TR Air Guide

You'll want to build your Mosquito in one of the following fashions:

Probably the most common thing anyone thinks of. You take out other aircraft. Your bread and butter for this is going to be Fire Supression, a Rotary cannon, and probably Coyote or Tomcat A2A missiles. The only issue here is if you're still learning, you're probably going to get dunked on by a battle rank 100+ with a Vortek Rotary or Saron High-Speed Laser every time you try to go take down an aircraft. If you're not still learning, you might still get dunked on. Anyhow, it is frustrating.

Many larger aircraft also have ample ways to defend themselves against other aircraft, especially Liberators. If you ever see a Liberator with a Dalton equipped flip and turn its belly towards you as soon as you tap it with a single bullet, you might as well just run since the gunner is going to splat you out of the sky with the C150 in one shot. Those kinds of crew are best dealt with by just harassing them from a distance with Tomcats.

Having even footing is important when learning to fight this way as well. If you get attacked by two aircraft of passable skill, you're most likely going down. Try to stick with your team and avoid getting separated from friendly aircraft if you can help it. Lots of enemy players in the air fly Reavers or Scythes as a religion and usually have very little issue deleting you with an accurate burst from their nosecannon of choice.

Many people will think less of you for daring to dab on infantry from the sky, but don't even worry about it. They would be salty in any case. You support your troops by eliminating ground threats from the sky, taking some of the pressure off of them. Any air-to-ground loadout is going to boast Hover Stability. In this sense, there are two subclasses:

Anti-Infantry - Your primary role is to eliminate hostile troops in an area, usually at the site of some base. Your best tool for this is undoubtedly the Banshee, but Hellfire Rocket Pods can prove useful as well. Infantry are crafty though, and you can expect at least one person to go grab a Grounder or Annihilator once you kill them. A particularly salty dog will immediately yank a Burster Max out of storage to get you to sod off. You'll have to learn of ways to avoid these spawn-dwelling beasts while still providing support, as more than likely they will hug their spawn shield to avoid getting killed by your wrath.
Anti-Tank - Your primary role is hunting enemy vehicles. Hornet Missiles are by far the best choice for this, though the M202 Wyrm can be of assistance if you have those. Vehicles are also crafty, some particularly savvy players may have an anti-air-oriented cannon mounted on top of their vehicle to deter your righteous fury. You could also expect any infantry you kill in the former role to simply spawn a lightning with a Skyguard, which is virtually impossible to kill from the air without a moderately sized group of aircraft or a suitable distraction (even then he'll probably get one or two of you).

As mentioned, vehicles and infantry both have ways to defend themselves, and almost all of them involve flak to get you to go away for some time.The more important thing about operating near the ground is these: Rockets, Missiles, and Tank Cannons. The holy trinity of you getting smacked out of the sky nearly instantly. Fly too low with tanks nearby, one of them is going to snap a shot at you. almost any tank cannon will kill you instantly, and a decimator rocket will do the same. Lock-on launchers are mostly a deterrent, and they force you to fly away from the area for a few seconds at least, and also usually require a repair. Learn how to avoid these threats so you can continue to support the ground.

Passable builds that can provide ground support but also offense against the air. The M202 Wyrm is a good choice for this, since it can be used to attack vehicles from a distance, but is also a passable threat against aircraft (especially larger aircraft). This allows you some flexibility in being able to still hold your own against another aircraft, while also allowing you to support the ground. The Needler and Locust also fall in this category.

Also, passive systems:
Unlocked by default. All enemy aircraft within 600 meters are marked on your HUD, showing the aircraft type, name of the pilot, and distance. Certain perks or systems like Vehicle Stealth can reduce the range at which your Engagement Radar can detect that particular aircraft.

There's a few weird things about the flight systems in this game:

Slowing down the Mosquito enough starts to rotate the rear engines into VTOL mode -- facing downwards. You can bring the mosquito to more or less a complete stop this way, but the engines take time to face that direction. If you use your afterburner while they're facing down, you'll get a huge burst of speed in the direction they're facing (so you'll go up, real fast). This can be employed as a quick method of gaining altitude while at a standstill, or to confuse and avoid other aircraft trying to bring weapons to bear on you (it is more difficult for them to follow you upwards, since they start loosing altitude trying to follow).

The aircraft has to come out of VTOL mode before it can really start to move forward, so you have to gain some forward momentum or hold "W" for some time to transfer it into forward mode. This can be troublesome if you're nearby some sketchy terrain or trees or whatnot.

VTOL mode will still slowly loose you altitude, so you'll have to periodically use Space to lift yourself up. Hover Stability Airframe lessens the rate of descent in this manner and also makes your VTOL mode stronger, even when not completely flat to the ground. Aiming downwards at an angle will slowly inch you forwards, so you'll have to make passes or even it out by aiming yourself upwards.

Also, if landed, trying to increase your throttle forward will raise you off the ground a few meters before going forward. This is troublesome in narrow spaces, so you're better off very carefully increasing your vertical thrust just a bit and slowly tapping your throttle forward until you transition out of VTOL mode.

Freelook is powerful, but it takes control of your mouse while you have it active. You can't really adjust your course except for WASD (throttle and turning left/right) while freelooking. But, if you bind alternate keys to rolling and pitching (I used Mouse 4/5 and the mouse wheel up/down), you can fly using analogue controls all while freelooking, which can help you keep tabs on things without having to fly directly at them or risk crashing because you can't steer.

As mentioned, using afterburner will launch you in the direction your engines are facing. If you're landed and you slam afterburner, you'll launch into the air a couple tens of meters before your VTOL mode kicks off, and then you'll launch forward.

If you slow down enough mid-air, you can activate your afterburners to gain a lot of verticality over your opponent, making you more difficult to follow. However, if you need to get moving forward from a standstill, you may want to wait until your engines rotate forwards to avoid wasting too much of your fuel going up.

Generally two aircraft are going to get into a death spiral trying to out-turn one another until one kills the other with a rotary, one crashes into terrain, the aircraft collide into each other, or one of the aircraft gets third-partied by another aircraft. You can sometimes avoid the death spiral by unexpectedly afterburning away while the enemy tries to find you, and it helps more if you have vehicle stealth or use terrain and buildings to mask your escape.

Vehicle stealth can be useful here in its final rank, since it can keep you off engagement radars outside 200 meters, but that's still quite a range is is really only beneficial to ambush other aircraft before they know you're on top of them.

On the note of flying around buildings and terrain, it can be useful if being pursued to try and mask your escape with odd terrain, tight turns, buildings, and all the while without exposing more of yourself for the enemy to shoot.

Enemies will typically avoid trying to follow you through tight terrain if they can help it and will usually just fly over it, though you can somewhat counter this temporarily by just staying under the difficult terrain ( a bridge for instance), which forces them to lower down and peek under it to try and shoot you. Bridges, Tech Plants, and Bio Labs are all huge candidates for flying through/under to avoid getting shot, and if your pursuer is careless enough they might just crash into something and embarass themselves.

The Mosquito is horrendously prone to collisions. The entire aircraft is rather stiff, so it takes collisions with even the slightest bumps and obstacles harshly. The tail fins of the aircraft are quite far from center, so they can snag on things like the edges of things you fly under, trees, and other bits and bobs, usually resulting in a painful flip or explosion.

Landing too hard will deal some damage, and slamming into the ground will absolutely blow you up. If the vehicle is flipped too far, it is almost always completely unrecoverable.

Strongest Points: Versatile, Straightforward, Very Accurate, large ammo pool/magazine size
Weakest Points: Low overall damage-per-second, damage falloff limits usefulness at range

The default nose gun for the Mosquito. Like the other factions default nose weapon, it is a general-purpose and generally accurate cannon that can sustain fire and damage all targets. It doesn't have great damage-per-second, but it can sustain fire for quite a while per magazine, and the high rate of fire makes target leading errors more forgiving on fast moving targets, since there are more opportunities to hit.

The Needler is decently accurate and fires in a tight cone, so the crafty operator can use to to eliminate stationary or slow-moving infantry to decent effect. It lacks any splash damage though, so it is hard to maintain accuracy if they take evasive action. Vehicles are usually in trouble if you can maintain damage on them, but don't expect to be killing anything heavy very quickly. This weapon lacks decent damage-per-second and fire will have to be sustained for some time on harder targets. It also has some damage falloff at longer ranges which weakens it for harassment from a distance.

Strongest Points: Very high burst damage (especially against light aircraft), quick reload speed
Weakest Points: Modest cone of fire, sharp damage falloff

The dedicated anti-air nose gun for the Mosquito. Compared to the Needler, the Rotary has a higher rate of fire and slightly more damage, but its damage at range falls off at a much steeper rate and its cone of fire is much wider, making it difficult to use at range like the Needler. Provided you can get close to enemy aircraft and make most of the magazine connect, it can easily shred other ESF's and even larger aircraft apart within one or two magazines.

This is very difficult to use against infantry and vehicles compared to the Needler due to the sharp damage falloff and more limited ammunition per magazine, but mostly due to its wider cone of fire. You can't sustain as much damage with the Rotary as you can the Needler, but the Rotary has much higher burst damage. Primarily, this should be used for other light aircraft.

Strongest Points: Very large magazine size/ammo pool, no damage falloff at range
Weakest Points: Lackluster overall damage-per-second, huge cone of fire for a long-range weapon

A needler alternative that is slower firing with a much larger magazine size and ammo pool, and no damage dropoff at range. Unfortunately it also has a cone of fire similar to the rotary, so it is much less accurate then the Needler and won't reliably hit all of it rounds, even with good accuracy. Its biggest benefit is being able to deal full damage at any distance, so it can be used to harass aircraft and ground targets from a distance without needing to reload.

Aircraft nose cannons do a lot less damage to most armored targets though, and only 50% damage to other ESF's, so the 150 damage can be a bit misleading as that's really only true of infantry. You won't deal much meaningful damage to ground vehicles, but you can force aircraft with shorter-ranged weaponry to have to come and engage you or risk being destroyed by a steady amount of chip damage from the Locust.

