison vehicle, Increasing the elevation of the Main gun by 10-15% would make a huge difference, and I also feel that if a MBT wants to sacrifice their secondary gun for a Ranger, then the ranger should be near as good as the Skyguard.

I'm going to disagree with you about the Liberators role as an AA platform. I do love flying the Lib and most of the lib pilots I know, love Lib vs Lib fights. Reducing its effective AA capability would take away from the Air vs Air game.

Actually that's one of the strengths of KPHs, which measure per hour of usage.

If you have 4 people in MBTs and each of them stay in their MBT for 1 hour each, you have 4 hours of usage, not 1 hour. The number of people pulling vehicles is already adjusted for the result!

In other words it makes no difference to KPH measurements that there may be 4x the number of MBTs as Liberators. For example, consider the following scenario:

4 people pull MBTs and play with their MBTs for 1 hour. During this 1 hour each of those 4 people kill 10 enemies each, for a total of 40 kills.

1 person pulls a Liberator and plays with it for 1 hour. During this 1 hour that 1 person kills 10 enemies, for a total of 10 kills.

The KPH for the MBT players would be calculated in the following way: 40 kills/4 hours of usage = 10 kills per hour of usage.
The KPH of the single Liberator player would be calculated in the following way: 10 kills/1 hour of usage = 10 kills per hour of usage.

So really it makes no difference about how many people pulled MBTs and how many people pulled Liberators... KPH doesn't change.

This is why KPH is a much stronger indicator of performance (except in certain limited and isolated cases) than KPU. And here KPH values clearly show that the Liberator is slightly over-performing when it comes to AV duties (by about 3.6%) and definitely over-performing when it comes to AA duties (by about 521%) when compared to MBT primary weapons. This is why the Liberator requires a slight A2G nerf and a very severe A2A nerf.

Lol this thread

they should just make the skyguard fly. but then these guys would have to get it nerfed.

This is about the Skyguard being totally ineffective against 1/2 targets, nothing else. A Lib will demolish a Skyguard
in 3 seconds, which shouldn't happen since the Skyguard is designed with only 2 targets in mind, ESFs and Libs.
The only way to sort this issue out is to give the Skyguard higher resists against air-weaponry and increase its projectile velocity.

You can't increase its damage, because it would make ESF's useless. But it needs to shake of attacks from Liberators
and chase them off instead of what is now occuring. When you have an Air-unit totally wrecking a AA-unit in a few seconds,
you have totally negated the purpose of that AA-unit.

You see this is where you are wrong, the liberator does not kill the most ground vehicles...

Monthly Vehicle Cause of Death

You want to use the KPH metric and when we do it makes it appear the Liberator is killing the most ground vehicles, But in actuality it is not killing the most vehicles. Go take a look at the leading cause of death of ground vehicles and top of the list on almost every single one is AP MBT. In fact, no where in the top 25 cause of death for ground vehicles will you find ANY of the liberators weapons. How is that possible?

So the question is...If the KPH statistic is showing the liberators are killing so many more vehicles then an AP MBT, then why is the AP MBT the top cause of death for just about every single ground vehicle in this game?

Please feel free to give me your answer, but the answer is KPH is not an accurate value for comparison because of the discrepancies in the number of Liberators pulled in comparison to MBT's. That is the main reason I used KPU, because that normalizes the values and gives us a better idea of the effectiveness of each vehicle.

I can agree with reducing the AA capabilities on some of the Lib weapons, but you can't nerf the liberator platform, because the Lib should be able to take on an AA role as well. May I remind you that you're talking about Lighting vs Liberators, not Skyguard vs Liberators. A lightning can equip AP cannons and become a threat to all ground vehicles. A shredder lib should be the same versus air.

Dalton as an AA weapon is actually very difficult. I suspect only a handful of lib crews can do it consistently. However, that's not really a justification for it to be a viable weapon. You can nerf the Dalton versus air, IE more gravity, longer reload (but higher damage to retain TTK) or something to that effect, but you can't nerf the platform.

liberator is way to op in this game and everyone is saying it,even some of the hardcore liberator flyers. The dev must know about it at this point but they must have someone high up in the dev to who love playing as the liberators, so it never been nerf.

What metrics are you using? It is OP in what way? Is it killing more vehicles, then other ground vehicles? Is it killing more infantry then other ground vehicles?

