As a young boy growing up in Sweden during the 80's, I always loved watching the frequent fly-by:s of Viggen two-ship formations as they were patrolling the airspace. The roar of that Volvo RM8 engine was just amazing!
This update is a love letter to those days.
Unlocking it!
Just like with the MiG-21 and the F-5E, you unlock the AJS 37 Viggen by completing one of the race track under a certain time. After that is done, you can put it in your NATO deck and fly it in matches!
What can it do?
The Viggen (Swedish for "Thunderbolt") is all about raw power. It's meant to be flown straight to the enemy lines at minimum altitude, unleash its ordnance, and quickly escape with the engine roaring!
In contrast to the newer JA 37 fighter version of the Viggen, the older AJS 37 was never really built for air-to-air combat. It has a large engine that packs a good punch, so it can certainly hold its own. But problems with compressor stall at sustained high angle-of-attack, required a really skilled pilot to be effective in a dogfight. In Sky Knights, this is portrayed by a dramatic loss of turn-rate as the speed drops in high-G turns.
Unguided rockets!
This update also brings a new air-to-ground weapon type to the game, unguided rockets! These pods can unleash rockets with an amazing speed in full-auto. They'll probably require some practice, as there's nothing that will help you hit the target except from a little crosshair. No locks here. Just aim and fire!
Viggen trailer!
Please take a look at this little trailer, demonstrating some AJS 37 Viggen action!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKwG78L8UQw
We'd love it if you wanted to jump on Discord and discuss this update!
Best regards
//Bankler
Patch notes
1.4.5 <*> Added the AJS 37 Viggen aircraft.
<*> Added new race track (finish this track under 00:52 to unlock the Viggen!).
<*> Added new Unguided Rockets weapon.
<*> Replaced Turning Power modification with Stamina Regeneration modification.
<*> Added required aircraft unlock time to the Time Race HUD.
<*> Fixed a bug where aircraft did not slow down enough during hard turns.
<*> Fixed a bug where a player in rare cases could lose scrap and raw materials when crafting a new modification in the workshop.
<*> Optimized graphics performance in the race level.
Twitch Integration!
Stream viewers can now join the game!
In this update we are focusing on streaming support! If you are a streamer using Twitch, you can now configure your Twitch settings under Options, and then your viewers will be able to join you in the game by taking on the role as the ground forces. The viewer's name will appear on an Infantry Fighting Vehicle, a Recon Vehicle or a Main Battle Tank.
To get their name in the game, your viewer just needs to type !creep in the Twitch chat.
The game keeps track of how far each viewer's vehicle made it before getting destroyed. So if you want, your can run competitions and such, looking at who got on top of the scoreboard.
Please join us on Discord to get all the updates on active streams!
Best regards
//Bankler
Patch notes
1.4.4 <*> Added Twitch integration. Input your channel info under options. Your viewers will now be able to join you as ground forces by typing !creep in the Twitch chat.
<*> You can now adjust the Picture-in-Picture opacity in options.
<*> Fixed graphics glitch where the Picture-in-Picture image did not render all the way out to the edges of the window when scaling it down.
Update 1.4.3 Cinematic Camera Options
Cinematic Camera Options
The last update brought the cinematic camera to the game. The reception has been really good, and many players appreciate the cool camera angles and character it provides. However, players have different views on when the picture-in-picture should pop up and when they need their screen to be as clutter-free as possible.
I have now added a couple of options so you can tweak the camera to suit your preferences. You can filter out each of the five events (kills, deaths, missiles, takeoffs, landings) and you can tweak the size of the panel.
Smaller quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes
A couple of other things requested by the community has been added. For instance, random map selection, SEAD sight and easier Novice Bots.
Thank you so much for all the awesome feedback you give on Discord. It's really helpful! I'm still blown away by how great the game's community is!
Please join us on Discord and discuss these changes!
Best regards
//Bankler
Patch notes
1.4.3 <*> PiP camera panel will now hide when you bring up the scoreboard.
<*> Added option to tweak PiP panel size.
<*> Added options to filter out the PiP camera events of your choice.
<*> Changed the Anti Radar Missile sight to more accurately show the 10 degree gimbal limits, and added a little marker to make it more easily distinguishable from the SARH sight.
<*> The game will now pick a map on random when hosting a game, rather than selecting the last one you picked (or Desert Trap if none was previously picked).
<*> Decreased Novice AI Damage Multiplier from 70% to 50%.
<*> Fixed a bug where you could switch side between NATO and PACT in race mode without losing your equipped upgrades.
<*> Fixed a bug where you didn't get "full tank" if you used a fuel modification, until you forced a refuel by rolling on the runway and then stopping.
<*> Fixed a glitch sometimes making the HUD color options checkboxes unresponsive.
