Beginner's Guide

Welcome to Tribes: Ascend Beginner's Guide. Within this article, you will be introduced to the mechanics and general how-to for this fast paced shooter.

Controls
Tribes: Ascend is a PC exclusive title that is best played with a keyboard and mouse.

The image below shows all the necessary keys to an effective player.



WASD are your movement keys. To move in the direction that you are currently facing, press W. S will move you in the opposite direction. A & D will strafe you left and right

Moving your Mouse will rotate the direction you are facing. Note: Inverted option is available in the settings menu.

Left Mouse Button (LMB) fires the current weapon you have equipped.

Right Mouse Button (RMB) activates your jetpack while the button is being pressed.

Space Bar activates your skis. By default you must hold the button down to keep your skis active, but this may be changed to a toggle in the setting menu.

In the next section I will talk more about these two previous mechanics and how they define the Tribes series.

Q switches your active weapon between your primary and your secondary.

Tab shows the scoreboard that includes relevant information such as your teams classes, the players' ranks and their current number of kills and assists.

E swipes your melee weapon at your enemy. The melee attack is great for finishing off enemies that are in a very close vicinity to you.

R reloads your current weapon. It is notable that weapons will automatically reload when that weapon hits the end of the clip and the player has more ammunition.

F throws your grenade or places your equipment, depending on your class.

C activate/places your gear or equipment, again depending on your class.

G will access the repair gun dispenser when standing in front of it. Note: this will exchange your current weapon with a repair gun.

O will toggle the identifications for the location of all your teams assets.

Shift will scope in your vision to where you are currently looking.

Z will drop the enemy flag if you have it within your possession.

X toggles your camera between first person and third person.

K is for suicide.

Skiing & Jetpacking


Reading through the controls section, you should have noticed two very peculiar tools at your disposal: Ski button, and Jetpack button. These two tools make Tribes: Ascend and the Tribes series so distinct. The two mechanics introduce many intricacies to the game. Skiing can be activated/toggled with the Space Bar and jetpacking used by pressing the RMB. Skiing doesn't have any negative effects on its user, where as using a jetpack will drain your energy. Energy regenerates over time to a class specified capacity.

Velocity
The first that needs to be mentioned is large amounts of velocity. Velocity can be easily acquired through the combination of skiing down hills and jet-packing up inclines. But why do you need velocity? Well, a foe who is not moving will be easy picking for your team. Motion throws off the enemies targeting, allowing more time for you to complete your objective (either neutralizing a target, asset or capturing a flag).

Z-Coordinate
The second is that jetpacking and the terrain allows players to access the z-coordinate (up-down). Each player has the ability to expel enough energy through their jetpack to rise upwards. Again, why should you care about this? The height advance in Tribes: Ascend allows the player to have better situational awareness of the battlefield. This awareness offers the player a better view of the opponents' motion so that the player may lead his shots.

Shooting
Most weapons in Tribes: Ascend are not your standard run-of-the-mill Hit Scan rifle, instead Tribes' weapons are projectile based. These projectiles take time to travel across the battlefield before exploding upon impacting on a surface. Due to travel time, shots must be lead in front of the predicted path of the target.

Discs
The classic weapon in Tribes: Ascend is the Spinfusor. The Spinfusor shoots discs that are not affected by gravity. These discs move at a moderate speed and have some splash damage upon impact. This is the perfect weapon to start out with, as it introduces the player to inheritance. Inheritance is addition of a percentage (20%) of the player's velocity on to the disc's specific velocity.

Leading shots
The question is how far do you have to lead your shots? The answer is that the faster both you and the target are travelling and the direction in which each of you are travelling makes a single answer impossible. A good rule of thumb is to shoot ahead of them by a few meters at common landing location where their feet will be on the ground. Shooting at a target on the ground is a lot simpler and more efficient then trying to hit them mid-air. A common mistake is to shoot for the opponent's body, but this causes missed shots to sail into terrain outside the blast radius of the projectile.

After a few games, predicting the foe's path and leading your shots will become more natural. These two will allow you to be more efficient in your deathmatching skill and conservation of ammunition.