Strongest Points: Amazing rate of fire and splash damage mulches infantry and even MAX units, quick reload, BRRRRT
Weakest Points: Significant cone of fire makes operating at range difficult, also makes directly hitting infantry difficult if not using splash damage, lackluster damage against vehicles, low projectile speed makes hitting fast moving targets difficult

The dedicated anti-personnel nosegun of the Mosquito. It's absolutely excellent for destroying infantry and light vehicles in a flash, but it is not very effective against harder vehicles or aircraft due to a slow projectile speed and small magazine size/ammo pool.

The indirect damage and rate of fire makes dealing with enemy infantry a breeze, and spraying large groups of soldiers can easily net kills, especially with direct hits. I have also found that if you can ambush a burster MAX and get a good half magazine into them, they will generally go down easily if you get the drop on them.

The only issue you'll have is enemy aircraft (or vehicles in general), since this weapon is lackluster for dealing with them. You'll have to be within shotgun distance to get most of your shots to connect, and even then you'll want to lead your shots. The weapon also has poor accuracy at range, so you can't pressure vehicles at a distance (but your secondary weapon slot should be able to, so plan accordingly). The M202 Wyrm can make a good complement to this weapon, since the Banshee is by far the best aircraft weapon for dealing with infantry, while the Wyrm can be applied (with decent leading and practice) against aircraft and harder vehicles. The Wyrm can also be used to smack pesky infantry from a distance if they are standing still enough.

Strongest Points: Lets you run away more often or for longer, if you just want to get away from the enemy instead of die
Weakest Points: Strips you of any alternative offensive options another weapon might have offered

Forgoing a secondary weapon for fuel tanks is something I don't think anyone does, so we'll quickly go through them here:

External Fuel Tanks - Capacity +80%, Recharge +70%
Quick-Charge Fuel Tanks - Recharge +170%
High-Capacity Fuel Tanks - Capacity +220%

I have never used these except for when I didn't have a wing mount and was still starting out. They can let you zoom for longer and maybe outrun or out-manuver other aircraft if you're in a tight spot, but the power of a secondary weapon is too much to pass up. Also, the amount of certs they ask for the sidegrades (875) is ludicrous.

Strongest Points: Fast rate of fire and decent splash make killing small clusters of infantry easy, disorients enemy attackers with explosions
Weakest Points: Lackluster overall ammo economy, not as competitive against vehicles as other wing mounts, not as competitive against infantry as the Banshee

General-purpose, rapid-fire, high-explosive rockets. You get about 5-6 magazines of them with 16 in each rack, but they look a lot meaner then they actually are. Unless you can drop your shots very close or on top of the enemy, you'll be rather hard pressed to drop a lot of enemies using these. There's a rather large splash radius, so you'll at least do some damage, and unless you're using the banshee it will typically be easier to tag infantry with these rather than your nose gun.

They're not spectacular against most vehicles either, but they can make light vehicles a little easier to hit. They can be good to soften up harder vehicles or to use a volley of while your nose gun is reloading. Same goes for combat against aircraft. The missile explosions are also somewhat disorienting when used against personnel and vehicles, so that's a small victory. They are passable against larger aircraft.

Strongest Points: Low-risk and low-effort damage against most aircraft
Weakest Points: Lackluster overall damage, mostly an annoyance, weak against larger aircraft and vehicles

Dumb-fire proximity-based homing missiles, best used against light air targets. They work kind of like hellfires, where you lob them in the general direction of the enemy. Except these ones have a proximity seeking fuse. Once within a short distance of an enemy aircraft, they will automatically snap to it and hit it for some damage.

They're awful against infantry and ground units. They're barely effective against aircraft that are not ESFs. They're okay at shelling out some low-risk damage to ESFs while your nose cannon reloads. Otherwise, avoid. IR Flares will temporarily prevent these missiles from acquiring lock in proximity.

Strongest Points: Very high damage with no falloff against vehicles, tracks crosshair, good range, amazing ammo economy
Weakest Points: Low magazine size, difficult to hit fast-moving targets and aircraft, poor effectiveness against infantry

Laser-guided anti-tank missiles, best used against armored targets and vehicles. They're a little tricky to get the hang of, but do huge damage on direct hits and are great for tank and vehicle busting.

These missiles will track your crosshair for a time until they reach their maximum distance, at which point they despawn. The missiles are fired from each wing pylon, so the trick is to move your cockpit so your pylon lines up with the target, fire, and then move your cockpit so the opposite pylon lines up with the target, fire, and then guide both missiles in. This method ensures both missiles follow mostly the same path to the target, since the laser guidance is not particularly strong. Firing with the crosshair centered can cause the missiles to pass on either side of the target without careful adjustment.

These missiles are not the best against quick-moving aircraft and vehicles and can be troublesome to aim in the air, but if you can get a hit in on an aircraft (especially an ESF), they'll be in major trouble. Attacking armored vehicles from the rear can also net you quick kills using these, and tapping phalanx turrets from standoff ranges is a great strategy. The ammo economy is great, the only downside is only two missiles per magazine. Otherwise you can keep these things loaded with Ammo Printer all day, since you can have up to 60.

Strongest Points: Great ammo economy, high damage against large aircraft
Weakest Points: Lock required, rather short lock range, lengthy reload time, small magazine size, low overall DPS

Guided Air-to-Air missiles, specialized against heavy aircraft. The sister item to Coyotes. While these missiles cannot be dumbfired, after a locking period they will track the target to great effect, and deal sizable damage on impact. Liberators and Galaxies cannot manuver enough to avoid Tomcats, while only the most manuverable and skilled of pilots in Valkyries and ESFs can avoid the missile without using terrain or decoys. Otherwise, the best strategy employed against these missiles is flying close to terrain as to force the missiles to detonate on it. Otherwise the missile continues to track until the end of its lifetime, even if it has to make a 180 back to the target.

These missiles do come with drawbacks - the lock-on range is rather short, and the missiles are somewhat slow, and the lock-on time can be somewhat lengthy. Certifications do not alleviate these problems much, and the missiles can be defeated by a smart pilot in a small aircraft. Furthermore, these missiles do much less damage comparably against small aircraft, but can do huge damage against larger ones (the raw number of missiles needed to kill any aircraft is fairly consistent across the board, around 6-8).

Strongest Points: Decent sustained damage against vehicles and large aircraft, passable against small aircraft, good ammo economy, very accurate
Weakest Points: Slow rate of fire makes leading difficult, sharp damage falloff reduces effectiveness at long range

High-damage, slow-firing gunpods mounted on the wings. A newcomer to the series, but surprisingly effective against most things. The damage is pretty good against almost everything, and the ammo economy is passable. But there's still a few glaring issues:

Lengthy reload time, slow rate of fire. This makes following faster targets much harder, combined with low projectile speed. There is also very sharp damage falloff, which neuters the effectiveness of this weapon when trying to attack from standoff ranges without exposing yourself. Hornet Missiles, while a somewhat shorter range, will have a much better time getting out meaningful damage at standoff ranges since it doesn't fall off. The slow rate of fire and lack of splash damage makes this weapon difficult to employ against infantry, but it it still surprisingly accurate. You can also get headshot damage bonus with the Wyrm, killing infantry in 2-3 hits if you're a madman with good accuracy.

The Wyrm is great against larger aircraft though, and if it can be brought into close range it is surprisingly robust when combined with a Rotary or similar nose cannon. The weapon is somewhat lackluster against tanks due to its low burst damage, but it is servicable in that role.

The Wyrm can deal huge damage if you can get most of its magazine to connect and do so at close range: one magazine at close range is enough to destroy a Valkyrie, and about one and a half magazines at close range is enough to destroy a Phalanx turret. Know when you can fly in close and take advantage of the high starting damage on the Wyrm.

While the vehicle is occupied, moving enemy infantry within 50/100/150/200 meters will be displayed on the minimap for you and all nearby allies. Allies who kill an enemy spotted in this manner nets you a Scout Radar Assist for approximately 10 Exp and progress towards the Recon service ribbon.

Not really super useful on the Mosquito since infantry can really mess you up if you linger around too long (Valkyrie is a different story due to its staying power in the presence of infantry). Might be useful if you are not expecting a large enemy presence and really need to hunt down some careless infantry, or if supporting a large number of other aircraft, but otherwise avoid on the Mosquito.

Pressing X deploys decoy flares which disrupt all current missile locks on your aircraft, and also prevents new locks from being acquired on your aircraft for 8 seconds. Any missiles currently seeking your aircraft divert up into the air and explode shortly after. Can be activated once every 35/30/27/25 seconds.

Situational if you find yourself targeted by lock-on launchers (usually) or air-to-air missiles, but this is not always the case. Surface-to-air Missile (SAM) launchers have become rather commonplace in the past year or so, and now it's somewhat common for someone to pull out a lock-on launcher after getting killed once or twice by an aircraft. These launchers will usually force you to fly out for cover or repairs, so in either case they are effective at keeping smaller aircraft away from the area for a short period of time and work as a great deterrent, even if they don't readily destroy you or do damage.

Popping decoy flares, however, can net you a lot of precious time needed to finish an engagement or escape view, but the decoy flares are phenomenal when used to bait out SAM launchers. Allow the enemy to lock on to and fire at your aircraft. Pop decoy flares before the missile hits, but take note of where it was launched from (using the map or your eyes). Once you find the offender who launched it, fly right up to him and kill him dead with the Banshee or rocket pods. Not only does it net you a kill, but it discourages him from trying to engage you with a launcher again. It also allows you to loiter around the area if there are no other launchers nearby, instead of having to seek cover. With a high rank and since the flares function for 8 seconds after activation, you really only have 17 seconds of vulnerability to launchers. This is not all that much time if you are not actively being locked still, so flares can greatly enhance your ability to operate against the ground and frustrate enemy launchers.

This is less useful against air-to-air missiles since they all don't do enough damage to really warrant a hard counter, but if you happen to have them on board and find yourself targeted with such, flares can be useful. As a side note, this also prevents proximity-based missiles like the Hyena Rocket Pods and Coyote missiles from acquiring a lock when in close proximity to you, so these can be somewhat effective when employed against those weapons.