For something to be OP, it must be compared to something else and be shown to significantly out perform the thing it is being compared too. The liberator is a strong vehicle and it has some great capabilities, but the numbers do not show it being anymore devastating the an AP MBT, and when we look at raw kills no single ground vehicle has it listed as its main case of death.

If it is such an OP vehicle killing vehicle, then why over the last 30 days did the AP MBT kill over 29,000 MBT and the Liberator killed less them 7700? If it is so strong vs ground vehicles shouldn't we see it as a main cause of death for ground vehicles?

Well that's an easy one to answer.

There are many more people playing as MBTs for a much longer period of time.

Average Playtime Per Day
Liberator Dalton Cannon- 58.1-61.8 hours
MBT AP Cannon- 380.8-397.6 hours

Average Uniques
Liberator Dalton Cannon- 204-223
MBT AP Cannon- 823-1,001

So naturally if you look at total numbers of deaths, you are going to see far fewer deaths caused by Liberators simply because there are far fewer Liberators flying around.

For example, say we have two weapons. One, weapon A, is known to be OP but is only used by 5 people. The other, weapon B, is the baseline but is used by 100 people. Weapon A kills 100 people per hour of usage, while weapon B is inferior and only kills 10 people per hour of usage.

In any given hour, those 5 people will rack up an impressive 500 kills with weapon A. However, because of the sheer number of people using the inferior weapon B, in that same hour weapon B will garner a total of 1,000 kills.

It would be incorrect to say (as you have tried to do) that weapon B is stronger than weapon A based on total kills or percent kills... the limited number of kills from weapon A is solely due to the fact that it is not used as much as weapon B.

This is the case of the Liberator. This is also why total kills or even percentage of deaths is a largely useless statistic and why KPH is superior in determining whether one weapon system, like the Liberator, is overperforming.

seems legit. that's what we saw with ZOE MAX and Harasser. we saw less people using them every day, for far less total kills. in fact, you almost couldn't even notice them in the game at all because it was really just a handful of people who were able to make those weapons over-perform through a lot of dedicated playtime and practice at certain skill-mechanics.

Exactly, and that is one of the central tenets of my argument...

Ground vehicles significantly outnumber Air vehicles and they are played with much greater frequency, therefore if we want an Air game then ground vehicles can not be able to easily destroy an Air vehicle in a 1 vs 1 engagement, because the battlefield does not have an equal distribution of Air and Ground vehicles. The battlefield consists of 2:1 or even 3:1 ratio of ground vehicles to Air vehicles and that does not even take into consideration the number of Infantry as well.

ok lets look at KPH, which I did originally as well. I showed both KPU and KPH

AP MBT Avg KPH - 20.86
Dalton Avg KPH - 22.6

*** Almost Identical, but keep in mind the AP MBT can achieve that number with only 1 Player, The liberator must have 2 players for the Dalton to achieve that Avg KPH number

The Difference in KPH between the AP and the MBT is smalll, now both of these vehicles are multi-crewed,so lets factor in the Tank Buster and the NS AV Secondaries of the MBT.

Tank Buster Avg KPH - 6
Halberd Avg KPH - 24.4

So when we use KPH and we add both the Pilot/Gunner and Driver/Gunner lets see what the KPH difference is between the MBT AP/Halberd vs Lib Tank buster/Dalton

MBT AP/Halberd Avg KPH - 45
Lib TB/Dalton Avg KPH - 28.6 (-16.4 KPH compared to MBT's)

Where is this over performance?

You've conveniently ignored the Skyguard. You've conveniently ignored any reference to the Liberator itself.

This is a weak argument and a weak line of reasoning. You're essentially window dressing.

You're arguing that the KPH somehow determines how strong a weapon is. It doesn't. If only one person used the Liberator and got one kill p/hour then that would have absolutely no bearing on the relationship between say the Skyguard and the Liberator, just as if it got 100 kills p/hour. The statistic just doesn't tell us that much. Especially since the Liberator performs all roles with more or less equal efficacy. You're not controlling for the right variables.

First of all, the MBT and the Lib don't have a relationship with each other. You may as well compare Knife Kills and Dalton Kills.

Here's a more telling stat.

Skyguard avg. kph: 8.09 / A. Avg. KPH: 5.85.
Lib TB/Dalton Avg KPH - 28.6

To quote your statistics.

