[Suggestion] Upgraded Lightning AA Systems

Well at least on the front of helping out AA deterrence, SOE has graced AA units with Air Deterrence Medals, so keeping the Skygods off everyone's backs is now slightly more profitable.

Not only that, but they're finally nerfing the Liberator and ESF! A few of the upcoming changes:

Hahaha. Our prayers... they have been answered!

Which of course in a weird way negates much of the point of this thread and other threads that I've made about AA weapons. If they only make the Liberator a short-medium range vehicle, then you really don't need any long-range AA and the Skyguard should be sufficient (combined with the Tank Buster nerf).

Ah... glorious...

skyguard pilot with over 250 hours and 1,677 vehicle kills (official SOE stats are linked in my signature). in my experience a majority of what the OP said is lies.

liberators have been a problem, but with the upcoming changes they will be forced to be much closer in and the TB stops carving up tanks in one volley. while that part was true it will become irrelevant shortly.

now for galaxies. why on earth would any skyguard that wasn't already on fire hide from a gal? for now we will overlook the fact that they can easily be spotted and hit as soon as they render. their weapons would be scary EXCEPT at any given point you are only ever getting hit by 1 or maybe 2 of them which is not enough to win the DPS race against the skyguard.

ESF do run away, but that also means they aren't doing anything effective. in most cases i kill ESF even when they try to run because most areas (even on amerish) have wide open spaces with huge lanes of fire leaving few places for aircraft to go. all you need to do is learn how to lead targets.

INFANTRY! they are what i play with when i want to watch my prey scamper around frantically in terror as i murder them. the skyguard cannon is horribly inaccurate beyond a few meters, BUT 5 shots kill infantry within 100m and we have a 70 round clip with a very high rate of fire. ever hose down an aircraft pad on a biolab that is full of enemy infantry? i have, and as a result they all ran inside and my team took the pad and began a proper assault. the skyguard is one of the best suppression weapons in the game. if you want even more fun slap on a proximity radar and hunt snipers, the ones with stalker cloaks are especially entertaining.

as for other vehicles for the most part you must be a substantially better driver to kill anything on the ground, but it is supposed to be a dedicated AA and as a result it should be the underdog in a ground vehicle fight. you don't have to hide under the skirts of some other tank but you should always have an escape route. lightnings are small and fast so escaping most vehicles is trivial as long as you know the terrain well.

as for the weapons suggested. i have my own opinions on the aesthetics there but that is largely irrelevant. what does matter is the fact that the skyguard will out DPS all of those very easily. lock on weapons have limited range by their very nature, anything without the flak effect is vastly harder to hit aircraft with and ALL of those suggestions would cripple your ability to hurt infantry and vehicles to the point that you would just be seen as free certs.


something i have been thinking about with regards to making the skyguard a little more effective would be giving the lightning access to Engagement Radar like ESF have (except maybe switch it to the defense slot on the lightning). since they are for hunting aircraft give them some effective air radar. i could never give up my proximity radar, but i think this would be good for getting new skyguard pilots trained on how to fight aircraft (how they move, attack, etc.).

I agree with lawn gnome for the most part except for his assessment of Galaxy firepower. True, most Galaxies aren't dangerous. Either because they are uncerted, pilot is unskilled or the gunners are unskilled. But against a skilled and manned Galaxy - No chance.

Especially one which uses drakes to hunt vehicles. 2 of them kill anything fairly quickly - Drake isn't simply a Aircraft version of Basilisk. While it is similar - its damage drop off doesn't even start at the range Basilisk does minimum damage. There is a maneuver to let 3 guns of a Galaxy hit a ground vehicle. I have killed some skyguards as solo Galaxy by simply landing next to them and start shooting them up with my Drake. While Skyguard does way more damage, Galaxy has way more hp. TTK for 1 Skyguard vs 1 Drake gunner Galaxy is pretty similar when hitting front armour. Luckily Drake as the default weapon suffers from being underestimated, thus a lot of people cert out of it quickly.