The other side note, this only protects you temporarily against lock-on missiles, and if you pop flares too late, the missile will explode when it gets close to you anyways, which can still deal damage. Generally if you frustrate the enemy with these too much, they'll start fielding flak and AA cannons of which are much less counterable by an ESF.

When exiting the vehicle, you are immune to fall damage and do not inherent your vehicle's momentum until you hit the ground.

Pretty much worthless. Go down with the ship or land, unless you literally only use the Mosquito to get from A to B quickly. The fact this takes your utility slot is silly.

Pressing X activates the Fire Suppression System, which repairs 25% of your aircraft's health at a rate of 5% per second. If the vehicle is on fire when activated (below 20% health), instantly restores your vehicle's health above the fire threshold when activated, in addition to providing 25% of the aircraft's health. Can be activated once every 55/50/47/45 seconds.

This is by far the most meta choice, mostly because scout radar sucks, ejection system is useless and expensive, and flares are dangerously underrated for air-to-ground combat. Great for saves and outlasting your opponent in air-to-air, but the cooldown is rather high. The only other saving grace is this upgrade is relatively cheap (compared to decoy flares at least). 25% of your aircraft's health is usually enough to shrug off the worst of a SAM hit or some scattered AA fire.

Increases the vehicle's maximum health pool by 7/8/9/10%.

Wow, for 1700 certs you can have a whole extra 300 health on your Mosquito. Incredible. That really won't help you survive anything noteworthy, and the other options are far better. Avoid this, take anything else. This was better when it provided resistance to small arms and flak damage, but it doesn't anymore, so just avoid it.

After not taking damage for 8 seconds, nanites auto-repair the vehicle for 5/5.83/6.67/7.5/8.33% of its maximum health every second.

One, it is pretty cheap. Two, you don't have to go land every time you take a speck of damage to get your aircraft back in the fight (however, an Engineer Passive ability called Aircraft Synergy provides you level 1 Nanites for free). Nanite Auto Repair can keep you up in the air after minor bumps and scrapes, allowing you to keep positional and situational advantage, instead of needing to ground and potentially expose yourself to danger.

Aircraft Synergy passive for engineer can make this kind of irrelevant if you don't have it at a high level, but higher levels offer at least modestly fast repair. Landing to repair is usually faster and awards points, though.

Increases the lock-on time of guided weaponry by 0.25/0.50/0.75/1.00 seconds. Reduces the range at which the aircraft is automatically detected and placed on the enemy's minimaps to 174/116/58/0 meters.

Pretty good if you enjoy the ambush-style play and are confident in your abilities, since a lot of people will rely on engagement radar or their maps to see if you are close. You are, however, taking this over Nanite Auto Repair, which means more frequent stops for repairs and less up-time. The lock-on duration length is also a nice bonus, but 1 second is not all that much of a difference.

Improves turning (yaw left to right), rolling, and the overall manuverability of the aircraft for each rank.

Obviously most useful to out-turn your opponents, but there is literally no documentation on what it actually does, so its usefulness is dubious compared to Racer for instance. Might also help you bait other aircraft into crashing by taking unexpected sharp turns near obstacles.

Improves top speed and maximum top speed while using afterburners for each rank.

Most people might parrot to you that because the Mosquito is the fastest ESF that Racer will allow you to outrun pretty much anything. This is pretty flatly them trying to cope with their purchase of the Racer Airframe. It will let you go a teeny bit faster than normal, but you won't be outrunning anything that is determined to catch you unless its an aircraft larger than you. Other ESFs can still usually keep you within engagement range if they want you, and their afterburners can still overtake you, especially if they are one of the degenerates using extended fuel tanks.

It does let you keep up with and maintain contact with fleeing aircraft pretty well though, so it might be more useful in that respect then dogfighter. It is really your pick.

Improves hover strength, air braking power, and vertical thrust of the aircraft for each rank.

You will really want it on any air-to-ground loadout. The hover strength will make the aircraft loose less altitude while hovering at odd angles (with your nose cannon pointed 45 degrees at the ground, for instance), giving you a longer loiter time. The air braking power lets you come to a stop much more quickly, and the vertical thrust can be useful to get out of the way of naughty infantry when they fire rockets at you. There's no competition from Racer or Dogfighting if making an A2G loadout, this is your airframe for such a loadout and you'll like it.

The Valkyrie is a robust and underrated platform for small squad work. Whereas the Liberator can kill anything it touches with the right loadout, it's bulky, less manuverable, and attracts a lot more attention then the Valkyrie. The Valkyrie has built-in squad spawning and safe drop, so in essence it is like a pint-sized Galaxy with a nose cannon.

A few of the performance tweaks on the Valkyrie can be used to support a fast drop/manned respawn point mentality. Vehicle stealth in particular can keep the vehicle from being detected while it drops off 4-5 troops, then flies off waiting for another group to spawn. The Nose Gun can provide close air support for troops as they try to take the base.

The Valkyrie can stay in the air and loiter around infantry a lot longer than a mosquito due to a 50% resistance to small arms damage that hit the bottom of the aircraft, which further increases its survivability while flying over infantry ill-equipped to deal with the air. Rumble seat repairs have been removed which was a very strong suit of the aircraft, but it can still be difficult to take down without proper equipment.

A strong anti-personnel nose gun like the Pelter Rocket Pod or the CAS-14E can very quickly mop up groups of enemy infantry, especially those in a position that is not effectively concealed from the air, while a Scout Radar can both help you point out targets to your gunner, as well as support the troops on the ground by giving them intelligence free of charge.

The Valkyrie can also douse unsuspecting armor and vehicles using a strong anti-vehicle nose gun like the Pelter Rocket Pod or the VLG Laser-Guided Missile Launcher. These can spike vehicles from a distance while the pilot maintains a positing outside of their traverse, generally making quick work of them. Heavy assaults from the side seat can provide supplemental damage with lock-on or dumbfire launchers.

A Valkyrie with a nose gun of choice and one or more Heavy Assaults on the side seats wielding T2 Strikers is a formidable force against two or sometimes even three fighters if they can be caught unawares. The Terran Republic is perhaps the only faction that can make an anti-aircraft Valkyrie extremely effective, since the T2 Strikers can dumbfire rockets and hit enemy air with ease, doing not-insignificant damage in the process. This amount of burst damage is also effective at damaging larger aircraft, but this strategy needs to have your heavy assaults regularly supplied with ammunition.

The NS Annihilator can prove useful due to its large ammo pool and long lock-on range, but acquiring a lock from the side seat may be tricky depending on how good your pilot is. The upside is it can be used against both air and ground units.

Light assaults are the most robust when they have a high starting point. There's no higher starting point then dropping from an aircraft, so you can simply have light assaults spawn on your aircraft, drop out, and guide themselves to enemy vehicles that are too preoccupied doing something else. Once there, they'll detonate them with C4 and redeploy on you, ready to start the process anew. This is frighteningly effective against deployed Sunderers, and even Skyguards can be defeated in this manner if you're fast enough. Vehicle stealth helps greatly with this task.

Straight from the underground. When killing things with a nose gun is not dabbing hard enough, fly right up on people broadside and have your passengers gun him down. Bonus points for using pistols, revolvers, and the T7 Mini Chaingun. You win the game if you kill someone with a knife.

Like the Mosquito, the Valkyrie has a VTOL mode that engages when you have little forward velocity.

The wings are a bit large and rotate around if changing speeds frequently, and as mentioned this can be problematic for rear seat gunners trying to acquire locks. Gunners in the rear seats will get their locks broken if the wings rotate even remotely nearby where they're locking, so the pilot has to take corrective action if they want to avoid this problem.

The wings only rotate when you slow down to a near-hover. The throttle on aircraft is incremental, so you can keep tapping "S" or your equivalent key to lower your cruise speed until you get it where you want. This can slow you down enough to where you're still flying straight, but the wings don't rotate and your gunners still have time to make shots.

Increasing your vertical thrust also half-rotates the wings a little bit, so avoid doing that if you can. If at all possible, it can just be easier to keep your lock-on gunners in the front seats, 3 and 4.

Also, if landed, trying to increase your throttle forward will raise you off the ground a few meters before going forward. This is troublesome in narrow spaces, so you're better off very carefully increasing your vertical thrust just a bit and slowly tapping your throttle forward until you transition out of VTOL mode.

The Valkyrie is EXTREMELY forgiving of collisions. Most collisions you think would destroy you twice over are usually survivable. This is mostly because the rotating VTOL wing parts of the aircraft are not really stiffly attached (and neither are the tailfins) for some reason, so these tend to compress and bounce before the main body of the aircraft takes any damage.

The aircraft does have a habit of 'sticking' to certain terrain or structures, where trying to use your vertical thrust to escape it only makes it worse. The trick here is to loose some altitude so your vertical thrust doesn't pin you sideways against the tower, then once you can angle yourself away from the structure, apply vertical thrust and disconnect. Same goes for cases where you nearly flip over -- using your 'go down' key can generally flip the vehicle back over if it's still at enough of an angle and make your flip survivable.

Seating is always an issue in this god forsaken craft since every seat is functional, but the passenger seats especially. Just keep these assignments in mind:
1 - Pilot
2 - Nose Gunner
3 & 4 - Front Seats
5 & 6 - Rear Seats
Odds - Left Seats
Evens - Right Seats

It may help your rear gunners to call out seats they can switch to in the heat of the moment if you need them to swap sides to get a shot on something you can't reposition to.

The Valkyrie Nose Guns are unique in their mounting. They are at the front of the aircraft and have quite a wide range of traverse - they can cover a full 180 degrees below the aircraft, and can also cover about 10-20 degrees up from level. This gives it quite a bit of leeway when you are trying to give your gunners targets, unlike the Liberator's belly gun which has a much narrower traverse limit, forcing the pilot to fly in a much more particular manner in order to continue dealing damage with the belly gun.

Strongest Points: Decent damage-per-second against vehicles, can kill just about anything at short-ish distance
Weakest Points: No splash and cone of fire makes infantry difficult to hit, not as competitive against vehicles as other nose cannons

The default, boring, general-purpose 20mm cannon that damages all targets blah blah. Its like every other 20mm gun in the game, where it has average DPS, isn't really good at killing anything competitively, and you'll have a hard time enjoying it.