Where is the problem? There is your problem.

In that last part you are comparing the KPH of 2 weapons vs 1 weapon. The Skyguard is a solo vehicle with a KPH of 5.85, the better comparison would be with the Tank buster which is the solo equivalent of the liberator, which has a KPH of 6... 5.85 KPH / 6 KPH are pretty similar. What you are doing is like comparing the KPH of an AP Lightening (22 KPH) with a 2/2 AP/Halberd MBT (45 KPH)


That being said, I do not consider a single Skyguard the counter to a Liberator, it is a closer counter to the ESF. Not that a solo skyguard can't take out a liberator, it just isn't easy, nor should it be. Just like it isn't easy for a solo AP Lightening to take out a 2/2 AP/Halberd MBT. But as soon as you add 1 or 2 more skyguards into the mix or even 1 or 2 other sources of ground based AA either Infantry or vehicle, then you have a more appropriate counter to a Liberator.

You are also not grasping the fact that ground vehicles outnumber the liberator by anywhere from a 2:1 - 3:1 ratio, there are more of them and they are pulled more frequently on the battlefield. Therefore in terms of balance ideally 2-3 ground vehicles or infantry will have the combined power to obliterate a Liberator. If you up that individual ability, then ground based AA will completely obliterate everything in the air, because of the difference in populations.

You can't give one unit the power to kill another unit in a 1 : 1 match up when Unit A outnumbers Unit B by a ratio of 2:1 or even 3:1. Unless Unit B is killing Unit A by 2x or 3X, which is not the case with liberators, as I was explaining in my examples of comparing KPH's.

Now, I would agree that ground based AA would need to be increased if the amount of damage that the Liberator is doing to ground based vehicles and Infantry would far exceed what current ground based vehicles are doing in terms of killing power or if the rate of pulling and frequency of liberators was much greater, such as the ESF which is pulled in the same numbers as ground vehicles. The fact is the Liberator pound for pound does less killing then a comparable MBT, in a 1 vs 1 Avg KPH comparison and especially in terms of total kills because of the shear numbers of MBT's.

This is the same type of balancing we use for infantry weapons. Infantry vastly outnumbers ground vehicles, therefore it generally takes 2-3 + Infantry to take out a ground vehicle. Yes, I know C4 and Tank mines and other weapons can kill a vehicle on a 1 : 1 basis, but not when you consider the amount of attempts it takes Infantry over time to get that kill. For instance; an Engineer can run up and drop mines and kill a tank, and that gives the appearance that an engineer can solo a vehicle. However, over time the engineer is not going to kill a tank every time they drop mines or rush it, for instance 3 - 4 engineers may rush a sunderer and all but one is killed in the attempt, but that 4th engineer got the kill (is that still a 1 : 1 kill ratio, no it would be a 4 :1. because they will die many times in the attempt or the mines will not be hit, etc etc. Thus it will take 3 or 4 attempts on average for the engineer to kill a vehicle Or even the HA vs a MBT. Can the HA kill a MBT by themselves, yes, but over time, the HA is going to lose or die trying more then they will succeed, thus over the course of time it will take 3 HA's or attempts to kill 1 MBT.

And why is that ratio of 3 Infantry for every MBT kill needed, because Infantry vastly outnumber MBT's and if we gave them the power to consistently deal with MBT's in a 1 :1 basis, then MBT's would get completely obliterated, because Infantry outnumber them 3:1.

This isn't window dressing. This is about perspective. Is the Liberator the strongest vehicle in this game, no doubt. But in terms of impact on the game it is nominal, which is expressed when comparing it to other comparable vehicles in this game in terms of KPH or even total kills.

The Skyguard or even a MBT will never be a better AA platform then an ESF or another liberator for the simple fact that they do not fly and they can not engage Air vehicles in the same fashion, they will almost always be reactive and not proactive, while Air vehicles can be proactive vs other Air vehicles.

It's still a FACT that enabling an air-unit to kill an AA-unit in 2-3 seconds totally negates the purpose of the AA-unit.

The Skyguard's purpose is ONE thing, to kill air-units, it's useless at anything else, so it should at the very least
be somewhat good at what it's suppose to do.