Against Tanks? At long range (in open ground like rivers of Esamir) its possible to beat other tanks simply by moving and shooting. Hitting 15/70 shots better than hitting none at all and it stops NAR. Which is also why its good as a support weapon in tank battles. At ranges where its easy to dodge tank cannons, Skyguard can consistently hit at least some shots out of its big magazine. It is really unnerving to be on the receiving end while you try to focus on other tanks who are deemed bigger threat. It is still on a fast moving tank and you can use it to draw fire from enemies, flank them, confuse them, distract them. See a tank which is smoking, you can decide to push as well - at close range it still does considerable damage.

I usually engage other lightnings with my Skyguard and I consider my odds to be in my favor most cases. HE and Viper usually die to skyguard in direct engagement. Against HEAT chances are around 50/50, who has better positioning and gets the first strike.
Against AP you gotta be careful, but its still beatable in specific circumstances.

It may even get better with the upcoming tank changes in relation to other tanks. Im really curious how they will affect Skyguard vs other Tank cannons balance.

I also want to add that Skyguard kills Sunderers rather quickly and easily (easiest weapon do drive and shoot with)

Giving Engagement Radar would make Skyguard a big threat to Liberators and boost its defence tremendously. Most times when Skyguard dies to Air is due to Air getting the drop on Skyguard. With advance warning, the tank driver can position himself better, look for any cover nearby and take advantage of it. Can also tell if ESF are planning to use swarm tactics since you can see them lurking about behind hills and buildings. You could also see aircraft behind buildings who try to repair and shoot them - Skyguard doesn't need LOS after all.

The skyguard scares the poop out of esf pilot as a skyguard lightning effectively creates a no fly zone, they are very powerful against esf. Galaxys and libs have large health pools which make them more dangerous to skyguard lightnings than the lightning is to the lib/gal. An easy fix is to reduces the resistance of skyguard flak on gals and libs.

Seriously folks just give me this instead the Original concept for the Lightning.
On one side fast flying explosive rockets. On the other side an Armour piercing proper version of what the Vulcan should have been. And this little baby would become a fast agile and versatile little thing to roam around in. Good at many excelling at none.

Devs please give the Lightning some love of this kind.

i rarely let gals get that close before i have dumped at least one full clip into them so i may be wrong and most of the gals on connery run bulldogs for infantry ground support and those are pretty easy to murder.

as for sunderers. skyguards kill unmanned sunderers but a bus with 1 or 2 dedicated gunners is very dangerous because they can tank the damage well enough for their guns to kill you if you aren't careful. add in blockade armor and in most cases it is a lost cause. i will murder parked sunderers but a fully loaded battle bus is a whole different story. especially if it is running dual furies, one volley from each is enough to end a healthy lightning (it has happened to me before).

i also hunt other lightnings, but you still need to be a better driver and always at least have your front armor facing their side armor or your side armor facing their rear or some other favorable situation. as for MBTs i only actively hunt them when they are smoking or incredibly dumb (i have killed more than a few because they ignored me while i parked on their back bumper and unloaded on them). besides when i want to kill tanks i switch to my heavy assault with decimator, 4x AV grenades, and 2x C4. my skyguard is for AA and AI work which i am poor at with my heavy assault.

Okay, that's a bit harsh, no? I mean I'm not entirely inexperienced in a Skyguard myself... 134 Lightning hours for 862 vehicle kills... which comes out to about 6.4 vehicle kills per hour. That isn't very different from your 6.7 vehicle kills per hour, ya know.

Yup, and I posted above you that the new Liberator changes have addressed one of the original points of the thread. It was true when the thread was created (and for most of its life), but is no longer true. Thankfully.

As others have mentioned, the two main dangers of a Galaxy are 1) the Light or Heavy Assaults that can pop out and 2) Bulldogs. Essentially the Galaxies themselves are so heavily armored and have such high hitpoints that a Skyguard simply won't scare them off.

The infamous "Galaxy stomp" is also an effective maneuver against Skyguards that refuse to run, and only requires one person to be in the Galaxy.