Ballistic
These type of weapons will arc due to gravity. Fusion Mortar, Bolt Launcher and Thumper DX are three examples of these type: each moves at a certain speed and is affected by inheritance and therefore the player needs to lead the shot for these types of weapons.

Hit Scan
These types of weapons instantly hit the target if the 'bullet' emitted intercepts the target. Currently, pistols (Eagle Pistol & Sparrow) and Shotguns are hitscan weapons but the Chain Gun, Assault Rifle, and the Rhino SMG are not a hitscan but instead shoot a fast moving projectile. Hitscan weapons are an interesting addition to Tribes where previously all weapons were projectile based.

Classes
Tribes: Ascend introduced a new system of character selection, where the player would choose a unit with set traits and weapons. Each class has two weapons, a grenade, unique pack ability and an associated weight.

Weight
Weight affects the unit's health and mobility
 * Heavy classes have a lot of health and can not move around as easily as other classes. They are equipped with weapons that deal more damage. These classes roles vary from laying down spam on the enemy bass(also called HO for heavy offense, Juggernaut) to standing on the Flag(also called HOF for Heavy On the Flag, Doombringer or Brute)
 * Medium classes are a middle ground of the types of units since they have more mobility than a Heavy but have more damage output than a Light class. The two free classes are both of this weight category, yet each play different roles. This category has a variety of roles from playing the base's maid(Technician) to offensive rushes and escorts to general deathmatching(Soldier) to tracking down cappers(known as chasers, Ranger)
 * The light class is filled with units with extremely specific roles. They have high mobility at the cost of their health. Light classes roles range from cappers(Pathfinder & Jumper) to espionage (Infiltrator) to snipers (Sentinel).

Pack
Each class has a pack equiped. Packs vary from passive buffs (Energy Pack, Regen Pack) to activatable buffs(Stealth Pack, Thrust Pack) to deployable objects(Force Field, Drop Jammer). Packs help determine what role that class is effecient at doing.

Grenade
Each class has a grenade; grenades vary in effectiveness versus their intended target. Grenade types range from Regular to Anti-Personel to Sticky to EMP to Flash, all with a vareity of damage.

Basic Strategy
Tribes: Ascend is built upon team unity. This means that even the best deathmatcher or capper cannot win on their own, they need to work with the team to properly coordinate. Essential positions for a team to be successful are a capper, an escort team, a couple HOs, a Technician, a couple chasers and a HOF with a back-up.

Offense
Let us start off with offense. For a team to win, they must capture the enemy flag up to five times. This cannot be done if no one is focused on gaining velocity and then grabbing the flag. This is the capper's primary objective. The capper will be stopped dead in his tracks by the opposing team's HOF fire, therefore HOs are required to mortar the flag stand to remove the HOF. Once the enemy flag has been acquired, the capper must race away to safety, the escort's job is to safely see the capper out of enemy territory. If the capper drops the flag for any reason, it is the escort's role to reacquire the flag. During the capper's escape, HO can also aid in escorting.

Defense
For a team not to lose, it is essential that the team has adequate defense. A heavy class should always be standing on/around the flag to body block incoming cappers (HOF). In the case that the HOF is taken out, an aid (also a heavy class) should be near to take the HOF's place on the stand and prepare for the imminent run-by. A Technician should always be on the team to keep the base in working order and to have the extra firepower from turrets. When the other team's capper does get a hold of the flag, it is important to have a group of units with mobility (either Medium or Light) to chase down the capper and retrieve the flag.

Communication
This is one of the most underused tools that a team has at their disposal. Coordinating a capper's run via the ingame voice commands, VGS, will allow the team to better prepare themselves for this offense. Some important VGS commands for offensive communication are VVF and VTF. Same goes for defense, if a defenseman sees an incoming run or a foe going to the generator, it only takes them a few keystrokes for the others to be aware of what is happenning. VWE and any VD commands are all related to defensive coordination. It is important not to fill voice chat with spam as this will impede important information from being heard.