<*> Fixed a glitch where you could only press the top part of the Redeem Code button.
Season 13 is starting! Free Wings available!
New season! Free Wings!
Season 12 has concluded! Congratulations to everyone who fought, to the top-10 (now promoted to "Maverick" in Discord) and most of all ALCaPWNy and Ironprostate who achieved ACE rank this season!
To celebrate these achievement, as well as the one year anniversary of early-access Sky Knights, we're giving out two vouchers, worth 50 wings each (open up Options/Redeem Code and enter the codes in there).
These are the codes: * ACE_IRONPROSTATE
* ACE_ALCAPWNY
(Not valid forever, so jump in and claim them right away!)
Season 12 Final Results
1 Ironprostate
2 AL CaPWNy
3 TorchedForever
4 Zeropoint
5 Esco
6 Weeb One
7 >RACS36< Shepherd of Fire
8 gamers2000
9 nukeofwf
10 Micchan
This patch brings a brand new picture-in-picture view to the game! I've always felt that it's a shame that you don't get to see more close-ups of the jets as you're flying around shooting things down. This new "pop up" style of camera will come in every now and then to show you some eye-candy. For instance, when you kill an enemy, or when you take off or land!
Your choice!
If you don't like it, you can disable it with the press of a button in options. It should be mentioned that because this is an additional camera, the rendering will be more performance thirsty when this panel is up. So if you're running the game on a low-end computer, you might want to disable this feature.
You can always press F2 in the game to see your current framerate.
Multirole differentiation
Historically, the two multirole fighters in the game (F-16 and MiG-29) have always shared the same stats, while the other jets in the game were all unique. This has now been changed. The multiroles are now a little different from each other. I believe that having asymmetric stats is good for giving the game depth, but it also makes sense when comparing to the real life counterparts.
Both fighters have gotten a little additional maneuverability, turning them into the lethal short range fighters they are supposed to be.
The F-16 now has better radar and more gun ammo than the MiG-29. The MiG-29 though, now has higher max speed and afterburner power than the F-16. It also has a slightly better turning power.
The fuel amount hasn't changed, so you'll still be limited on that end. These smaller multirole fighters are still designed for shorter hit-and-run missions and short-distance interceptions.
Please join us on Discord and discuss these changes!
Best regards
//Bankler
Patch notes
1.4.2 <*> Added cinematic Picture-in-Picture (PiP) camera for takeoffs, landings, kills and missile launches. (Enable/disable in options as required).
<*> Picture-in-Picture camera can be pretty performance heavy. If you get bad framerate, try disabling it in options.
<*> Optimized gun impact dust particle effects.
<*> When rejoining a game after having lost connection, the game will now remember your credits, upgrades and respawn time.
<*> Fixed bug where chat stopped working after a very high amount of messages had been posted.
<*> Fixed bug where AAA vehicles appeared to low, clipping into the ground.
<*> Fixed bug where the ground vehicles in the tutorial didn't stop to fire at the FOB.
<*> Gear should no longer momentarily clip through the runway when landing.
<*> Added option for quick respawn when running AI Skirmishes.
<*> Increased time for showing new upgrade unlocks if you unlock more than one after a game.
<*> Decreased the chat font size.
<*> Increased F-16 Turning Power from 70 to 71.3.
<*> Increased F-16 Flare Count from 6 to 7.
<*> Increased F-16 Radar Power from 100 to 115.
<*> Increased F-16 Gun Ammo from 120 to 140.
<*> Increased MiG-29 Turning Power from 70 to 71.5.
<*> Increased MiG-29 Flare Count from 6 to 7.
<*> Increased MiG-29 Max Speed from 302 to 306
<*> Increased MiG-29 Afterburner Power from 164 to 174
<*> Decreased MiG-29 Radar Power from 100 to 95.
Reinforcement balancing
Reinforcements balancing
Patch 1.4.0 brought the Reinforcement element to the game, aiming to prevent games from snowballing if one team got a very good start. Reception has been good, but as all things that change a game in a major way, things will need some tweaking before it works perfectly.
In this new revision of the system, the game looks at Player Kills, Ground Vehicle Count and Remaining FOB Health when estimating how much a team is in the lead (as opposed to only Player Kills like before). If the opposing team is enough ahead of you (as shown by the new little HUD arrow just below the morale line), you're eligible of a Reinforcement when your next FOB is destroyed.
1.4.1 <*> When hotjoining and teams are equal, the new player will now end up on a random team rather than always get on the NATO team.
<*> When determining if a team qualifies for a reinforcement when a FOB is destroyed, the total combined FOB health, creep count and player kill count are now compared (in contrast to only kill count like before).
<*> Added a small arrow under the morale line, indicating a collected state on how the match goes. When this arrow reaches the end of the line, reinforcements will be available for the losing team.