You clearly have not fought against effective ESF pilots who can fly nap of the earth and who take advantage of topography. Those ESFs can get in, unleash a barrage of rockets, and get out before there's effective return fire.

So against those BR5-10's that insist on flying in a straight line, Skyguards are great. But against experienced pilots, Skyguards are relatively ineffective. Which I'm actually pretty okay with (the main point of this thread being an anti-Liberator thing).

And I'm perfectly fine with leading targets... I spend 204 shots to blow up one vehicle, where you spend 713 to do the same thing.

Yes... suppression... I mean I'd agree with your point if the Skyguard's flak made a tiny explosion when it hit the ground or if there actually were suppression mechanics in PS2. But if that's the best you can come up with... you could have just pulled whatever LMG your faction uses and do the same thing, for the cost of 0 resources!

I do agree that playing with Infiltrators is fun, but really I have to wonder how effective I'm being when I herd them all over a hill (flashing my little Lightning lights as I do it ). I never kill them though, it's all just fun and games because they really aren't a threat to Lightnings in the first place.

Haha. I did manage to kill a 2/2 Magrider in my Skyguard once. And possibly a few Viper Lightnings that I got lucky on. I am totally okay with the Skyguard/AA options totally sucking against infantry and armor if they could just effectively destroy air units.

It's actually not too difficult to hit air units with a variety of things, and you don't have to rely on the flak effect at all. Just a few days ago I downed a Scythe that was engaging a friendly Reaver... using my carbine.

The problem here is that you're thinking that shell velocity would be the same as the Skyguard. But things like the Shredder have velocities that are 150% that of the Skyguard (600 m/s versus 400 m/s). This is why the Shredder is a decent AA system when mounted on a Liberator... I have flown with pilots who essentially have AA Liberator loadouts using the Shredder and Coyote.

These options simply offer alternatives for engaging out to medium ranges... as it is the Skyguard is really only effective at short ranges against ESFs. Taking out fleeing aircraft at longer ranges or intercepting Liberators before they can engage is the purpose of adding new short and medium range AA systems.

While all those vehicle concepts are interesting, I don't really think we need to change much on the Skyguard to make it more interesting to use without completely cranking its performance up to 11 (compared to, oh say, a Harasser with a Walker or Ranger which is almost the same resource and cert cost of a skyguard).

My experience at least is that a single Skyguard is pretty good at deterring air already and two competent Skyguard users are already pretty much a death sentence to any air in a general area (provided the air don't get ground support to deal with the Skyguards).

What sucks is that you have to give up any capability at fighting ground when running a Skyguard, so if we'd just address that I think it'd be a pretty solid vehicle overall.

I'm thinkin maybe just give the Skyguard two firing modes - the current flak mode and an alternate (changable with B like infantry can switch modes), which would switch the gun to something like a Basilisk with a tighter cone of fire and slightly higher bullet velocity.

The flak mode would then be most useful for dealing with air at range, while the other firing mode could ding light and medium vehicles and absolutely kill any air at close ranges.

With this setup the Skyguard would still be good at dealing with air while having some capability against ground, allowing the pilot to be a little flexible in terms of what he can do - and it'd be easy. It's all code work without the need of any new models.

If the goal is to purely increasy AA capabiliy, a deployment option might be the way to go - this would increase the firepower of the Skyguard making it more deadly to air (taking it from "deterrent" strength to "pretty deadly"), while the tradeoff would be the Skyguard being more vulrenable to attacks in general (un-deploying might take 5 secs. - get caught by infantry or a focused airstrike and it's toast).

