Well if your opponent likes to crouch tech a lot, you can take advantage of it with a cross-over jump punch. (You jump in anticipation of D1, D3 or D4, they are unable to anti-air so you can catch them off guard like this).
Usually, when a character has air control you don't jump on them unless they're in the middle of something (a whiffed special or string, stagger state, recovery etc). So the idea is you have to bait them into whiffing something and take advantage of their recovery to jump on them.
Don't know much about Liu Kang, but with Stryker the best way to start a combo on ground is 1, 1 / B3, 2 / B2, F2. But more importantly you wanna use your footsies (4, 3, B3, B2, D3, D4) and gun cancels to set up a "false safe jump". But up close your goal should be building meter 75% of the time. The only time you need to combo is to punish a blocked or whiffed special and after landing a jump punch of course. The rest of the time it's all zoning, counter-zoning, baiting counters, footsies, mixups, set ups and mind fucks you should be doing. Not trying to land your big flashy combos.
Vs Kitana you don't want to be in her face anyway. Just zone her and outpoke her with 4 and sweep. Jump over her in anticipation of a crouch tech or attack string. Or use EN Roll Toss/EN Baton Sweep as parry. Punish Square Boost with gun cancels, high grenades, 4 or uppercut. And punish fans with roll toss on reaction.
Vs Noob from far away you should be trying to bait his teleports with crouch tech cancels. At mid-range you should be jumping over his straight clones with jump cancels. Up close, you don't combo or jump on Noob, you outpoke him, mix him up and build meter. Then you start counter zoning and dash blocking again.