<*> Added small "!" marks to the FOB health boxes, visible when reinforcements are ready, to make it more clear when a FOB kill would result in a reinforcement.
<*> Polished and repositioned some of the HUD elements.
<*> Updated the credits listing.
Main Battle Tanks!
Main Battle Tanks
A new type of ground vehicle will now roll out on the battlefield! The Main Battle Tank (MBT). On the NATO side, we have the M1 Abrams, and on the PACT side there's the legendary T-72.
These tanks have movable turrets with 120/125mm cannons that will kill the smaller IFVs (the ordinary vehicles we've seen before) with one shot. They also carry machine guns that can fire at enemy aircraft. They can even use these weapons to engage different targets simultaneously.
When MBTs start rolling over the battlefield, it might be a good idea to launch some CAS aircraft before they break straight through your lines!
Reinforcements
Everybody likes an even match!
In Sky Knights, matches tend to snowball sometimes, making it very hard to recover from a bad start. A new mechanic called "Reinforcements" tackles this by giving the losing team a chance to rally and get back into the game.
This is triggered whenever a team loses a base and is behind on the total amount of player kills.
At the moment, this happens when a Reinforcement is triggered:
Main Battle Tanks spawn on the losing side (normally 3, in Coldsnap it's only 2).
AAA are respawned around the remaining FOBs.
Morale is zeroed out.
Every player on the losing side that is currently waiting for respawn can respawn right away.
I have setup the system so it's easily tweakable, without requiring patching. I can toggle all these four effects on and off, tweak the amount of reinforcements a team can get, and tweak how many kills behind you have to be for the reinforcement to trigger. So keep the feedback coming, and we'll make sure to balance all this to make the experience as good as possible.
Modification balancing
Several modifications have been balanced. Check out the patch notes for details!
Input device ignoring
The game uses a system that always discovers input devices such as gamepads. This is to make everything as hassle-free as possible. You shouldn't have to restart the game when connecting a gamepad, or click some option if you want to transition to mouse/keyboard in the middle of a match. This is generally a good thing! However, it also means that the game will react on input from all connected devices. So for instance, if you have rudder pedals, they might be outputing a slight signal, and the game can pick it up and think you want to use those. Before, you had to disconnect them from stopping this.
After this update, you can use the options menu to select the input devices that you want to use and which ones to ignore. This should hopefully take care of these problems.
Bug fixes
Some smaller bug fixes are in there as well, most ones related to modifications.
Best regards
//Bankler
Patch notes
1.4.0 <*> Added "Reinforcements" anti-snowballing mechanic.
<*> Added Main Battle Tanks.
<*> Ground vehicle AI (specifically MBT's) can now track and engage several targets simultaneously.
<*> Ground vehicles that can target aircraft now have better accuracy on shorter ranges and worse on longer ranges.
<*> Added slight camera shakes when destroying a AAA or an MBT.
<*> Ground vehicles now start and stop in a more smooth fashion.
<*> Anti-tank missiles should now more strongly prefer to lock-on to AAA and MBTs over IFVs and FOBs.
<*> Added team's total kills in the HUD.
<*> Added a skull icon on destroyed FOB health bars.
<*> In the options menu, you can now select input devices to ignore input from, to avoid conflicts between gamepads, joysticks and rudder pedals.
<*> AI bots now use modifications. Higher skill setting bots use better modifications than bots with lower skill.
<*> Modification boxes now show secondary stats icons.
<*> Modification boxes aircraft symbols are now yellow if the modification fits multiple aircraft.
<*> Unequipped modification slots that only have modifications that are already equipped on other aircraft now shows like "(1)".
<*> AI is now more aggressive with the gun, and should miss fewer opportunities when an enemy shows up in front of the nose.
<*> Altered team AI so that bots should be less likely to head back to base and change aircraft shortly after takeoff.
<*> Replaced Infantry Fighting Vehicle models (BMP-1 and M2 Bradley) and with better-looking, more optimized versions.
<*> Added black outline on the "Starting" text when starting a game.
<*> Decreased Turning Power Modification max power from 10 to 5.
<*> Decreased Gun Range Modification max power from 25 to 15.
<*> Increased Gun Ammo Modification max power from 20 to 30.
<*> Increased Flare Ammo Modification max power from 4 to 6.
<*> Increased Hull Modification max power from 10 to 15.
<*> Fixed bug where you lost your stats if you were hosting, lost connection, and re-joined.
<*> Fixed bug where customizations and modifications remained on aircraft when switching from online mode to offline mode.
<*> Fixed bug where you could get the modification bar to show up in offline mode by cycling past a locked aircraft.
<*> Fixed bug where bots didn't get trait bonuses.
<*> Fixed bug where you sometimes didn't crash if you missed the runway, but instead started to fly very low.
New Season! New Aces! Free Wings!