Unlike most other 20mm guns it has only a 30 round magazine but can dump it pretty fast. The reload speed is still not very good, and the ammo economy is not amazing. You can absolutely kill anything you can loiter over with it, but you won't generally be able to do it quickly, which is the problem. It also has a not-insignificant cone of fire issue which makes it lackluster against infantry. Otherwise, it can reliably chunk most targets with a magazine, requiring a few magazines of solid hits to kill. Really only employable at close to mid range against larger ground vehicles and larger aircraft (Valkyrie and up).

Strongest Points: High burst damage, High damage-per-second at close range
Weakest Points: Significant cone of fire & damage falloff require close-range attacks to be most effective, Cone of fire & no splash damage makes engaging infantry virtually impossible

A rapid-fire gatling gun that has a short spool-up time before reaching full rate of fire, used primarily against armor. Essentially, it is the flying version of the Vulcan Minigun for ground vehicles. It has passable ammo economy with 60 round magazines and an okay reserve pool. It is strongest at dealing with enemy vehicles at close range (inside 50 meters it does maximum damage, but has sharp falloff). In ideal circumstances, it can destroy almost any tank or ground vehicle in two magazines. More generally, you won't really have that much time available as you will be flying incredibly close to the vehicle to try and destroy it.

This is especially dangerous since if you're flying 50 meters over a tank trying to blast it, there's likely other nearby tanks taking aim. Otherwise the Hellion is great for quickly dealing with isolated vehicles that you can give chase to, and takes little user skill to use against vehicles, simply requiring a click and hold and very little lead. It's not very good against infantry and aircraft due to low projectile speed and a not-insignificant cone of fire, which makes hitting those targets outside point blank difficult.

Otherwise, it is pretty easy to splash majority of your shots on top of a ground vehicle. Its only 550 certs compared to other weapons, so its somewhat cheaper if you're looking for a passable anti-armor gun, but the Wyvren is already that and you start with it.

Strongest Points: Great ammo economy, large magazine size, indirect damage excels at killing personnel
Weakest Points: Non-negligible cone of fire makes consistent hits at a distance difficult, weak overall damage-per-second against vehicles

A high-explosive autocannon used for dealing with enemy infantry and light vehicles. Interestingly, it is almost the exact same gun as the Hellion G20, except half of its damage is converted into splash damage, and the rate of fire is constant but slower. The CAS-14E is great for mopping up enemy infantry and will easily chunk any infantry target with splash damage alone in 10-15 rounds or less, regardless of aim as long as you can get a hit marker. Direct hits can seriously murder infantry quickly, but the cone of fire on the weapon makes it difficult outside very close passes to do so. There's also no bloom on the gun, so it always starts at its default cone of fire. This means the CAS-14E, like the hellion, needs to be fairly close to the enemy to deal with them effectively.

This weapon will leave a lot to be desired against armor and aircraft. It is easily possible to deter most lone aircraft from attacking you if you just fly belly-out and spam the CAS-14E at them, but you won't survive many determined attacks against you. You can take out armor with the CAS-14E, but don't expect to do it in anything described as quickly. You'll have to park over or slowly pursue them and allow your gunner to put down three magazines or more. It may be worth it to plan the loadouts of any passengers (if available) to help you deal with aircraft and armor if you plan on using the Valkyrie in CAS mode against infantry.

Since your gunner has a very good traverse range, not much is needed in the realm of manuvering to give your gunner a shot on infantry, as long as the infantry doesn't have cover close at hand. The Valkyrie is small enough to manuver into some really tight spaces and hardy enough to not regret it against most attacks, so you can sometimes stick the nose gun in doorways and the entrances to biolabs and rack up some points that way.

Strongest Points: Great range, no damage falloff, tracking missiles are forgiving of aiming mistakes at launch
Weakest Points: Low ammo economy, weak against infantry, laser tracking not strong enough for fast-moving and evasive targets

A single-shot, laser-guided warhead launcher. Once the VLG missile is fired, it tracks the gunner's crosshairs for a short time until it reaches approximately 400 meters from the aircraft, at which point it automatically detonates.

The VLG is great and consistent for dealing with enemy armor, and with a skilled gunner, detering enemy aircraft from attacking you. The reload speed is fairly short, and damage is very consistent due to the direct-hit nature. 400 meters is somewhat short in terms of aircraft, but the VLG does not suffer damage falloff and thus can be used to attack vehicles and aircraft from standoff distances, and still remain a viable threat against them.

There's a few noted issues with this weapon though: The ammo economy is sort of low. It can take 10+ rockets to take out most main battle tanks, and you only get about 40 rockets by default. Each ammo capacity upgrade grants two more rockets, but that's only 20 at its maximum certificaiton. Ammo printer can keep you in the game much longer, but otherwise you may need to make semi-frequent trips back to pads to get missiles. Also, the missile does not hit as hard as it looks (a little more than half the damage of most infantry launchers). You'll have to really either hit the rear armor or continue nailing your target to kill them.

This weapon also takes not-insignificant skill from the gunner to employ very effectively. While it is laser-guided, leading and consistently hitting targets while all the parts (aircraft, gun turret, and target) are moving requires considerable skill and patience from both the pilot and gunner, especially with fast-moving targets like Harassers, Magriders, and other aircraft. Try to give your gunner the best shot with the most area and try not to throw his crosshairs off with sudden movements. Its quite difficult to employ against aircraft due to their speed, as the laser tracking is not stellar and will usually lag behind a bit, making hitting moving aircraft challenging.

Lastly, this weapon is somewhat difficult to use against infantry without a good gunner. Splash damage of the missile is okay, but direct hits will kill infantry immediately. It's workable against lone infantry with a skilled gunner, but otherwise you will not see much success in eliminating pesky infantry.

Strongest Points: Hybrid, passable performance against infantry and vehicles, decent splash damage
Weakest Points: Low ammo economy, low magazine size can make killing infantry without direct hits challenging, out-preformed in specific roles (Anti-Tank/Anti-Infantry) by other nose cannons

A multi-shot unguided rocket pod mounted on the turret. It's actually a surprisingly robust hybrid between the VGL and the CAS-14E, being able to dump its magazine of rockets fairly quickly, with decent accuracy, and good projectile speed. Primarily this is best against vehicles and can eliminate most of them with about 30 rockets, allowing it to deal with them rather quickly due to its rate of fire. Unlike the other anti-armor weapons, it is also passable versus infantry, however it takes a decent number of rockets to bring infantry down without direct hits.

The biggest issue this weapon has is ammo economy. You only get about 110 rockets by default, and there's only four ammo upgrades which brings the total to about 160. Using this against infantry will usually see semi-frequent trips back to a pad for ammo, and this weapon has much less sustained fire ability against infantry than the CAS-14E. It makes up for it by being able to dump 10 missiles on top of their location and splash damage them to death. The magazine size upgrades also only allow up to two extra rockets per magazine, and are generally not sought after in favor of reload speed.

Your passengers are arguably the Valkyrie's greatest weapon of all. A proper team crewing a Valkyrie can have a terrifying effect on anything you go up against, provided you have a smart pilot, an accurate gunner, and flexible passengers. We'll cover some of the most common and effective weapons and classes here to give you an idea of what usually works.

Forewarning: they removed rumble seat repairing. This makes engineers a lot less important then they were, but they can still do some work for you from the side seat. You may want to favor heavy assaults instead though.

No longer can he use his repair kit to repair you mid flight. Fun is not allowed. However you will still want one or two engineers to do some repairs when you land on the ground at some point.

The NS-AM7 Archer AM (and the Shortbow AM) rifle can be used to attack vehicles and MAX units from long distance on the side seat, adding to your damage and harassment ability. Two engineers and a VGL can deal sizable damage to a vehicle from a distance. Burster MAX units can be dealt with to an extent by pelting him with the archer from a semi-concealed position, without having to expose yourself and try to deal with him using your belly gun. This can be especially effective if deploying the engineers to a nearby location where they can line up a shot, as the Burster MAX is always going to be looking for aircraft, not infantry.

He can also deploy tank mines from the side seat, which unlike C4, is not liable to attach itself to your aircraft due to latency issues. Flying low and semi-slowly over roadways and the ground can allow your on-board engineers to drop mines in a strategic area quickly, or drop them on ground vehicles you wish to ambush and blow up with something else.

They also carry ammo, which if you have any Heavy Assaults on board, they will need after a while. They cannot resupply anyone while they are riding in the vehicle, but they can hop out during a repair or ammo run and resupply that way.

The other really good choice (especially Terran) that you wish to keep aboard your passenger seats. His heavy weapons can deal impressive damage to light vehicles and infantry, and his overshield helps him survive fire directed back at him and the aircraft (even though he can just respawn in the vehicle anyways if he dies).

Most importantly, he carries a rocket/missile launcher that can be used against enemy vehicles to great effect.
ASP-30 Grounder - Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) launcher which can be dumbfired. Can be used to decent effect to deter enemy aircraft, but getting the lock might be tricky. Can also be dumbfired against ground vehicles, enhancing its usefulness.
ML-7 - Default, unguided launcher. Can be used against mostly stationary targets, or moving ones at very close range. Works in a pinch against vehicles, but avoid if possible.
M9 SKEP Launcher - Surface-to-Surface Missile launcher which deals slightly more damage than the ML7 and can lock on to ground vehicles up to 200 meters away. Can also be dumbfired in a pinch. This can be a great help in hitting moving vehicles from the side seat without having to risk getting too close. The bonus damage is great too. The only downside is the lock on range is a bit shorter than preferred.
NS Annihilator - Lock-on launcher that can target both aircraft and vehicles, but cannot be dumbfired. Does slightly less damage then all other launchers, but has a higher ammo pool and faster reload speed. Can lock on to ground vehicles at 300 meters and aircraft at 350 meters. Due to its long lock-on range and how versatile it is, it is not a bad choice to supplement your nose gun and deter aircraft. Locks may be tricky though.
T2 Striker - Dumbfire launcher that shoots proximity-seeking missile-lets, of which there are six per magazines. The missiles will snap to and damage aircraft once they pass within a short distance of them, dealing more damage then a single rocket from most launchers if all six missiles hit. This is god-tier against enemy aircraft as it is supremely difficult to avoid all of the missiles, and you get a ton of them. It is somewhat lackluster against ground targets due to not having a lock and needing more time to deal full damage, but it is passable to supplement the nose gun on stationary targets like Sunderers.
NS Decimator - Dumbfire launcher, with slow-moving, high damage warheads. Avoid unless you know what you're getting into. It will only be good against stationary targets or with luck.
NS Swarm - Never used it. Locks will be tricky, but versatile since it can lock air and ground. Missiles have an extremely long lifetime, will track aircraft for an extended amount of time.
NS Masaruma - Or whatever it's called. It's awful, don't use it.

