How do I “spot” enemies?

Question

In Tribes: Ascend, I constantly see other players "spot" enemies which displays a voiced message to the chat

[Spotted] (type of enemy) spotted (area)

and puts a marker on the actual enemy that was spotted (regardless if you or your base's sensors can see him).

How do you "spot" enemies?

Asked by Resorath

Answer

You can spot an enemy by pressing Left Alt (default binding) when your crosshairs are over them.

http://www.tribesascendwiki.com/Default_Key_Bindings#Communication:

Answered by A. Still

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What determines how much XP I earn, and how can I earn more?

Question

With my wallet thin and weapon prices so high, I'm looking for faster ways to farm XP.

What exactly determines how much XP you get at the end of a match and what should you do to get more?

Asked by heishe

Answer

Simply put, the best way to farm XP is to play games and win them.

The XP you earn by playing is determined by three things: How long you were in the game, your position on the scoreboard, and whether your team won or lost.

First, you earn Base XP based on the amount of time you spent playing, at a rate of 0.5833/second.

Example: A ten-minute game will give you 350 Base XP.

Next, you earn Bonus XP based on who won and how well you played. This value starts at 1/4 of your Base XP, and is divided by your position on the scoreboard. Everyone on the winning team gets their Bonus XP doubled.

Example: If you were second on your team, you would earn (350 / 4) / 2 = 43 Bonus XP. If your team won, this would be doubled to 86 Bonus XP.

Finally, you earn VIP and Boost bonuses based on the Base+Bonus total. If you have made any real-money purchase, you get a VIP bonus of (Base+Bonus * 0.5). If you are boosted, you earn another bonus of (Base+Bonus * 1.5). Effectively, being boosted VIP triples the XP you earn.

Example: You are a VIP and boosted, so you earn an additional 218 VIP Bonus and 654 Boost Bonus, for a grand total of 1,308 XP.

Answered by Brant

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Are alternate (more costly) weapons always more effective than base loadout weapons?

Question

In Tribes Ascend, each class has a base loadout of a primary and secondary weapon, as well as a "belt item" and other equipment. There is an option to purchase (with in-game experience or real-world currency gold) an alternate gun, belt item or what not.

Are these alternate purchasable options always an upgrade (more damage, accuracy, etc with no tradeoffs) over the standard loadout or are they simply "different"? Does investing in gold (or playing the game for a very long time) really give a significant advantage over players who do not?

Asked by Resorath

Answer

It's depending on the item. But generally you can't "buy power" by buying other weapons. Because the Weapons are suiting other situations better or you prefer one weapon over the other, but they are not straight-up more "powerful", even if it would seem like by looking at the stats, they mostly require more skill/accuracy in use or just fit better in certain situation's.

For example the new MIRV-Grenade for the Raider deals a lot more damage than the EMP-Grenade if all the shrapnel's hit. But it's hard to make the grenade hit for its maximal damage. And the EMP-Grenade has a utility effect by draining energy from enemy's making them "immobile". On the other hand the MIRV-Grenade can cover an area over an bigger time (first explosion -> shrapnel's explosion).

In some cases the buy-able Weapon isn't a huge change in the usage/effect (e.g. the MIRV-Launcher for the Juggernaut or the new Sub-Mashinegun for the Raider). There it's up to you what you prefer.

So you have to choose your loadout based on your preferential's and the role you want to play.

To address your question if someone gains advantage by buying stuff with gold: It simply depends on the player(s). But given same skill-level, you only get situational advantage. I think you can compare the gold from Tribes-Ascend with the riot point's in league of legends, it speed you up or gives you "quick-access" to stuff. But you won't dominate in league of legends by simply having a champion the other player's don't.

I hope you get my point. :)

Answered by Patrick Stalder

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How do I gain Boost?

Question

In the end-game screen, there is one item that says: "Boost : Not earned"

It doesn't show any progress, either.

How do I earn a Boost?

Asked by Bora

Answer

There are two ways to get boosted, which doubles the XP you earn:

Buy one: You can buy one in-game using gold. The costs and time the boost lasts are:

Buy enough gold and get a free boost. The 3000 and 5500 gold packages include a 30- and 60-day boost, respectively.

A good point to keep in mind is that making any real-money purchase will give your account VIP status, which permanently increases your XP gain by 50%. This stacks with the boost bonus: Being boosted (2x) and a VIP (1.5x) will triple the amount of XP you would normally gain.