Anyway, point is that we don't really need more options, we probably just need to slightly tweak what we have to be more fun.

i get tired of people saying the skyguard is too weak, so yes i lose my patience quickly.

yup i spend around 700 rounds per aircraft, but i also have a 24% accuracy (not exceptional but alright) and if you faced down the swarms of connery liberators then you would have 700 rounds per aircraft too. now lets do a little math and add in the accuracy with your 32% accuracy you hit with around 70 rounds per aircraft with my 24% accuracy i hit with around 175 rounds per aircraft BECAUSE i don't just aim at the guys who are parked on my face like you do. come to connery and face down an EXE swarm, not all of us get to wait and carefully pick our targets when there are more than 2 dozen enemy aircraft above. ever kill over 100 mosquitoes in a day? i have. what did the enemy bring against you the last time they decided they wanted you dead? besides the MBT forces that come after me was the incident where i was attacked by a liberator a mosquito and a harasser with a halberd out in the north indar desert. the liberator was left smoking and the harasser was burning before they dropped me. i was alone.

the connery pilots may not be good at A2A, but they know how to defend themselves from skyguards. come to connery and see what real skyguarding is.

an experienced skyguard who knows how to lead can be just as deadly to those expert pilots at range, BECAUSE aircraft telegraph their movements heavily so yes i do need to lead 2 to 3 seconds ahead of my target, but the motions of the craft tell me almost exactly what they are going to do in those next 3 seconds and if an aircraft keeps maneuvering and making rapid course changes, force them to make more until they are wallowing in place and then unload on the now stationary target. ALSO if you want to peal an aircraft off that is chasing another friendly aircraft aim directly at the friendly aircraft (unless they are so close that the shots will outright hit the friendly or they are flying directly at you) and the shots will most likely hit his pursuer because people seem to naturally follow at perfect lead ranges.

as for the guys who hug the terrain. MOVE the thing has treads use them! find their favorite approach and move into position to cover it. all it takes is half a clip to drop an ESF and if you catch him by surprise then you will either get that half clip or convince him he should go somewhere else.

now for suppression. no this game does not have suppression mechanics, but hose down an area full of troops and see just how many sit there and take it. the skyguards advantage is that it has big bright tracers so everyone can see the full swarm of bullets raining in AND each shot hits pretty hard, it is the same reason why the lasher is so powerful (well not really the hard hitting part, but the lasher is big and flashy).

it's not too hard to hit with a variety of things when they are right on top of you, but if you want to effectively attack aircraft out to render range then flak is important. like i said also this is the primary reason why lock ons would be useless because it would limit the range of the skyguard far too much. i actually shoot at aircraft that aren't face humping me.

That's a difference in tactics then. I never fire at enemy aircraft at extreme ranges, because I know that given the Skyguard's horrible cone of fire and the relatively lower damage, you're really not being useful engaging enemies at that range.

If anything that sort of behavior just gives away your position, allowing enemy Liberators to follow the tracers in and TB you to death. I learned that lesson more than a few times.

At the end of the day though, I trade a higher K/D (1.35 versus 0.97) for a lower vehicle kill per hour (6.4 versus 6.7). It's just different play styles. You engage enemies in an effort to "deter" them, whereas I engage the enemy if I think there's a good chance I can kill them.

At any rate there's nothing really wrong with my aiming... I just know when to fire when I can actually hit things instead of have the shots go wild.

I do have two alts on Connery (NC and TR with a collective BR of about 39), so I do get a picture of what Connery is like. And no, they're honestly not as great as Mattherson pilots.

You're forgetting the Skyguard's CoF, which is a hardcoded limiter to the Skyguard at range. Your accuracy is proof of that, really. No matter how you lead, the majority of your shots will go wild simply because that's the Skyguard for you.

If you're suggesting that I try to outmaneuver the most agile and mobile unit in the game...

Sure I might be able to catch a bad pilot if he tries to pull the same trick twice, but any pilot worth their salt is going to try runs from different angles and approaches each time. I mean, unless you mean sitting right outside their warpgate or something.

See, everything you do in PS2 with a Skyguard has costs and benefits. Shoot at air at extreme distances? That's giving away your position and making you an easy snack for competent Liberators. Shoot at infantry? That just gives your enemies an idea of where you are, and enough time to send an AP Lightning your way (or one of the hundred things that can deal with a Skyguard).

I mean if there's enough friendlies between you and the enemy that you're relatively safe, then you must recognize that your side probably would have won regardless of your Skyguard suppression or not.

