Aka: The least useful, most effective weapon in the game. It is definitely pretty awesome against Air, can almost one clip ESF and Libs, ESFs cause they are often fast enough to barely escape if they react quickyly, Libs cause of the magsize. they are so good at almost killing air that i've started to use my skyguard as a heavy with a lockon launcher,as a single rocket usually doesn't scare them away, but softens them up nicely. however, the best thing to do in a skyguard after 1 minute is usually to press 'E' to go and grab a different vehicle. It's damage against ground targets is absolutely laughable, currently an easy way to improve your infantry killing potential is to jump out and shoot with a flaregun at the enemy. This overspecialization results in the skyguard needing to be really, really good against air to make it worth it to even pull it when air is around but also really useless to pull earlier or keep around afterwards. So a few ideas to make skyguards more viable to keep around. Idea 1: increase direct hit damage against infantry. I definitely do not want the Infantry farming machines that AA tanks are in Battlefield 4, but in Planetside the skyguard already is more capable of shaving infantry at close than actually hitting it, so a hit should deal decent damage and roughly 3shot infantry that threatens you. Idea 2: increased damage against lightly armored vehicles. In particular the harrasser and to some extend the sunderer. the skyguard does not shoot armor piercing rounds and should be hard countered by MBTs and other lightnings with ground cannons. But it should be reasonably effective against ESFs on wheels and atleast do more than tickle heavier targets. at best it should be to HE what HE is to AP (with the new patch, not the age of hesh). at worst it should be 2/3ds of hesh so that if you sneak up on another lightning from behind you are capable of winning. Idea 3: Ease of use, a lockon. now, not Arma 3's AA tank point and click instagib lockons, but a help for newer players that simply allows you to lock an ESF to display it's distance and it's health even if you don't have the implant for it. ofcourse the pilot would get a warning for getting locked by a skyguard, so more experienced players would opt to not use it. for simplicity this could just be a gun optic, so you engage the lockon by right clicking and it then allows you to keep tracking an aircraft like engagement radar does by displaying an icon at the display edge when it leaves the screen. Now ofcourse an increase in ground firepower would mean that the anti air power would have to be toned down to not make it the most versatile gun in the game and the most likely solution would probably be to reduce it's accuracy more, to keep single skyguard effective at defending against air bur reducing their max range so that an increase in skyguard numbers won't create infinite no fly zones.
Well as AV turret , skyguard is pretty useless right now, only 1 thing left ---> squad spam, 4,5,6 skyguards clearing sky fast or just spook ppl for a short period of time then back to the vehicle pad, boom them with hesh-lightning or sundy purchase and back in action. But it's pretty rare strategy cos u can just take AA MAX which is far superior
The problem about skyguard and infantry is you'll need to tighten its CoF in order to shot things. But it may screw ESF at longer range. Why not add a coaxial AI gun to the skyguard (and only to that cannon, not on viper/python) ? I'll propose a coaxial AI mana turret, except it has a minimal CoF of 0.5 and no bloom per shot. 143dmg with 550RPM will be enough to make infantry think twice before charging with C4 in the hand. In their current stats, I don't think skyguard need a damage buff against air or vehicles. I didn't used my skyguard since a lot of time so I've no clue of how current balance are against ESF/lib. There is an other possibility to make skyguard suffering less from the "after 2 min every air unit are gone" syndrome : reduce it's nanite cost so you can effectively use it as a kleenex.
How to kill two birds with one stone. Make the skyguard damage harassers more effectively. Boom! Uselessness of skyguard solved. Boom! #1 hated item in the game now has a counter when it never did before. Bonus: No nerfs required!!
The skyguard is great, the problem is that you never get the chanse to use it due to the fact you need to get excorted, and when you are, often something else is already stealing its job and planes wouldn't dare to arrive at all.
Heh, that would be bad. I meant direct damage though. Right now the harasser has *nothing* it fears. Everything else in the game has some direct counter that strikes fear. Not the harasser. Make the skyguard be that thing.
an increase an accuracy isn't really needed if it would hit harder than spitting marshmellows. i don't want it to turn into a farm vehicle, i want it to be able to defend itself against atleast a guy in a broken wheelchair. it's very easy to hit infantry below 20m, however you do basically no damage to them. and at 50m plus the skyguard has the effectiveness it should have against infantry: absoutely zero. why not 3? it doesn't do anything except give you a bit better information at the tradeoff of also giving information to the enemy. and it adds something to the optics slot that the skyguard can actually use cause the current options are entirely useless for it's job.
Hitting harder isn't exactly gonna help if it can't hit the target. As well, if it's still flak, the fact of it not missing will make those harder hits seem brutal, let alone at the longer ranges on the fluke of an impact. I personally like your Three, since it isn't a weapon, it's just a tracking optic that warns the target as well. Far safer than a lock-on weapon, since the auto isn't aiming, it's just feeding the player the position. Hopefully the Radar won't be near worthless against ESFs that aren't rookies, due to stealth changes.
as i said, below 20m it is quite capable of **hitting** infantry. it would just be nice if those hitmarkers were worthy to be called "hits". and no, i do not want an increase in it's flak damage, that damage is pretty good, the issue is that it only triggers against air so against infantry and ground vehicles you are stuck with the direct hit damage which is just laughably low. The direct counter to a quad barrel 40mm heavy autocannon should not be running up to it from the front and sticking a knife in it's engine, it should be heavy vehicles, mass infantry or sneaking up on it.
I preferred the PS1 Skyguard. It was basically a glorified Harasser with an MG as well as it's flak gun, so it had at least some utility against infantry, and it could zoom around. At least PS2's one is decent against air, as opposed to it's earlier uselessness, but it's definitely extremely situational. I pretty much won't even pull one unless I'm near a vehicle terminal under an uncommonly heavy air fight/spam.
the ranger harrasser currently is an amazingly good AA vehicle. good damage coupled almost twice the speed of a lightning to chase after fleeing enemies and the manouverability to just run over infantry who threaten you pretty much makes for the superior choice in firepower, survivability and cost. just like with everything else harrassment trumps lightbulb.
