The Skyguard Is Not a Viable Deterrent

Blah blah blah Waterson.
I was skyguarding at Howling Pass Checkpoint, and everything was going rather well. I was deterring the rocketpod reavers that were trying to kill our Sunderphants, and had shot down a Skywhale suiciding a mag. And then, a tankbuster lib appeared. I magdumped him, and while I was reloading, he began firing his tankbuster. I got in half a mag before I bailed. The thing was not smoking. If this is the best a dedicated AA tank that is only useful against air can do against a 1/3 lib, I might as well just run a RamWhale.

I propose the following changes.
•Skyguard should one clip a lib within 100 meters, or get it flaming.
•Skyguard flak should shake the craft and increase the CoF by 150%.
•The tankbuster should only be able to one clip a Skyguard if it is shooting the rear armor.

/endrant

I'd say that the skyguard is in a good place against ESFs and Gals, but are broken against libs(like most things )
Maybe just decrease Lib flak resistance.

If flak resistance is a huge problem, changing the skyguard's weapon type may be better and adding a set resist for it.

0/10

Skyguard is in a good place against ESFs. It's just libs are capable of winning DPS races with their hard counter. And that is terrible.

1 skyguard is the counter to 1 ESF, not to a liberator.
I am tired of having to constantly repeat this...

A tankbuster already can only 1 clip a skyguard if it attacks from the rear and has magazine upgrade #3...

You need to spend more time solo libbing skyguards man...

I'm wondering why you didn't just dodge the TB. It's one thing for MBTs, but in a Lightning it's far easier to juke the TB.

If there were to be ANY change to the lib/skyguard interaction it should be to make it harder for the liberator to kill a skyguard via resistance changes. It would be pretty cool if the skyguard had completely different armour to a lightning and was extremely vulnerable to ground attack but very resistant to air.

Or nothing, you could also change nothing.

Seriously we cannot allow ground to just ignore air entirely. You need allied air to provide full coverage.

One Skyguard is no Skyguard. Even a single ESF can molest a lonely Skyguard.

Libs cannot one mag you unless it is the rear armor. I also sense you had a lack of friendly air which is the actual hard counter for libs. Might want to find an outfit that has an active airwing or maybe find a friend to run dual sky guards with.

The suggestion I usually post is to change "Top Armour" (which no one uses) to grant extra damage resistance to air based attacks (so that it takes somewhere between a quarter less to half less damage from aircraft) from any direction, instead of only attacks from above.

Your suggestion of increasing vulnerability from non air based threats is probably an excellent addition to that, to stop people taking it for their Viper lightnings .

The problem with skyguard is that,with the current flak mechanic, if you have too few, or they're too weak, then aircraft can pretty much ignore them. If you have several, or they're too powerful, they completely shut down a hex for aircraft, so neither the aircraft or the skyguard is having fun. In general, the population of aircraft in a hex is inversly proportional to the number of skyguards, and since only one skyguard is getting the kills anyways.

I'd model average kills per hour in a skyguard as

1/(2^n)*C1*C2*C3+1*P1 where n is the number of skyguards, P1 is the probablility of kiling an aircraft when you initially spawn a skyguard in retaliation to seeing it, and C1, C2 and C3 are some variables describing, respectively, how much aircraft wan't to go to a contested hex(knowing that there are targets), difficulty of killing aircraft, and the amount of aircraft.

Even if my model is wrong, the general point is that the more skyguards are in an area, and the more effective your skyguard is, the less rewarding your skyguard becomes because you can't chase down targets and aircraft sure as hell don't want to go to a hex where they get instagibbed with no chance to do anything. Believe me, I would rather not spawncamp because spawncamping is fairly unrewarding and not that fun, but aircraft quite simply can't operate in any airspace where you have flak sources.

skyguards my default vehicle when ol' Bessie's on cooldown, to the extent I was confused at the thought having to spawn a skyguard in retaliation - I'm probably in it already...or a burster MAX too far from anything.

The number one thing I'd like changed is projectiles, either a tighter/more reliable firing pattern, or faster muzzle velocity, flak shells are glacially slow compared to ESFs and given the poxy bullet drop, longer range encounters are an exercise in futility and deafness. failing that, an alternative AA weapon for the lightning would be nice, although the two obvious suggestions - Coyotes-on-a-lightning, or some kind of dual-A30 walker mount - are both OP and kinda lame. How about putting a shredder on a lightning?

ITT: I learned that it's actually a Lightning tank, not a Skyguard specifically. There are other guns?! No thanks.

So for you, 0=P1
just look at that smiley, lol. but the problem is figuring out how to make an AA option that
a. Rewards skill when using it
b. Rewards skill when escaping it
c. Doesn't completely lock down a hex
d. Doesn't remove the purpose of ESFs
e. Still promotes combined arms on each side.

The ESF does all these things rather well, but I understand that not everyone should be required to fly. I do, however, think everyone should be required to use vehicles though, this is not infantryside 2.

Agree 100%

Declaring that "you only play infantry" is a playstyle that should be catered to exactly as much as "I never play heavy" - i.e it shouldn't be catered to.

This is a combined arms game and you have 3 resource pools to maximize your team contribution with. Noone is saying that you have to spend every second of your PS2 time doing what your team needs the most but you do have to be flexible, adamantly sticking to the same loadout life after life and refusing to adapt to the situation is not what should be being encouraged by game design.

Also learning to fly well enough to take out your average liberator is really not that hard.

I guess you've never seen 2-3 Skyguards working together.


WHAT'S THAT YOU SAY??? TEAMWORK???????



...teamwork OP, nerf it.

No friends, no mic, no outfit

oh your tank lost to THE anti-tank gun......so nerf anti tank gun?

dumb post bro you sat in the open until the direct counter to tanks showed up and killed you sounds like both were working as intended

to pull that off with a tankbuster takes a lot of skill and a fair amount of luck to do

i

it's called top armour try actually using it

then you are definitely in the wrong game.

that statement is like saying "im bad at playing duck hunt but i refuse to plug in the gun controller please make the dog shoot the ducks for me"