Finally, the T7 Chaingun is a great weapon to use for shock and awe against infantry. The deafening BRRRRT and suppresive ability of the weapon strikes fear into your enemy. It is also pretty good against light aircraft and light vehicles that can take damage from it (Harasser, Flash, ESFs, and other Valkyries).

The only issue with lock-on launchers: from the back passenger seats (5 and 6), the folding wings of the Valkyrie will frequently interrupt your locks while flying. This makes using the lock-on launchers a challenge from the rear seats, so if possible, have those with lock-on launchers occupy the front seats (3 and 4). Otherwise, the pilot needs to fly at a constant speed and avoid movements which rotate the wings (increase vertical thrust or slow down too much).

These boys are fantastic if they are bringing C4 along. C4 faries can be deployed from your Valkyrie simply by quickly flying over an enemy vehicle or MAX unit. From there, they can guide themselves like minature missiles onto them, drop C4, destroy the tank/what have you, and if they die, they can just respawn in your aircraft and do it all over again. It is a very difficult strategy to counter effectively and most players are simply not looking upwards all the time.

Light assault can't really do anything from the side-seat besides harass things with the Rocklet Rifle though, so they're only really good to man the gun or deploy from the aircraft against targets you can't loiter over. They might also run out of nanites pretty quickly, depending on how much C4 they are slinging. Otherwise, they are the most effective for blowing up something quickly and unexpectedly.

Seat-sniping is not really a good strategy for him since he can just cloak anyways without exposing himself from an aircraft. You will also need Hover Stability 3 if you want to seat snipe with any accuracy. Overall he's probably going to rack up less kills than if he was just on the ground.

The only really notable thing he is good at is being stealthily deployed over bases to subvert their terminals and turrets, softening the defense of the base. This can help increase your loiter time by making anti-air turrets and Skyguard-spawning terminals more difficult to access. Otherwise he can stay at home.

The medic will only be strongly useful when deployed to fights. Alternatively, if you find you need it, you can use him in the Pilot's seat with the Jockey implant at tier 5 to give your passengers a free 20% shield boost as well as use the Triarge passive to heal them if they end up taking damage. Otherwise, stick to Engineer and Heavy/Light Assaults.

The Valkyrie has a number of unique passive abilities built into it, which used to require certification. Now they are present all the time and make the vehicle quite robust for squad-level play.

While the Valkyrie is occupied by at least one squad member, any other squad member can spawn directly into the aircraft if one of the following conditions is met:

• The aircraft is in friendly, completely uncontested territory (no points are being captured and the base is not being attacked or defended).
  
• The member trying to spawn on the aircraft died within 1000 meters of the aircraft.

If the vehicle is too far away from the member trying to spawn, the option will simply not be available. Otherwise, spawning on the vehicle gives the pilot a squad spawn bonus.

All seats of the Valkyrie feature a 'safe-drop' system. Players disembarking from the aircraft will not inherent its momentum and will take no fall damage until they hit the ground. This allows the aircraft to quickly and safely drop its cargo over points with little to no warning.

Press X to deploy decoy flares, which break all active lock-ons and lock-on attempts, and cause any missiles tracking the aircraft to loose lock. Prevents new lock-on attempts for 8 seconds after activation. Can be activated once every 35/30/27/25 seconds.

Less useful on the Valkyrie compared to the Mosquito. The Mosquito is a little more vulnerable to missiles but has the agility to kill the offending launchers, and as such can make better use of this. The Valkyrie needs to be rather close to its target most of the time to reliably kill them, so it makes it difficult to fly over and splat the guy. Plus, Scout Radar is usually too useful to pass up for this. If an area is rife with lock-on attempts though, this may help you stay in the air if you are not being contested by other forms of damage as well.

This ability also disrupts lock-on attempts from proximity-based missiles, like Coyote Missiles and Hyena Rockets.

Press X to activate an on-board Fire Suppression System, which repairs the aircraft for 15% of its health over 5 seconds. If the aircraft is below 20% health on activation (on fire), immediately brings the aircraft to 20% health before repairing. Can be activated once every 55/50/47/45 seconds.

Simple and useful. If you find yourself in need of just that bit of extra health to overstay your welcome, this can be useful. Also, the Valkyrie's slow nature makes finding appropriate landing areas while on fire difficult, and it can be hard to bring her down easy since being critically damaged massively reduces your thrust. This can make those landings largely unnecessary. If you are not planning on needing the Scout Radar to hunt infantry (hunting tanks, for instance), this may serve you much better.

While the aircraft is occupied, reveals all moving infantry on the map within 50/100/150/200 meters. Any enemy that was recently spotted by the Scout Radar that is killed by your faction gives the pilot a Scout Radar Assist for +10 experience.

The description is so short, but it's so incredibly useful. It has a wide range at later levels and can make finding new targets a breeze, and also allows points to roll in when parking near large fights. This is usually your go-to for ground work, and makes it very difficult for the enemy to hide from you. The only downside is you can't park this guy somewhere and run off -- the vehicle has to have someone in it for your scout radar to do anything.

Increase the time required for lock-based weapons to establish a lock on the aircraft by 0.25/0.50/0.75/1.00 seconds. Reduces the minimap auto-detection range of the aircraft to 174/116/58/0 meters. Reduces the range at which the aircraft can be detected by enemy engagement radars by 150/250/350/450 meters.

This is great for an ambush, in-and-out playstyle. If you want to make hot drops, ambush tanks, or slip through areas with minimal problems, this is a good choice to take. The bonus against lock-on weapons is nice, however even at the last rank, 1 second is probably not going to make a difference most of the time. Minimap auto-detect range is great if you plan on landing in close, but this is negated if your vehicle is manually spotted by the enemy. Engagement radar range reduction is very useful, not only does it make you nearly invisible to enemy aircraft until you're right up on them, but it can be useful to sneak up on naughty Skyguards as well and drop a light assault on them, since their engagement radar is typically weaker than an ESF's, which is 600 meters by default.

Overall, it's great for the ambush playstyle, but most of these benefits are negated if you are manually spotted, and it won't help you loiter over an area if you plan on providing CAS. Once the enemy is aware of your presence and actively looking for you, vehicle stealth will no longer be as useful.

After 12 seconds of not taking damage, the aircraft will be repaired at a rate of 4.17/5.00/5.83/6.67/7.50% of its maximum health every 5 seconds.

The auto-repair is good, but Aircraft Synergy passive from engineers provides rank one nanites automatically. The maximum rank of this ability doesn't quite reach double the effectiveness either, so typically you are better off relying on the rank 1 from the passive ability and freeing up this slot for something else. You can always land for some quick repairs if you have time.

Increases the vehicle's maximum health pool by 11.5/13.5/14.0/15.0% (from 3000 default maximum health to 3345/3405/3420/3450 health).

It's okay to take at the first rank if you don't want to bother with Vehicle Stealth and you don't forsee needing the auto-repair system (having an engineer, for example). However, beyond the first rank, the amount of health you receive on each additional rank is minimal (1000 certs for 30 more health?). This is probably one of those upgrades you can leave at the second rank, as 45 extra health is unlikely to make the difference between life and death.

Still, the first rank is a decent increase in survivability for not that much in certification, and might allow you to scrape your way out of situations you may not normally. However, the prior two upgrades may be much more useful depending on how you want to play.

The most American aircraft which liberates oppressed peoples by application of lead and high explosives.A three-man aircraft designed as a gunship, probably at least somewhat comparable to an AC-130 minus the need for a broadside to hit things. The liberator comes in three parts:

The man that gets paid the big bucks. He decides where to go, how fast, and what to crash into. He is one critical half of the essential Liberator crew, the other being the belly gunner. It is only through the pilot's flight, situational awareness, and direction to the gunner that the gunner is able to accurately and quickly engage targets for sufficient time to destroy them. The pilot is in charge of all movement of the aircraft, its onboard ability, and its afterburners for ramming speed (which is actually a valid tactic against small aircraft too close for comfort and also close enough to smack).

The pilot has a nose gun, but we'll level with you here: its not usually a good idea to use the fixed nose guns against many things unless they're already stationary or unoccupied. The Spur is the exception, which is mentioned below. Otherwise, let your other two guns deal with things on the ground below you -- they are much better equipped for that sort of thing and its kinda their whole deal.

But as stated, he is merely one half of the critical crew, the other being:

The other star of the show. By his hand the belly-mounted turret comes to live and smites foes and allies alike with his thunder. Once presented a target by the pilot, the gunner communicates with the pilot as to the target's status (usually how much it is exploding, firing back in anger/desperation, or how he cannot shoot it), occasionally feeding back requests to reposition or reangle the aircraft so he can continue to engage, and sometimes a request to leave very quickly.

While the belly gunner wields the ultimate power, he has a limited view port in which the gun can traverse. Without an optimal angle and trajectory to attack by, he is powerless, heedless to the enemies attacking him outside of his spiteful gaze. If the gunner is the claws, the pilot is the upper arm, or the torso and the eyes of the hydra, working like the tendons of the cavicle -- i'll level with you, I've completely lost track of this analogy.

Only through this beautiful synergy can the gunner and pilot come together and eliminate most threats coming their way. But occasionally you will get the threats that the belly gunner cannot see, and the pilot cannot easily manuver to allow him to see, requiring the third member of your crew:

The redheaded step-child of the Liberator crew. You won't generally notice him when you're blasting things with your gunner buddy, but you'll notice when he's missing and you'd rather have him dealing damage to the aircraft chasing you. The tail gunner has the widest turret traverse of the Liberator and can keep a watchful eye all around you while you and the belly gunner do important things.