I'm not sure that because one type of weapon is scarce on the battlefield is any good justification for making that weapon OP. After all, I could use that same reasoning to say that since infantry outnumber tanks by a large margin, therefore tanks should be extremely powerful as compared to infantry. Or I could argue that the Infiltrator class should be given absurd advantages over all other infantry classes because it is the least played. Either way, I think that in most cases that would not be considered a valid justification at all and I would be laughed at if I tried to make such an argument.

In the same way, the fact that air is outnumbered by ground vehicles cannot possibly be used as justification for making air units overpowered. If there are not enough air units in the sky, that is the responsibility of pilots to form their own organized air wings. We should not hand OP equipment to pilots simply because there are not many of them, no more than we would make OP Infiltrators or OP tanks.

I'm not sure if it will help you understand how to use statistics at all, but you do realize there's a difference between KPH, VKPH, and AKPH?

KPH- Measures how many infantry (and possibly pilots/vehicle crew) are killed per hour of usage. Generally this statistic is used when looking at anti-infantry effectiveness, but tells you little about anti-vehicle effectiveness.

VKPH- Measures how many ground vehicles are killed per hour of usage. While the data doesn't reveal the type of ground vehicle, it's the best measurement of anti-vehicle (ground) effectiveness.

AKPH- Measures how many air vehicles are killed per hour of usage. Different than VKPH and measures anti-air effectiveness.

So really you tried to make an argument about anti-vehicle effectiveness and cited anti-infantry statistics. I'm really not sure you know what you're doing here. While it might be fun to have a theoretical chat about how good the TB is against killing infantry, I doubt that's really what you intended to focus on.

If you want to focus on combined VKPH and AKPH, it might look something like this:
NC Liberator
VKPH- 16.8 (Dalton Cannon: 13.4, TB: 3.2)
AKPH- 14.9 (Dalton Cannon: 12.3, TB: 2.6)

NC Vanguard
VKPH- 22.3 (AP Cannon: 10.3, Enforcer: 12.0)
AKPH- 2.4 (AP Cannon: 2.0, Enforcer: 0.4)

So we see here that the Liberator does about 33% worse against ground vehicles than Vanguard when you start combining the VKPHs together. It also tends to do about 521% better against air vehicles than the Vanguard when you start combining the AKPHs together.

Of course, we run into the fundamental problem if such a combination is even a legitimate way to manipulate the data. This is because of the different ways in which the 2/3 Liberator and the 2/2 MBT work.

A 2/3 Liberator typically engages the enemy from range; the pilot simply tries to give the gunner the best positioning possible. In these cases the pilot isn't actually going for too many kills and instead is letting the gunner hit the target as best as possible.

A 2/2 MBT engages the enemy through closer-range direct fire; both the "driver" and the roof gunner are engaging the target at the same time.

So for Liberators, we would expect a low VKPH value for the TB... because much of the time the pilot isn't trying to engage. And for MBTs, the secondary weapon often "steals" kills due to being a rapid-firing weapon as compared to MBT primary cannons.

Now let's throw in an analysis of the Skyguard for good measure:
NC Skyguard:
VKPH- 1.9
AKPH- 5.8

And manipulate it so you have two Skyguards (to compare to the less-expensive 2/3 Liberator or 2/2 MBT):
2 NC Skyguards:
VKPH- 3.8
AKPH- 11.6

So we still have a problem. Even a pair of Skyguards isn't going to have the AA capabilities of a 2/3 Liberator or the AV capabilities of either.

Changes need to be made. I think enough changes should happen so that the following performance statistics are true:

AV:
(Liberator Dalton = MBT AP Cannon)>MBT Secondary>Liberator TB>Skyguard

AA:
Skyguard>(Liberator TB = MBT Secondary)>(Liberator Dalton = MBT AP Cannon)

Putting these two vehicles, with their completely different natures, in the only situation where they can preform a comparable role would be to defend a static point (ex: base or vehicle column). In this particular situation, I find it hard to believe that you believe two Skyguards would be inferior to a single Liberator in attempting to keep your charge unmolested by air. Your conclusion should be all the evidence you need to see how useless those numbers are when is comes to comparing a fast moving (flying) attack craft and a slower moving air defense tank. Personal experience on both sides is the only proper way to see the contrasting strengths between the two, which doesn't translate well when conversing on the internet with a hundred different people with a hundred different experiences.