Answered by Brant

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How do I properly disc jump?

Question

One of the core gameplay elements in the Tribes series is trading health for speed by disc jumping. I seem to be having trouble pulling this off though -- I've tried shooting straight down as I come off a hill, as well as turning around and shooting slightly behind me, but I always end up losing more than half of my health for a minor speed boost at best.

Am I doing something wrong, or is disc jumping simply not as effective as it was in earlier games in the series? (I'm a Tribes 2 veteran, so I'm still used to Classic physics.)

Asked by Brant

Answer

Coming from Tribes 2 myself I have to agree with you that the physics in Tribes:Ascend do differ greatly with respect to disc jumping. In respect to old school vs. new school, T2 had much more of a 'lofty' (more air control) element to its physics in comparison to T:A (almost no air control). The key in this new iteration however is timing and of course practice.

One thing to note before explaining is that the variances between the projectile speeds of the variety of disc launchers in this game, does require that you're familiar with each specific weapon. For example, the Infiltrator's disc launcher has a slower projectile speed than the Soldier's disc launcher. All disc launchers now have the same projectile speed. In addition to this other non-disc weapons (with unique timing) can create a similar effect such as the Pathfinder's bolt launcher. This timing will be the key to achieving the maximum boosting effect from your weapon's Area of Effect (AOE).

The best way to practice this is to try honing your skills in the free roaming portions of training mode. The key to getting an effective boost is to time your shot so that you are at the minimum distance from the top of the hill (or any surface) to get the full effect of your weapon's AOE. By this premise you should be able to jump/jet a reasonable distance away from any surface and receive an appreciable boost.

For example: When skiing up and/or approaching a hill at adequate speed, upon reaching an angle in which gravity begins to diminish your speed, using your jetpack to maintain constant or increasing momentum is of course the common practice. However, when doing this, your distance from the ground may not change greatly or at all due to the angle of the hill. Firing your weapon at the ground from a close distance will not be effective. The best strategy is to continue jetting up the hill, maintaining speed until you have risen from the ground a reasonable distance. At this point firing at the ground (within the effective AOE range) will cause the player to inherit a significant boost. Judging the firing distance is more an art than a science and getting it right can make a big difference. With discs I have found that it is most effective to aim straight below the player when firing. Angular or rear-facing shots seem extremely ineffective. Practice makes perfect! Watch your speedometer when holding down the ski button to judge the effectiveness of your attempts.

Answered by Nick

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What physics model do spinfusor disks use?

Question

In Tribes: Ascend, I often notice my spinfusor disks seem to go slightly off course over large distances when I'm flying, even though I could have sworn the reticule was over the (immobile) target. I know that disks are not affected by gravity, so there appear to be three other possibilities here:

• I can't aim.
• The game adds a slight random shift to the aim at high player velocity.
• The disk velocity is the sum of instantaneous player velocity and muzzle velocity (that is, physically correct).

Which is it?

Asked by Richard Terrett

Answer

None of the above, you're just not accounting for a mechanic in the game called inheritance:

Projectile Inheritance (or simply inheritance) is a mechanic in Tribes: Ascend which causes projectiles you fire to "inherit" some of your current velocity. T:A currently has 50% inheritance on all projectile weapons. This means that if you fire a Spinfusor perpendicular to yourself while traveling at 200 km/h, the shot's end-point will be a trajectory taking into consideration its firing speed, aiming angle, and 100 km/h worth of inheritance in the direction you were moving.

Answered by Decency

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What counts as an armored target?

Question

Many weapon upgrades you can unlock provide a damage bonus vs. armored targets. Simply put, what are armored targets? Do players in heavy armor count?

Asked by Brant

Answer

No, players never count as heavy armor.

What counts as heavy armor are:

• Vehicles
• Base Turrets / Scanners / Generator
• Deployable player packs, such as the Engineer Turret
• The armor supply drop that you can call from the sky with 2000 credits

Answered by heishe

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How to handle people camping your generator?

Question

I've just come out of a terrible streak of terrible games where one side simply camped en-masse the other side's generators while people simply flew in, grabbed the flag and flew away. Without base defenses up classes like pathfinders don't have too much of a hard time simply going around in circles from flagpole to flagpole I imagine.

