Sky Warriors Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Become an Ace Pilot

Sky Warriors: Airplane Combat is a flight simulator developed by Wildlife Studios where you and two other players duke it out against the opposing team in high-speed aerial combat. You will be dodging missiles, returning fire, and contesting objectives every step of the way. After each match, you earn currencies whether you win or lose, upgrading your chosen fighter jet between matches and take to the skies once more.

Sky Warriors offers a variety of planes to choose from, unlocking them as you progress through the ranks, and lets you upgrade and arm them as you see fit. The game modes are limited but matches are short, making scuffles between teams a quick affair. Later on, you can join squadrons as a means of interaction and strategizing with other players, even heading to sorties together as a team.

Remember, whatever weapons and powerups you can find in Sky Warriors can also be found by other players. Expect some serious aerobatics to avoid their salvoes while retaliating with some of your own. Do not forget about the match objectives however, as your enemy might be able to snatch victory even if you have been controlling the skies. Stay with us to learn how to achieve air superiority!

1. Aerial Acrobatics And Armaments

The game’s controls are split between the two sides of your device’s screen, with the left side controlling basic steering, and the right side controlling the speed of your jet as well as your arsenal of missiles and powerups.

Booting up Sky Warriors for the first time brings you to the game’s tutorial, where you have the option of inverting the left joystick’s up and down controls, a feature present in many flight simulators. Regardless, if your chosen control scheme during the tutorial is not to your liking, you can change this option in the settings after completing the tutorial.

Your chosen jet will always move forward, seeing as stopping in place will result in the plane plummeting to the ground. As mentioned above, you can control your engine power via the slider on the right side of the screen. Adjusting your speed is very useful not just for pursuing or engaging the enemy, but also to make precise maneuvers or to evade incoming missiles.

Do not drop your speed too much, or your jet will lose velocity and start falling. In addition, pitching your plane too high may cause your engine to stall, shutting it down and causing your fighter to drop like a rock. Your jet’s current altitude is displayed to the left of the targeting reticle, while your current velocity is displayed on the right.

All jets in Sky Warriors have two weapons to use: missiles and machine guns. Missiles will lock into enemies at around 1500 meters, while machine guns will automatically fire at 500 meters. On average, any jet in the game can only take at least two missile hits before being destroyed, so outmaneuvering those missiles is a must.

The UI will warn you of an incoming missile or two, and you can evade them by performing sharp turns and letting the missiles overshoot you. You can also use flares to deflect incoming missiles, but you have a limited number of those so they are best used as a panic button in the event aerobatic maneuvers fail.

Missiles take roughly three seconds to lock onto their chosen target, indicated by the targeting icon changing from orange to red. You can fire two missiles per salvo, one missile per wing, and it takes about eight seconds before you can fire another missile. In turn, the screen will start flashing red once a missile is headed right at you, with the missile’s distance displayed below the reticle.

The default AIM-9 Sidewinder has infinite reserves, giving you a reliable source of heavy damage as long as you can aim your missiles right. However, you can equip up to three additional missile variants to augment your jet’s firepower. There are five variants available to choose from, and completing the tutorial rewards you with a small number of missiles whose names are italicized below:

• Fast Missile: These missiles have improved velocity, making them reach their target sooner. This does not equate to better tracking, though it does make it harder for your target to react.
  
• Strong Missile: A simple variant that deals extra damage. Nothing more, nothing less.
  
• Tracking Missile: Unlike the Fast Missile, these missiles sport better tracking abilities, making them much harder to evade through maneuvers.
  
• Auto-Aim Missile: These missiles automatically lock on to a target the moment it gets into range, allowing for an instant salvo.
  
• Cluster Missile: Upon hitting their target, the Cluster Missile spreads out bomblets that increase the explosion’s area of effect, potentially hitting additional enemies.

Meanwhile, your machine guns will only activate when you are within 500 meters of an enemy regardless if your missiles are locked on them or not. By default, they fire automatically but you can toggle this in the settings. Your guns are not as damaging as your missiles, but make up for it through fire rate.

These make them useful during close encounters or when your missiles are still reloading. You will have to lead your target however, which can prove challenging. However, the game gives you a lead indicator positioned  slightly ahead of your target’s current location, and you should aim your reticle towards the indicator so your bullets are more likely to hit your target.

2. Break Time At The Base

When not playing matches, you spend your time at the base, using your hard-earned rewards to upgrade your planes for future battles. There are two currencies you can earn in Sky Warriors: Coins and Diamonds. Both currencies can be bought through in-game transactions. You can earn Coins in greater numbers and through participating in matches, whether you win or lose.

