Air Problems and Potential Fixes

I've been driving my Skyguard for a few weeks now, and the only area I feel it's really lacking in is effective range. However, while I do believe this needs tweaking, I still feel that the Skyguard's inherent mobility is being underutilized, and that the AA platform is much more robust than many think.

A Skyguard with a Racer 3 chassis is as fast as a stock Flash, and accelerates at surprising rate. By abusing this mobility a driver can increase the effectiveness of the Skyguard dramatically. Coupled with the first rank of vehicle stealth, a Skyguard can appear almost anywhere that the terrain permits with little to no warning, and unleash a staggering amount of firepower on unsuspecting pilots. The speed and agility of the Lightning allows its driver to avoid incoming rocket salvos without much effort and to relocate to a new vantage point after each kill before enemy forces can retaliate.

Because the acceleration that a Skyguard with a Racer chassis possesses makes long-range rocket attacks ineffective, less-experienced pilots will often allow themselves to be lured into the AA platform's optimal range in the hopes of securing an easy kill. A frontal attack from this distance usually proves to be fatal to the ESF, and leaves the Skyguard with enough health to make it back to safety and repair before finding a new spot to ambush aircraft from. A close-range strafing run from behind is obviously much more dangerous to the Skyguard, as the low TTK of rocket pods from behind can make it difficult for the driver to react in time. There are, however, several ways to mitigate this danger. It is often possible to use terrain features such as trees, boulders, and steep valleys to make attacks from behind difficult or impractical. This is especially true in the rocky canyons near our current warpgate. It is also not unusual to hear aircraft coming before they can attack, which can allow Skyguards to quickly back under the incoming rockets, ruining the pilot's run and leaving the ESF vulnerable to retaliation. In the case of pilots trying to hover behind the Skyguard in order to ensure that every rocket hits, reversing under them will leave the aircraft in front of the Lightning at close range and with no momentum to escape with. As someone who has lost several Mosquitoes by making this mistake, I can tell you that this is the absolute worst situation to be in when facing a Skyguard.

Burster MAX's do have many advantages over Skyguards in terms of render range, visibility, range, being able to fire from spawn rooms, and their ability to be revived by a Medic. However, Skyguards are not as completely ineffective as many players make them out to be, and can be a great asset in the hands of a driver who knows how to play to the vehicle's strengths. Should the accuracy of this AA platform be tweaked as I hope it will be, I predict that we will be seeing a lot more of them, and that they will be a force to be reckoned with.