Since you can pick what team to be on and everybody tried to be on that one same side, we ended up taking 17 flags in a row across four different maps before I decided to spend my time otherwise.

What ended up happening is simply invisible dudes using sticky explosives around the generator. Technicians' sentries won't target them, technician's SMGs are no match for their explosion spam and even when I switched to more powerful classes such as Jaggernaut I had an extremely hard time with them camping bastards.

How can I cleanse my generator out of those pesky people? or am I fighting the wrong fight? I was assuming my teammates would bother with other stuff such as defending the flag or attempting to capture theirs but I guess that's not what was going on.

Asked by badp

Answer

1. Let them waste time camping it. Focus on the flag stand instead.

First, an aside: Unlike earlier Tribes games, players spawn fully equipped in their chosen armor class. Since you don't have to visit an inventory station to gear up anymore, the generators tend to be ignored in high-level play. This is a controversial state of affairs that may see some changes in the coming months.

If a third of the other team wants to have a party in your gen room, let them. Switch to Pathfinder and chase enemy cappers instead. Switch to Doombringer and plant yourself on the flag, chaingunning down anyone who approaches. Switch to Soldier and harass approaching offense in your midfield. Cappers zooming around at 200 sanics or more aren't going to care about turrets, so neither should you.

On the other hand, not everyone is a highly-skilled spinfusor jockey. Static defences like turrets and forcefields can be much more effective on public servers than they are in competitive games. Also, good players will quickly get bored sitting in your gen room and poke their heads out to harass the flag defence, which tends to drag people back into the gen room and away from the flag.

2. Switch to Brute or Juggernaut and clear out your base, but don't forget...

If there's one thing the Brute is good at (and arguably, this is the only thing the Brute is good at) it's close-quarters combat. The Heavy Spinfusor and Disco Grenades are great at taking down enemies indoors, but depending on the layout of the base and the number of hostiles, the Juggernaut's mortars may work better.

However, keep in mind that any players you kill will have respawned and skied back to your gen room in 20 or 30 seconds. With the regular repair gun, that's just enough time for you to get your generator back to 60% or so before the Raider you just killed turns the corner and blows it up again. If you don't have a Technician buddy to repair the generator for you and set up a couple turrets, you'll be right back where you started.

Personally, if I find myself in this situation, and none of my teammates are helping me set up a solid base defence, I'll just opt for option #1 above.

Answered by Brant

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How much does a health regen pack decrease the regeneration delay?

Question

Normally, your health begins to regenerate after not taking any damage for 15 seconds. The description of the Juggernaut class' Health Regen Pack says it decreases this time, but it doesn't say by how much.

So: When I'm using this pack, how long do I have to wait before I start regenerating health, and how many more seconds does each upgrade (-3%/level) shave off?

Asked by Brant

Answer

Each upgrade reduces the time to start regenerating by 3%, so:

• No Health Regen Pack: 15.00 s
• Level 1: 14.55 s
• Level 2: 14.10 s
• Level 3: 13.65 s

Answered by SaintWacko

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Why do I have no ammo for my pack?

Question

I.e. my soldier has the energy pack, which is supposed to restore a certain amount of energy upon usage.

However, I never have any ammo for the pack, and I don't know how to find it (Not in TDM and neither in CTF). Are some packs disabled for some game modes?

Asked by heishe

Answer

Some packs are passive bonuses that you have all the time. There's no need to activate them! The Soldier pack you're talking about is one of them, where it increases your max energy by 10. There are others, such as the pack that raises your maximum Health, or packs that make it so you start recovering health sooner.

Other packs have to be activated, but the passive packs are always in effect, even if you don't know it!

Answered by Aceofgods

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Unable to buy Shrike

Question

I today played several matches as a Juggernaut and had over 15000 credits, but I still wasn't able to buy Shrike. According to Wiki, it costs 4500 credits, so I had more than enough. It allowed me to buy Grav Cycle and Beowulf, but not Shrike. Other players on the same server were able to buy that vehicle, so it wasn't disabled by the server. Why couldn't I buy the Shrike? Is there a limit of number of Shrikes that can be in a game at the same time?

Asked by Paja

Answer

So it seems heavy classes cannot buy Shrike. I switched my class to Soldier and went to inventory station, and then I was able to buy Shrike.

Answered by Paja

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