You might want to reevaluate your Skyguard tactics. Engaging enemies at that far range really is not that useful (if you're doing it and I'm not, then in your average hour you get an extra 0.4 aircraft destroyed... which is really not that much), and moreover it can give away your position to any enemy tanks or air or C4 faries that might be in the area. In my book, that means that it makes sense to hold your fire in those long-range instances, simply because the negatives outweigh the positives.

This is because the Skyguard is not meant to be a medium or long range AA option, despite your insistence on ineffectively using it in that manner. This game simply doesn't have a ground unit or weapon that is effective at beyond 350-400m. This limits the ability for ground forces to destroy incoming aircraft before they have a chance to engage or flee.

my KD comes mostly from hunting tanks with my heavy assault. in my skyguard i almost always have more 3000xp when i die. my skyguard is actually propping up my score when compared against my heavy assault where i do die A LOT.

as for firing at range against aircraft individual skyguard shots do not lose effect over range because ONLY the flak effect ever hits aircraft. if the rest of the shell hit, at close range ESF would drop in under 15 rounds, and that just aint true. also the flak radius effectively makes ESF roughly the size of liberators, liberators the size of galaxies, and galaxies frigging huge (because it adds about 12 meters [inner flak radius] to every dimension of all aircraft) for the purposes of hitting so the spread is mostly irrelevant even out at render distance. if you are leading properly 90% or better of your shots will hit any aircraft (maybe they will be low damage in the 6-8 meter flak radius but they will hit) 1 full clip is all i have ever needed to kill any ESF out at render distance.

There's too many weapons so from all of them I'd have to pick the sam missile(s). Also there would have to be a higher flight ceiling.

i think the flight ceiling was reduced so that aircraft couldn't simply go straight up and be out of render distance.

Air is at the top of the hierarchy because it can dump explosive ordinance ranging in power from one missile to a salvo of nuclear warheads. It can go fast, go hard, and blow up anything. And as far as the peasants, I view them as scummy idiots who are pulling OP items all over the place, so they should get farmed. Anyone using shotguns, flak, lockons, and other OP things should be farmed.

Yes now you will start in on nerfing the other vehicles and weapons until we play with feathers. Everybody skilled has better things to do with their time then waste it with whiners. SOE should be scared stiff that Moukass1 is starting to slowly start thinking of other games, and he is about the most skilled player out there.

and i would be perfectly fine with pilots being the top of the food chain if they were actually piloting. i picked up the scythe recently and have been weaving through hills and treetops since. escaping flak and lock ons is a frigging joke, i really don't understand why any ESF has ever let me kill them with my skyguard. now for the "piloting" part of this, i have been flying full speed hugging terrain with my KEYBOARD AND MOUSE. in a real flight simulator with something approaching real physics, just getting off the ground without a joystick is a terrifying experience, because of the severe lack of control simple buttons afford. PS2 is like playing IL-2 sturmovik (a real flight sim) with all of the realism settings turned off. if i tried to fly like i do in PS2 on any sort of respectable flight sim i would blackout/redout my pilot, rip the wings off, and/or stall and fall out of the sky. so don't worry, for pilots on PS2 to be elitist snobs, there would need to be pilots first and this game has nothing even approaching flying.

go pop on to some of the servers for IL2 and see just how insignificant you "skygods" are. someone will come out of a cloud fire a quick burst into the base of your wing blowing it off entirely and leave without ever being seen by you (and no i am not even remotely close to that skill level, i would be fodder for them as well). you will be simply flying along and then suddenly you will be falling, maybe on fire, watching chunks of your plane come down with you.

...I have more Vanguard kills with my skyguard than i have galaxy kills <.<

These are brilliant ideas, the devs have to have extreme brain damage not to consider these!

I have played battlefield jets. I have played flight sims. I have died tons of times. But I always give more than I get. I am no skygod. GALM is fair, balanced, and we have people from all spectrums of the game. I am in my own company. As far as flight physics go, SOE is to busy grabbing our money to work hard on them. Flashs just got physics and it's been a few years. I say again, Don't You Dare Associate Me Or My Friends With Skygods. Talk to Emperorpenguin5.