Diamonds on the other hand are collected mainly through chests, which are discussed below. These are earned by winning matches or rewarded directly through completing daily missions. You can view daily missions via the quests button at the left side of the screen. There are four quests available each day, and they reward a varying number of Coins and Diamonds depending on the difficulty of the quest, and completing enough missions will award you a chest.

As mentioned previously, chests are obtained primarily by winning matches. However, these can also be purchased from the store directly with Diamonds, and come in different tiers that determine the number of rewards you get from them. Chests give you a sum of coins and additional missiles, with higher tier chests offering more goodies along with some Diamonds.

However, the chests take time to open depending on the tier, with higher tier chests taking much longer to crack open. Bronze chests, for example, take about two hours to open and only give a meager number of supplies. Platinum chests can offer a fair bit of Coins and Diamonds along with a lot of supplies, but take half a day to unlock.

On top of this, you can only have four chests in “reserve;” excess chests are lost. Furthermore, you can only open one chest at a time, so you will have to wait before a chest opens up or speed the process up with Diamonds. Chests awarded from daily missions are automatically opened instead.

Coins are used either to purchase new jets or to upgrade ones that you already own. The ones you already own are displayed via the Upgrades tab at the bottom of the screen. All jets have four stats with two UI elements: a white progress bar and a green divider. The white bar represents the current upgrade level of the stat, while the green divider represents the maximum limit the stat upgrades can go.

Jet upgrades will take time to implement, with the time increasing for every purchase. You can spend Diamonds to instantly apply the upgrade and it will not prevent you from using the jet in matches. The stats, and the relevant parts you select to upgrade, are as follows:

• Durability: Naturally dictates how much punishment your jet can take before blowing up. This is upgraded through the jet’s Cockpit and Fuselage.

• Firepower: How much damage your weapons can deal. This is upgraded through your jet’s Weapons.Because of this, upgrades for the Weapons part cost more than the others.

• Maneuverability: How well your jet can make turns, especially at higher speeds. This is upgraded through your jet’s Wings.

• Speed: A self-explanatory stat, this is upgraded through both the jet’s Cockpit and Engines.

You can purchase new fighters and select your fighter of choice via the hangar, which also displays the current stats of the displayed jet. All new accounts start off with a F-4 Phantom ready to use, and a F-5 Tiger II you can only unlock with Diamonds.

You can scroll through the screen to display later jets you can unlock by increasing your Rank, which in turn is increased through matches. Selected jets can also be given paint jobs and wing art for further customization, and they also increase a couple of stats past what the divider specifies by a tiny bit; Diamonds must be spent in order to use them. Increasing your rank also rewards a meager number of Diamonds.

Aside from jet purchases and timer reduction, Diamonds can be used to purchases Missiles and Flares directly from the store, along with additional chests. You can purchase Diamonds and Coins through in-game transactions, but every day, the store offers a complementary missile or flare along with a small number of Diamonds for free. So even paying the store a visit just to browse can net you a few things at no cost.

Once you reach the Rank of Senior Airman, you unlock Squadrons, which serve as clans for players to socialize in. Being in a squadron unlocks an additional Coin reward from standard matches and lets you form up with squad mates to better coordinate in PvP. Squadrons can also compete in seasonal matches for additional goodies. For now, you can only join a preexisting squadron. However, a higher rank will let you found a squadron of your own.

3. Clashes In The Clouds

As of this article, Sky Warriors has two game modes to select from: Payload and Skirmish. Towards the end of the tutorial, the game will put you through some practice matches with bots, and you can opt for a practice match yourself even after the tutorial has been cleared.

Before starting a match, the game will let you select your choice of Missiles, Countermeasures (though with only flares available at the moment, there is not much you can do there), and Enhancements (temporary powerups that give you brief leg up against your foes). You can equip up to three enhancements, and there are four to choose from:

• Attack Up: Doubles your damage for 30 seconds, with a cooldown of 60 seconds between uses.

• Defense Up: Reduces all incoming damage by half for 30 seconds, with a cooldown of 60 seconds between uses.

• Repair Parts: Restores all lost health, with a whopping 135 second cooldown to balance it out.

• Quick Fixes: Restores up to half of your jet’s maximum health, but has a cooldown of 65 seconds.

You can only carry two copies of each Enhancement during a match, regardless of how many copies you have in stock. In the event that you have vacant Missile or Enhancement slots which can be occupied, the game will recommend you to equip them. You are, however, free to leave those slots blank if you are trying to conserve your supplies.

Lastly, all non-practice matches consume two units of Fuel, and you only have ten units in total. Fuel regenerates over time, but this will limit the number of matches you can do with each playthrough. You can either wait for the Fuel to regenerate enough units, spend some Diamonds to refill it immediately, or try to rank up as one of the benefits is that your Fuel is refilled for free upon reaching a new Rank.

