The Skyguard needs further buffs.

.. An AP cannon? I can kill ESF's with that too.

I do admit, the recoil on the lightning weapons do feel a little... Strange as if it were more of a bug thing because I have no idea how allowing a tank gun to have recoil seems logical.

As a user of the Skyguard and a Reaver/Lib pilot, I find the skyguard pretty balanced and perfectly fulfilling its role.

By role, I mean: "keep aircrafts at distance and instagib any who gets too close". IMO the skyguard is not intended to annihilate anything at sight...

I agree with the above, I fly Reavers and liberators and I pull skyguards on a regular basis. I think they're really well balanced right now!

I pull skyguard regularly.

With stealth skyguard I decimate air. Heck I'll do it surrounded by enemy vehicles. I don't care. They really don't expect flak from their own friendly forces.

With nanorep skyguard I hold a point and keep the skys clean.

It does what its supposed to do, and it does it the best

To expand on earlier, a single remotely skilled skyguard spreads concern to pilots and kills every noob pilot in range. Two semi-decent skyguards and you're scared off every good lone pilot and can crush entire airsquads of decent pilots by yourselves. Three decent skyguards and even the best airsquads are gonna consider changing fronts. Four skyguards and even suicide galcrashes are gonna make it anywhere near you.

Skyguards scale crazy well thanks to their range, ammosize and very respectable damage. If there is gonna be any buff, the only one I'd consider as a skyguard user myself, is removing that stupid *** recoil. Why does that even exist? It's not too much to limit its effectiveness in any way but that just means it's annoying, and pointless. Then again if that's actually keeping people away from using them more then great, Cobalt already has a steadily growing number of skyguards and seeing more than one at a time is becoming a sight too often for my piloting health. The free HA lockons were bad enough, at least ESFs can handle a couple of lockons.

I hardly notice that

I dont care about recoil, mag size or projectile velocity. The COF is pretty rough though. Still, anything more and experienced/skilled Skyguards would be death dealing AA snipers. I would love that, as Skyguarding is one of my favorite things to do - but it would be OP.

So I guess, as a Skygurad driver, its fine.

Remove recoil from the Skyguard then it's fixed.

A Skyguard is where it needs to be in my opinion. Bursters are rather inaccurate and only really viable when the plane is in close. A Skyguard has a lot tighter CoF and thus a lot longer range.
On top of that, the Skyguard can tear Harassers apart. In my opinion the Skyguard and the Basilisks are the only real Harasser counter that currently exists.

A Skyguard is also a rather good anti-armour. And if you're skilled enough you can even kill MBT's, other Lightnings are even easier unless they have AP.
(You can 2 clip a Magrider in his back)

tl;dr : Skyguard is where it needs to be.

Twin Bursters 220 x 2 = 440rpm 100+56 damage out to 50m 20+56 damage out to 200m 56/84 rounds(84 with extended mags).
Skyguard 480rpm 200+60 damage out to 150m 150+60 damage out to 300m 70 rounds.

Skyguard simply stomps twin bursters into the ground these days I don't how you can use Bursters as a reason to buff Skyguard. I think Bursters need there range increased to 300m is the actual change that needs to be made after looking at the two weapons stats.

Strangely, I can hit Libs that are glued to the sky ceiling more or less good with my dual bursters. With my skyguard 90% of the rounds will miss due to the CoF. Hell, I even struggle to kill infantry at 20m range. I hit everything else but not the guy I am aiming at.

The skyguard is great at close range against ESF and Libs. But further away, the burster is better since you can land more hits.

You can compensate recoil and drift when shooting with some skill. But you can't compensate a big CoF.

Sky guard is the number one AA threat on the battlefield. When used in numbers it locks down an area making approaches nearly suicidal since it has such a fast TTK on ESF. To buff them anymore would finish off the already weakening air presence that is being currently punished by Lock on bugs.

I still think it's COF is too great as well. As well as the rounds' draw distance is too short. (not the actual distance they travel, the distance you can SEE them travel)

I don't think the Skyguard needs much of anything at this time, any buffs could possibly just send it right over the "OP Line". It is a fairly well rounded vehicle and can definitely "hold it's own" against an array of threats. It's not made to slaughter targets at extreme distances even though it can dish out some damage, it's made to be somewhat close to the fight, that's when it really shines and tears through enemies.

The Skyguard already gets a bad rep by alot of players for being, "a tool for noobs" or "a skill-less farming machine", mostly by ESFs getting shot down by it but still. I don't think it needs anything. It does a good job challenging newer players (at playing Skyguard) to get kills (learning to lead targets, getting used to predicting movement of pilots and their reactions, etc) and challenges the veteran pilots to pull some serious aerobatics when faced with a decent/experienced Skyguard.

Skyguard's bullet spread is as absurd as the Tankbuster, the velocity speed is also quite hard to get use to.
I would nerf the damage, but making it easier to hit.

While 3/3 of those would be a bit much. 2/3 of those should be good enough to tweak the skyguard to a point where it's better than a burster. I'd definitely go with Flak Splash if the CoF isn't tightened.

To me the Skyguard feels just about perfect. Solo it does well against ESFs, but competent Libs are a scary prospect to gain the attention of.

What I would like to see changed / added would be the removal of the recoil as it's only really enough to be an annoyance and, as other mentioned, it doesn't make sense why considering it's mounted on a tank body.

The other, and most important to me, would be some sort of secondary AI machine gun. It's very frustrating to watch a HA just stand right out in the open with no fear while round after around misses. At least with a secondary AI I could have an additional role I could fill when air targets become scarce.

Not trying to knock your post by any means, so sorry if it seems that way but:

My opinion of that would be that it would enable Skyguards to sit farther from the battle albeit doing less damage. I think the Skyguard has a decent enough range, that the COF creates, that force it to atleast be pinned down to the battle area. I always liked the COF as a sense of reward for being close to the fight, the closer you are to the fight the more often you're going hit your target.

Most decent pilots will turn and evade QUICKLY once being hit by a Skyguard, which already gives us a small window to do as much damage as possible. If you're one of the few who doesn't mind getting close to the fight like some us, then this suggestion only hurts US as our damage output gets nerfed and we see no gain since we are already close enough that the COF makes no difference.

I'm no ESF pilot by any means (god do I suck at flying) but I think enabling the Skyguard to be even more of a pesky render limit shooter would just annoy the piss out of most pilots. Again, I understand the damage got nerfed but still. The thing has a wide COF, very much so....but don't be scarfed, get out front and use that increased damage to your advantage. Throw some Stealth on the Skyguard and get close.

I really like the Skyguard now (I liked it pre-buff also). It could be slightly better against infantry. Never panic more than when a LA is running at me only to have a majority of my rounds missing around them. Otherwise versus air it's great, versus sundies good, versus other lightnings very good, versus harassers , versus MBTs don't be crazy.

I don't think the skygaurd needs more buffs, but if you really wanted one I would be OK with a slight velocity buff so leading at range is not quite as long.

The buffs OP suggested would make it very over powered, I just don't want the game to go back to the days of the last week of beta where skyguards could instantly kill every ESF it sees within 3 hexes...

When there is a skygaurd and I am in the air with my fellow X pilots, we call that instantly and tend to stay at range from him, asking the ground to kill it (Yay C4 fairies to the rescue).