He is great to deter lone aircraft attacking you, but his job can be rather boring at times if equipped to deal with air which may or may not come. While he is not critical crew, since the largely-useless-during-a-pursuit belly gunner can switch to the tail gun, the tail gunner can be effective as supplemental damage against ground targets when equipped with a Bulldog, bringing a spark of joy to his otherwise bleak life. He and the belly gunner will, for once, talk to one another about targets they are both engaging and working together to eliminate, and you can sit back in the pilot's chair and sip some coffee, read a newspaper, break out the NES console while they become fast friends, as they were initially unaware they sat in such close proximity to one another.

By their powers combined, these three crewmen are the Liberator crew, and they are greatly effective at deleting things on the ground, from the air. Depending on gunner skill, they can also be adept at deleting things from the air as well, but we'll get into that later.

The most obvious role. You blast anything that has wheels, treads, or magnets in it from orbit, or from really close. The bread and butter of this is the Dalton (typically), but the AP30 Shredder and the L105 Zephyr are both passable in this role. The Dalton will provide the longest range with the least decrease in effectiveness, but the Shredder can also be employed from quite a distance. Equipping a bulldog to the tail slot can also assist against tanks, but generally the tail gun is independent of the belly gun's choice and largely up to tail gunner or pilot preference.

The least obvious role. Eliminating the little men on the ground seems like a waste of the Liberator's potential, many people think, but it has a whole host of weapons specifically for this task, and it is actually frighteningly effective. The Liberator is the equivalent of a flying tank, with 4500 health, and it doesn't take small arms damage. This means normal infantry is powerless to stop you from doing anything without flak, AM rifles, or missile launchers. You can sit on top of them all day and splat them until they do something about you. And even then, you can counter or just kill them before they can deal enough damage to put you in trouble.

The Spur, Duster, and Bulldog are all anti-infantry weapons, and it is an amazingly effective combination of ludicrous amounts of fire rate and splash damage.

Nobody said you can't hit aircraft with the Liberator's guns, just that it's kind of hard to do. In any case, the Dalton is the premier anti-air weapon of the Liberator, since it blows ESF's out of the sky in one smack if you can manage to actually hit them. If they're stupid, they'll get close and expose themselves, or fly in a straight line. Otherwise, good luck trying to lead the shots.
The Shredder is also quite effective and requires less Hail Mary Full of Grace to land shots on your target, especially larger aircraft.

The pilot is typically a non-combat role in every aircraft. The exception here is the Mosquito and the Liberator. The Liberator comes with a nose gun, but this doesn't really mean you should use it all the time. The nose guns are heavy and deal sizable damage if everything connects, but the Liberator is by nature rather slothful in its manuverability, which makes following targets difficult or even getting into an advantageous position hazardous. Know when a good time to employ the nose gun is (hint: it rarely is), because generally, your belly gunner's entire job is to take care of ground targets you're about to blast for you, so there's no need for you to expose yourself with a gun run on the target from the nose. More often, you approaching on a gun run either looses you a ton of altitude and puts you in danger, or you were already at low altitude and are flying dead-on to a tank which is leveling its main barrel at you.

You may have more opportunities to engage aircraft then ground vehicles with your sluggish nose cannons, ironically. ESF's and especially larger aircraft can be blasted with the nose cannon to shave off some health, or if they're particularly slow, delete them entirely.

The exception to this is the Spur, which will be explained below. Essentially the spur turns the Liberator pilot into an Apache gunner, allowing you to engage targets almost independent of the aircraft's facing.

Strongest Points - Passable damage against everything, decent ammo economy, no damage falloff, longest range of available nose cannons
Weakest Points - Difficult to aim, slothful projectile speed, its job is typically done better by your belly cannon, horrendous rate of fire makes damage-per-second lackluster

Default nose gun for the Liberator. Its biggest strong point just being being able to deal 300 damage per bullet at any range, and having a decent magazine size. Unfortunately, it's not enough and the rate of fire is so slow with the 50 round magazine that it takes several seconds to empty the gun. I did a bit of testing in VR, and connecting every shot of the 50 round magazine doesn't even take a Sunderer down to less than half health, so it takes three magazines to bring one down without any resistance.

Increased magazine size pushes a bit of your damage over into the two-mags-per territory, but again the damage per second is so lacking that any real target is going to flee or attack you in the time it takes to empty the magazine, time which could be better spent just allowing your belly gunner to destroy them. As far as infantry goes, its passable but the cone of fire and aiming issues make this a terrible strategy to employ seriously.

Strongest Points - Extremely high close-range burst damage against mostly anything, fires two shots per trigger pull
Weakest Points - Horrendous spread and sharp damage falloff makes employing outside point blank range worthless

After being nerfed into the dirt, it is not really as relevant as it used to be. Used to be able to nuke tanks with one good magazine (or the belly gun could finish it off if not), but now it needs almost all of the rounds to connect inside its maximum damage range to do anything meaningful.

Some VR testing, even with the maximum magazine size upgrade (44 round magazines) shows that attacking any vehicle with this outside point-blank range usually results in less damage than a Dalton shot. At point-blank, in the top armor, you're getting maybe a little more than half health. The only time you are really going to see results is dumping a full magazine into the rear of a tank at close range, but even then you don't even destroy it for all that risk, it's just around critically damaged.

It is still dangerous up close if you can aim it, but the Liberator's manuverability makes that difficult against anything not stationary. Overall, its really only good for getting a large amount of initial damage off on unsuspecting targets before letting your belly and tail gun clean up, and you really have to restrain yourself from using it in situations that aren't low risk, lest you get blasted for being too close.

If you can hit them, this will shred ESFs and other aircraft in general, but hitting them is the hard part. It can be quite useful against larger aircraft that are easier to hit, like Liberators and Galaxies, but don't forget to let your other gunners in on the action.

Strongest Points - Free-aim from within the cockpit negates the Liberator's terrible manuverability, great ammo economy, great DPS and splash damage against infantry
Weakest Points - Awful damage versus armored vehicles, cockpit console blocks some view of the free-aim, must be mindful to give your other gunners shots at the same time

An apache-like nose gun that allows you to aim the gun independently of the Liberators orientation. It can aim about 90 degrees to either side and about 30 degrees up or down, giving it an extreme amount of versitality against ground targets. The pilot can finally participate in bombing the ground with his other gunners. The only issues it has is that the console in the cockpit blocks most of your view you care about, so you sometimes have to angle the liberator by rolling or pitching it to get good shots. In doing this, you may inadvertently take shots away from your other gunners, so coordinate with them closely. If the enemy is spotted, you can usually just aim through the console (and any other obstructions, really) to kill them. Using the spur at its furthest left/right traverse usually allows the tail gunner their full traverse range, but the belly gun will rarely have a shot if you are using the Spur.

This thing is amazing for shredding infantry and especially for precisely eliminating problem infantry, like those equipped with launchers. Simply do a drive-by, roll the aircraft to its side slightly, and smite him. It is perfectly capable of dueling burster MAX units if you can get majority of your shots to directly hit, since the Liberator has such a massive health pool. It has manageable spread, but the splash damage nearly negates it. This allows the spur to be used at quite a longer distance against infantry than you would think, up to 100-200 meters.

Your zoom can also be activated independently of your aim for the Spur. Using your aircraft freelook key engages the Spur's aim without using the zoom, whereas just using your zoom key all the time gives you no choice. Therefore, high magnification is not a waste on the Spur.

If you are planning on employing this, it is seriously advised to try binding your left/right roll to some nearby keys or mouse buttons. Being able to adjust the aircraft's orientation while using freelook can make a serious difference in getting the kill on an enemy that's passing out of your sight. If you have the bulldog as a tail gun, your Bulldog can still get its full traverse height if you are using the edge of your cockpit on the left or right to aim, and you can roll left and right to temporarily get better shots on targets trying to get under you without seriously throwing the tailgun's shots. Try it, seriously, it's amazing.

The Belly Gun, generally the holy grail of any Liberator Crew. Everyone wants to be the belly gunner, to control the awesome power contained within and rack up those sweet kills while everyone cheers your name...

Except you need close coordination with your Pilot if you want to kill anything effectively. The pilot and the belly gunner are Ying and Yang, PB&J, like peas in a pod, like Vanu and NC in mass graves, they are inseperable. If you take one away, the whole thing just isn't right anymore. Obviously this works best with a Microphone.

Your Pilot's job is to choose where to go, how to approach the situation, and tries to call out the best targets for you, and then presents you an angle. He should try to give you the largest firing window possible without endangering the ship. Good pilots pick and choose their fights, fly away from areas with too much anti-air activity, and pick targets of opportunity, and entrust their gunners to take care of the business below them. Bad pilots will try to solve problems themselves, stick to an area even if the airspace is more flak then air, and will try to fight anything, even if it's not very lucrative to destroy for the time it takes.

Find good pilots. Cherish their existence and continued willingness to fly you to targets and thereby victory (and by extension, certificaitons). Become a good pilot yourself and swap off every so often.

In contrast, YOUR job is to accurately deliver fire from your belly cannon at ground targets. Given that you have the gun and you can see the situation below, and your pilot cannot, you have to communicate with him. If your shot is bad, let the pilot know how to adjust. If you don't think you can kill something before you take too much damage, tell the pilot to leave the area. If you think your shot window is better spent shooting something else, let the pilot know and shoot it.

If your Liberator does not have a tail gunner, it is also occasionally your job to switch to the tail gun and use to for whatever its purpose is, typically to deter enemy aircraft.

Strongest Points - Consistent damage-per-second against vehicles from almost any distance, fast reload speed makes for low downtime, long effective range
Weakest Points - Difficult to employ against infantry due to no splash, lackluster ammo economy

Default belly gun. Fires a hail of 30mm ammunition in a continuous lead stream. It's surprisingly effective against aircraft since it can consistently do damage and does not require as much lead or gambits as the Dalton, and can easily delete even narrow Scythes in one magazine or less if they are bold enough to fly close by. You can essentially just sit at orbit distance and smack vehicles all day with this thing. However, the Shredder requires longer shot windows to deliver its immense damage. Whereas the Dalton can snap off some shots as it flies past, the Shredder must maintain constant contact to continue dealing damage.