In every match, all players or bots have four lives before they are unable to contribute in a given match. When you a destroyed, you have to wait about ten second before you respawn. You can skip the timer and rejoin the fight immediately by spending a couple of Diamonds. Newly-respawned jets will come with a special shield that reduces damage taken for a short while, preventing enemies from instantly killing players getting back into the match.

All matches last three minutes, so the cooldown of Enhancements and the lock-on time of missiles becomes a lot more significant in the context of gameplay. With the basics out of the way, we can discuss the specifics of the gameplay modes.

Payload

In Payload, one team is assigned to defend a convoy of three cargo planes, while the other team has to shoot those planes down. Rather than attacking the planes directly, the opposing team will have to shoot down their engines. Each plane has six engines, three on each wing, and can be locked on with missiles or shot down with your guns.

The engines are rather close together, so Cluster Missiles can be used to great effect in crippling or outright destroying a plane. The defending team wins if even one plane reaches their destination, while the opposing team wins when all three planes have been shot down. The progress of the convoy is depicted as a progress bar at the top of the screen.

When joining a regular Payload match, you have no control on whether you end up on Defense or Offense, but practice matches allow you to select which team you want to fly for.

Skirmish

Skirmish matches have one simple objective: get more kills before the enemy team does. To speed up match progress, the game will spawn three airships that both teams can shoot down, and three battleships once the airships are out of the sky.

Both ship types can take a lot of punishment before going down, so expect them to be hotly contested. The team that reaches ten kills first, or has more kills than the opposing team once the three minutes are up is the winner. If both teams are tied, the game will go into Overtime until someone makes a kill.

4. Dominating Dogfights

Now that you have an idea on what to expect with Sky Warriors, now we can share some tips on gaining aerial superiority for your team.

• First off, knowing what missiles and Enhancements to equip before a match helps not only in completing objectives sooner, but also saving up other missiles for later matches. For example, the Cluster Missile’s increased area of effect may not sound like much against enemy jets, with them generally being spread out.
  
  However, if they are in the midst of shooting down a cargo plane and you are on defense, that missile can easily wipe them out or at least drive them away. Conversely, the area of the explosion can be used to shut down multiple engines if you are on offense, bringing down the convoy in record time.

• When it comes to offense, the best time to fire missiles is when you are flanking your target. Firing a missile from behind or in front of them will just allow them to make a quick turn to avoid it. Attacking them from the side will make evasion more difficult unless they opt to pitch up or down, which might not be immediately obvious in a frantic chase.
  
  Attacking an enemy jet while it is currently engaged with a teammate may not always work, as they will most likely be avoiding missiles to begin with. Do not underestimate your machine guns as while their range might be short, the only way to avoid the damage they deal is to fly out of range.

• Speed adjustment during combat is overlooked, as you will probably be putting your speed to the maximum level to close in on the enemy. But slowing down your engines can help make tighter turns, which is incredibly useful during pursuits or going for another attacking run on the objectives.
  
  Do not shut down your engine for too long as your fighter’s momentum will come to a halt and you will start falling. You can also use it to make a pursuing enemy overshoot you, allowing for quick retaliation while they scramble to readjust.

• You can choose not to fill up all your missile slots before going in a match. It is not necessary to even use the missiles if you have them equipped, as the AIM-9 Sidewinder is a reliable enough choice that does not run out of ammo. For instance, if you are running short on Tracking Missiles, do not be ashamed of holding off from using them.

• Enhancements can easily turn the tide of a match if used properly. For example, activating an Attack Up to shoot down a cargo plane’s remaining engine just before reaching its destination, or using a Defense Up to weather a potentially fatal hit. That said, while Repair Parts sounds powerful, the long cooldown between uses means that you will only be able to use it once per match; use it wisely.

• It will be difficult to share tactics with other players in public matches, but it pays to play it smart. It may be tempting to go for a free-for-all on the airships during a Skirmish, but consider waiting for one ship to take significant damage, then steal the kill before your opponents can make the killing blow. Be advised that they can do the same thing to your team as well.
  
  Conversely, in Payload Offense missions, your team may choose to attack the closest cargo plane first. Unless you have the firepower to attack another plane, we recommend going with your team to systematically pick off plane engines, avoiding defenders along the way.
  
• Back at the base, open chests as soon as you can to free up space for future chests. Start off with the bronze chests as they will likely crack open while you are still awake. Open the gold or platinum chests when you have to leave your phone alone for a long while, like going to sleep. Do not forget about the daily handouts from the store, as well as your listed daily missions. These can help deal with equipment and currency shortages when need be.

And that concludes our guide to Sky Warriors: Airplane Combat! We hope our advice helps you become a flying ace, bringing down enemies with ease while deftly avoiding their attacks. If you have any tips you would like to share with us, please let us know in the comment box below! Have fun and fly high!