New aces bringing Wings to all of you!
Season 11 is over and we're now entering Season 12. Everyone, well fought in Season 11, and big congrats to our top 10! This season, two players managed to reach the ace rank! Nice work, Zeropoint and Shepherd Of Fire! Thanks to them, we've got two vouchers that you can enter into Options/Redeem. Each one is worth 50 wings! Yes, these codes are available for everybody, so be sure to give these aces a salute next time you catch them online!
The codes are:
ACE_SHEPHERD_OF_FIRE and ACE_ZEROPOINT
If you haven't already, please join us on Discord!
Best regards
//Bankler
Air superiority and morale balancing
This update addresses the balancing issue that there are few downsides to flying the air superiority fighters vs the other options in the game.
Game balance is hard. Especially when the ambition is that everything in the game should be somewhat representative to its real-life counterpart. It's a common feedback point, especially from newer players, that there's no point in flying anything else than an air-superiority fighter. While this might not be 100% true, the air-superiority fighters clearly are the most important elements in most teams.
The game is mostly centered around air-to-air combat, and that's intended. That's where most depth can be achieved. That said, I want the air-to-ground aspect to be important as well. It would be easy to start nerfing the F-15 and the Su-27 to make them less dominant in the air. However, that'd feel wrong, since these fighter are made to be just that.
Reduced gun damage against vehicles
The gun damage against ground vehicles has been reduced from 20 to 10, for both F-15A and Su-27. Wait, are the guns on the real life counterparts less lethal than other weapons? No, definitely not. An F-15 actually carries the exact same gun as the F-16. However. in general, aircraft that were made purely (or mainly) for the air-to-air role often lack the technical systems (targeting pods, air-to-ground radar etc) to make engaging ground targets easy and effective. Consider the lower gun damage to be a representation of this.
The ambition is to keep these aircraft as the kings of the sky, but limit their usefulness in the ground war.
Morale tweaks
Morale is the value that controls the interval of your ground vehicle spawns. As your team's morale goes up, you'll get more ground vehicles. The system was introduced to counter the strategy to win the game by just going for the bases.
Your team gains morale by killing enemy aircraft and ground vehicles. I have now tweaked these numbers, so you now get more morale for killing ground vehicles than before, and a little less for killing aircraft than before. In combination with the reduced gun vs vehicles damage, I hope that the multirole fighters and the CAS aircraft get a little more flight time than before.
Do you think these changes make sense? As always, keep the feedback coming!
Best regards
//Bankler
Patch notes
1.3.4 <*> Decreased F-15 and Su-27 gun damage against vehicles from 20 to 10.
<*> Increased morale gain from killing a vehicle from 0.25 to 0.5.
<*> Decreased morale gain from killing an aircraft from 1.5 to 1.25.
<*> Fixed an edge case where you sometimes couldn't craft a modification.
<*> Added clear error message with debug info in case crafting fails for some reason.
<*> Fixed a bug where you were not taken back to the server browser when leaving a game room.
Offline mode available!
Offline mode
Wanna practice some Sky Knights on the train ride? Is your Internet connection down every now and then? Do you live in a country where a scary firewall is blocking every little thing you're doing? Offline mode is here to help you out!
While Sky Knights obviously is built around its multiplayer core, many player have requested an offline mode, so that they are not required to be connected to the Internet at all times. The reasons vary. One of the more common ones is if you live in a country where it's almost impossible to get a stable connection. I'm the first one to admit that it made little sense that you were required to be connected if you were only doing bot skirmishes.
Privacy
Furthermore, if you for some reason don't want any data to be stored online (i.e your profile and progress) you now have the option to play the game in offline mode and be completely anonymous. We're not collecting any analytics when in offline mode.
Offline progress and smaller feature set
When playing in offline mode, all progress are stored locally on your machine. If it's lost, it's lost. It's also important to know that the feature set is reduced. You can still gain (offline) xp, but no wings, and no customizations nor modifications.
The offline progress and profile is completely separate from the online profile. Progress doesn't carry over.
I guess it goes without saying that you cannot play against other players when in offline mode.
Bug fixes
Thank you Zeropoint for the bug reports! The weirdest one this time around was that you for the strangest of reasons could toggle the mountain visuals on and off by pressing B on the keyboard... Yeah, I know. :)
Best regards
//Bankler
Patch notes
1.3.3 <*> Offline mode support. You can now play the game against bots, when offline. The game still needs to be started through Steam. Progress in offline mode is not carried over to online mode.
<*> Fixed bug where the mountain visuals could be toggled by pressing B.
<*> Fixed bug where the AAA radars were no longer functional.
<*> Added a function to completely reset the client preferences (offline progress, quality and sound settings, keybindings etc) under options.
<*> You can now abort the match start countdown by pressing the back-button on your gamepad.