Overall it is a consistent stream of DPS and is terrifying if employed from more than one aircraft at once, but you'll be more vulnerable to anti-air as you'll have to maintain your shot window to bring a vehicle down. Otherwise very serviceable against most anything.

Strongest Points - High magazine size is forgiving of missed shots, decent damage against vehicles
Weakest Points - Abhorrent splash range and damage makes it terrible against infantry, outclassed for anti-tank by the Dalton and Shredder

Formerly it was a hybrid anti-infantry anti-tank weapon, but now it takes four shells of splash to kill a single infantry target, making it very lackluster for that role. It still works okay as a hybrid, but generally the Dalton is your go-to for anti-tank. Generally, the Dalton is the superior gun for anti-tank due to its accuracy and consistency, whereas the Zephyr can slightly bloom each shot.

The only thing the Zephyr has is that some of the shots can still hit the target and do damage, whereas with the Dalton all of the eggs are in the one basket, so to speak. Still, the Dalton has reasonably fast followups, but the Zephyr's six round magazine might make engaging faster moving targets a bit more forgiving.

Strongest Points - Extremely high single shot damage, great ammo economy
Weakest Points - Requires high gunner skill to employ effectively, missed shots greatly hamper your kill time, significant drop when firing over long distances

The go-to for almost any Liberator pilot. Still the most widely applicable belly gun in the game. If your gunner can hit targets over and over, this is the gun for you. Destroys tanks in 4-5 hits, has decent refire speed, and if you are directly over your target, drop is pretty much a non-issue. If you can't hit things though, you'll be in trouble since you can't make followups easily. No damage falloff makes this an amazing weapon at range, and the shells are usually difficult to trace back to the Liberator if your victim is not paying attention. With the 3x zoom attachment, you can easily park several hundred meters above a target and let your gunner have at stationary targets (especially parked Sunderers, which are easy game). Leading becomes an issue at distance, but drop compensation is not an issue if nearly directly over the target.

Also ironically a premier anti-aircraft weapon, since it generally smacks ESF's out of the sky in one shot (if you can hit them, that is). Also handy against anything else that moves, except small things that move fast like Infantry. Infantry will prove difficult to smack directly, which is the only thing that will net reliable kills. The splash damage is rather poor, so you can't really bank on that combined with the poor rate of fire. MAX units are easier to hit by virtue of being chunky, but still may prove troublesome to smack.

Strongest Points - Massive splash radius and moderate damage, high rate of fire, good reload speed
Weakest Points - Glaring accuracy issues makes direct hits difficult outside close range even against vehicles, High bloom in full-auto mode

Has a huge (6 meter) splash radius, doing its most damage out to 2 meters. It can dump its whole 10 round magazine very fast, albeit the shots in full auto mode starts to bloom severely. Like the description says, you can either patiently drop shots right where you want them, or spread them out a bit. Given the massive splash, accuracy is not really required. This is the anti-infantry weapon for the belly. Can easily delete whole groups of modestly clustered troops at once. Your biggest issue is vehicles are nigh-impossible to kill with this thing due to the awful damage and bloom against them, unless you park right over top of them. Otherwise, landing on top of masses of infantry and unloading the Duster results in pretty much everything nearby dying. Just try not to get splattered in the process.

This weapon does have some glaring accuracy issues. It tends to just spit out the warheads in the general direction the cannon is pointed, so it is very difficult to employ from a distance of more than 75-100 meters. Multiple hits are required to bring down infantry, but due to the huge splash radius it is rather forgiving of poor aim. Even if it doesn't rake in kills, it will rake in kill assists. Has high burst damage against most vehicles (especially with the Bulldog helping if equipped), but cannot be relied upon to competitively get rid of them unless you park almost on top of them.

The only other issue this gun seems to have is that it cannot tilt as far as the other guns in its mounting, so the pilot has to be especially mindful to place his gunner in optimal positions.

The Liberator tail gun actually has a rather wide traverse, covering nearly a half-sphere of the back of the liberator, however it can traverse further up when looking directly behind the aircraft and is forced to traverse a bit down when looking forward due to its mounting. Overall it has a very decent field of view and has little trouble keeping tabs on targets that are at least behind or below the aircraft.

Strongest Points - Damages everything, passable accuracy
Weakest Points - Terrible overall damage, doesn't pose a threat to most things

Default Liberator tail gun. It does everything, but does it all equally terribly. Avoid if possible, the only way this gets any action is by pelting tanks that the Dalton is already taking out, or scaring off a stray Scythe or something. Really doesn't shine at anything.

Strongest Points - High rate of fire makes leading targets easier, massive ammo pool, good magazine size
Weakest Points - Rather lackluster damage against anything that isn't a light aircraft, modest cone of fire

An anti-aircraft tail gun, like the tail gun slot was intended. It's best interest is scaring off particularly bold Scythes and Reavers that try to pursue you. If they cross over from "bold" into "stupid", you can get a kill on them occasionally, but usually they'll peel off and head somewhere else. The Walker is really not that useful against any other vehicles, and it is difficult to kill infantry with due to no splash and a non-negligble cone of fire issue. All in all it is kind of a boring tail gun, but very useful to have if you find yourself constantly pursued by fighters. It can hold its own against one or two fighters pretty well, so as long as they are within appreciable distance and not evading too hard.

Strongest Points - Huge (5 meter) splash radius, great magazine size upgraded, decent direct damage to vehicles
Weakest Points - Slow rate of fire makes time-to-kill on infantry somewhat slow with splash damage, direct hits required for vehicle damage, usually should be supported by the belly gun for taking out vehicles quickly

Mostly a support weapon, but an effective one none-the-less. Can put the smackdown on groups of infantry and is powerful when combined with the Duster, providing even more splash damage on top of the ludicrous damage of the Duster. A great gun to augment your support against the ground, since the tail gun has a wide traverse. Can also help out in attacking vehicles, providing supplemental damage to your belly gun. Not really the first choice against more nimble aircraft, but one or two hits is enough to make them reconsider their life choices if you can manage to land it, workable with a skilled gunner and at close range.

Easily the most fun tail gun that won't leave your tail gunner bored out of his mind when you go to attack ground targets. The tail gun's massive traverse makes the bulldog quite effective at lobbing shells wherever infantry dwells and it excels at lobbing them inside buildings. As mentioned in the nose gun section for the Spur, this weapon and the Spur can share a good synergy when given the correct angles.

Strongest Points - Low skill floor makes it easy to employ even with a gunner of little skill
Weakest Points - Low overall damage-per-second, really only good for scaring off lone ESF's or supplementing damage to other aircraft

A tail gun that's solely for scaring off lone Reavers and Scythes that get too close with little effort. The rockets themselves do little damage and you will need to land multiple magazines to seriously hurt any aircraft, but you won't need to really lead all that much since your hit radius is rather wide. This tail gun is temporarily foiled by decoy flares, but an instance of that being employed is rare. Awful against anything that is not a light aircraft, low damage makes the ammo economy terrible. This is best if you want a low-effort option to get individual aircraft to go away for some time.

Can be decent to take if undercrewed since your belly gunner can just switch to the Hyena to pelt an aircraft and get it to go away without much interruption, but it won't kill anything reliably.

Engages an afterburner system with a regenerating fuel supply that increases acceleration and top speed for a short time. A completely empty fuel tank regenerates in 30.0/26.7/24/22.2/20.0 seconds.

Thankfully this is a passive instead of a utility now. However it's not really worth dumping more than one or two levels in. It's good for making some time or getting out of the way, but the number of seconds we're talking about for regeneration at the later levels is not all that much.

The Liberator also has much stronger hover than the other aircraft, so it can come to a complete stop and doesn't really shift into a true VTOL mode. Activating afterburner will get you going forward almost immediately, instead of up first like with the Mosquito.

All crew exiting the vehicle no longer inherent the vehicle's momentum and will take no fall damage until they hit the ground.

It's not worth wasting a slot on for, unless you plan on dropping your tail gunner out to go bomb something, but at that point he might as well be a light assault. There's essentially no reason to bail out of the aircraft early unless you want to send an engineer on a suicide mission against a MAX, in which case just land nearby.

Pressing X launches a cluster of decoy flares which cause all missiles currently seeking the aircraft to loose lock, and cause current lock-ons and attempts to clear. Prevents new locks from being acquired on the aircraft for 8 seconds. Can be activated once every 35/30/27/25 seconds.

Less useful on the Liberator compared to say, the Mosquito. Due to the Liberator's obscene health pool and general resistance to most damage, they can safely take four or five SAM hits and still have time to finish their paper and make an exit. The largest threat against Liberators is more often flak and other specialized surface to air guns, not guided missiles. Generally avoidable.

Pressing X activates the fire suppression system. On activation, if the vehicle is on fire (below 20% health), the vehicle is immediately brought up to 20% health. The vehicle is then repaired for 15% of its maximum health over five seconds. Can be activated once every 55/50/47/45 seconds.

Insanely useful on the Liberator in combination with its massive health pool, even without composite armor. The 20% fire threshold puts you at 1000 HP where you're on fire. Anything under this, and fire suppression can essentially instantly restore 19.99% of your HP, and then another 15% over five seconds. The Liberator, like all vehicles, tends to loose a ton of manuverability and engine power when critically damaged, so this is great to limp towards safety, activate fire suppression and your afterburners, and finally zoom out of sight.

It is by far the strongest of the three upgrades for the Liberator and you will be hard pressed to find anyone using Decoy Flares or the godforsaken Ejection system over this.

After not receiving damage for 12 seconds, the aircraft will automatically and continually repair itself for 4.0/4.5/5.0/5.5/6.0% of its maximum health every five seconds.

It's useful on the Liberator to help you stay in the air after soaking some non-critical damage. The Engineer Passive, Aircraft Synergy, at level 2 will give you the 4.0% repairs for free (level one nanites), so the improvement isn't really all that needed here. Generally as long as you have the Synergy running you can go for something else.

Increases the time it takes for lock-based weapons to establish a lock on the aircraft by 0.375/0.750/1.125/1.500 seconds. Reduces the auto-detect range of the vehicle on enemy minimaps to 174/116/58/0 meters. Reduces the range at which the aircraft can be detected by enemy engagement radars by 100/200/300/400 meters.

This is actually quite strong combined with the general lethality of the Liberator. While you may think "well only aircraft have engagement radars, so its only relevant to hide when I am sneaking up on aircraft", you would squarely be wrong. Naughty Skyguards, the bane of your existence, also employ engagement radars to find enemy aircraft. Using vehicle stealth, especially at a high level, can seriously allow you to get the drop on an enemy Lighting if you can properly mask your approach with terrain or buildings, maybe even giving you a chance to use that now-infamous CAS-30 Tankbuster(TM) on him.

However, this is less relevant if not using an ambush playstyle. Almost all of the benefits of this are neutered (except lock on duration) if you're manually spotted by the enemy, and once you hang around an area people will undoubtedly be looking for you, making hiding much more difficult. Still, even so, being able to get the drop on people occasionally generally makes this worth it.

Increases the vehicle's maximum health by 8.0/9.0/9.5/10.0% (by a total amount of 400/450/475/500 health, bringing the vehicle's total health pool to 4900/4950/4975/5000).

Almost useless now that it's been nerfed into the dirt and no longer provides damage resistance against most common types of damage employed against the aircraft. The later certifications are not worth the time spent into them for a measly 50 extra health on an aircraft that is usually dead if it is below 500 without fire suppression. The only time it is more useful than either alternative is when engaged in sustained contact, where you are constantly taking damage (ergo nanites are useless most of the time) and highly visible. The most common occurance of this now would be flying around a Bastion with repair galaxies nearby, it is potentially one of the few common situations you might want to slap 400 extra health on for nothing better. Still, even Vehicle Stealth's lock on time may come in handy since Tomcat A2A pods shred your airframe. Avoid if possible.

Improved airbrakes, turning, and rolling.

Better airbrakes allow the aircraft to come to a stop much faster than normal if it is up to speed. This can be useful to stop overtop of a target that was not spotted beforehand, or is manuverable enough to stop on a dime. In stopping, you can allow your gunner a much better shot instead of coarsely slowing down. It also has obvious benefits of not crashing into things, though that's usually (hopefully) less an issue.

Better turning (yaw left to right with A and D) and rolling (tilting left and right) will help you present your gunners with better angles more quickly. If using the spur, the more responsive roll and turning can make engaging infantry just outside of your gun's traverse range much easier.

Overall, a very solid airframe choice and difficult to go wrong with. Allows you a lot of flexibility against the ground.

Improved pitch, vertical thrust, and agility.

Improved pitch helps you follow targets traveling above and below you (aircraft most of the time above, but it can also help you track vehicles traveling under you). It can also help you level out of a dive or quickly turn your belly forward to engage something.

Vertical thrust greatly reduces the time it takes to stop yourself from falling when pulling out of a dive or otherwise raising altitude. This makes the airframe great for dive-bombing, where a sharp pull out of the dive is a common manuver after delivering a nose gun burst. You can also orient your airframe in different directions except down to gain speed, such as strafing left or right, however this is more difficult without the mobility boost from Precision Bomber.

I'll level with you here, nobody, not even the devs, know what they mean when they say it improves the "agility" of the aircraft. As far as I know, it just helps pitch and vertical thrust, agility is nothing but extra fluff to make it looks like it has as many benefits as the first airframe. Don't believe the lies.

Overall, its only really good if you find you need the extra pitch to quickly present your gunner targets and extra vertical thrust to quickly stop yourself from crashing.

Increases the maximum top speed of the aircraft and the maximum top speed of the aircraft while using afterburners.

It just allows you to go marginally faster. The Liberator and the Galaxy are already sky whales and the slowest things around, so the only thing you are possibly outrunning with this airframe is another liberator without it, or a Galaxy, no matter what it is doing. Even then, you're unlikely to make much distance that it would matter. Scythes and Reavers are still going to catch up to you and smoke you, so you might as well take the increased manuverability of the former two airframes and just try to crash into him instead.

It's a flying sunderer, but somehow with more health and guns. It also has the manuverability you would expect from a flying tank with a cross-section to match, so it having so much health is rather a nesscessity of it being completely unable to artfully dodge anything even shot in its general direction.

You have only a few options of how to employ the Galaxy, and any serious focused opposition against it can usually shut it down. While that's true of most things, the smaller aircraft can usually dip out and try different approaches to help minimize their profile against the enemy. The Galaxy has no such luxury and is such a massive target that it's nearly impossible to hide it from anything.

The only realiably successful usage you can get out of a Galaxy. Load up to 12 people into it and fly it above a point, then ditch it. The only advantage you have here is it is usually impossible to shoot a Galaxy down before it makes it over top of its destination, so you can at least be rest assured you'll drop your cargo somewhere nearby the point before being destroyed.

Galaxy also supports a squad spawn system like the Valkyrie, players that dont make it can respawn on the aircraft if you're nearby.

With four weapon mounts, you can provide considerable coverage almost all around the aircraft (the only area that is not covered by at least one turret is the lower front of the aircraft). This usually lets you keep pressure on any enemy aircraft in range, forcing them to either disengage or be destroyed when trying to compete with your massive health pool.

The side guns however are sort of lackluster for dealing with anything that's not ground targets though, so it lessens their effectiveness (the tail and top gun can still cover those areas to an extent though). This method also requires willing gunners, which can be hard to find. Also, not all of the turrets overlap a lot, so it is difficult to focus fire at one area like you can with other aircraft.

Equipping the galaxy with the Nanite Repair or Ammo Dispenser upgrades can provide support to vehicles within a considerable distance (usually in the ballpark of 100 meters). This is unfortunately only helpful in a zerg or with a highly coordinated team that can keep your much less agile and much more attractive aircraft to shoot away from danger. You also cannot really support ground vehicles this way, since the range is gimped and you are again, a massive target for other ground vehicles to shoot.

Repair galaxies are a frequent occurance in two kinds of strategies: bastion escorts and air zergs. The Bastion will usually have at least two or more repair galaxies hugging the deck and one another, providing repairs to aircraft nearby since they cannot land to repair themselves. This can greatly help the longevity of smaller aircraft covering the Bastion since air fights are usually such a furball up there that enemy air units can rarely keep focus on one target at a time. Air zergs are arguably more frightening, usually sporting several repair galaxies and several liberators equipped with AP30 Shredders. This makes all the aircraft invovled very resistant to unfocused fire, while the shredders allow them to easily maintain high DPS on ground vehicles from a distance.

The Galaxy can be employed in a limited CAS aspect, using the left and right guns to bomb infantry. It can be somewhat effective in this respect, only because it can't be brought down quickly by infantry or other ground units while the top and tail guns deter lone aircraft. However, you will usually find that a properly equipped Liberator or even Valkyrie will be a much more effective ground-attack aircraft that requires less gunners.

Foreword: the Proximity Repair System, Ammo Dispenser, and the Lock-on Jamming Field all have no effect on the aircraft that is employing it. You can't repair yourself, dispense ammo to yourself, or jam missiles on yourself (for whatever reason), so don't go in thinking you can.

Increases the aircraft's maximum health pool by 7/8/9/10% (for a total of 7700/7800/7900/8000 maximum health).

Cheap and to an extent, useful on the Galaxy if you are outfitting it for combat or hot drops. Otherwise, you won't see a ton of usefulness out of it as you would get out of some other options.

Restore 25/50/75/100/125/150 health per second to all allied aircraft within 75 meters and all allied ground vehicles within 50 meters.

A great boon, but only works well when coordinated with at least one other Galaxy with the same upgrade. Having both Galaxies able to repair one another greatly increases the amount of damage they can soak up, requiring massed or focused attention to one Galaxy to sever the synergy between you. If both Galaxies have gunners aboard, this can be an even better strategy as you can keep attacking aircraft or ground units off of you for an extended period of time.

This can also be used to support mainly other aircraft, increasing their durability and survivability in-flight, however it will usually be rare to see a group of air vehicles you can assist outside coordinated play or nearby a Bastion.

Resupplies all allied vehicles within 50/75/90/100 meters.

Useful, but a lot less then the proximity repair system. Given that Ammo Printer now exists, this has made logistics for ammunition pretty much irrelevant now, and very few vehicle weapons have trouble maintaining stockpiles of ammo even with low levels of ammo printer. Also is unlikely to rake in as many points as the repair system.

Prevents lock-based weaponry from targeting all allied aircraft within 100/125/140/150 meters.

Extremely situational and unlikely to be critical to success. Great to have at least one around a Bastion, where the furball of air usually has lock-on rockets, but those are usually survivable anyhow. May be useful to keep the lock-on missiles away from your other Galaxies since they do huge amounts of damage to larger aircraft, but otherwise avoid.

Also, another reason to avoid this guy: you get zero experience for making all your allies safe from lock-based weapons. Not a single experience point. Nothing. Not even a trickle. Nice guys finish last.

After not receiving damage for 12 seconds, the vehicle repairs itself for 3.57/3.93/4.29/4.64/5.00% of its maximum health every 5 seconds.

Useful on the Galaxy but much slower due to massive health pool. It's somewhat difficult for the Galaxy to avoid damage, but if you can fly away to somewhere that you can catch a breather, nanites can help keep you flying (or shorten the duration of repairs).

Increases the time it takes for lock-based weaponry to establish a lock on the aircraft by 0.375/0.750/1.125/1.500 seconds. Reduces the mini-map auto-detection range of the aircraft to 174/116/58/0 meters. Reduces the range at which the aircraft can be detected on enemy engagement radars by 100/200/300/400 meters.

It kind of works, I guess, if you have lots of cover to obscure your approach. But the Galaxy is massive and hard to hide from view. It can be useful to get the drop on enemy vehicles not paying attention (and usually subsequently crash into them to detonate them), but otherwise it can probably be avoided.