Vehicles
Vehicles are used to traverse the large playfields in Tribes: Ascend more quickly, or grant additional firepower. To get yourself a vehicle you need to visit your team's Vehicle Station (Capture the Flag & some Capture and Hold maps only), and purchase one with your game credits.
Once purchased, the Vehicle station will begin to glow and your vehicle will spawn, you will automatically be teleported to the drivers seat once it's ready.
While your vehicle is spawning you are granted temporary invincibility. However this only apply to the player, The vehicle can take full damage as soon as it's visible.
It is worth noting that any vehicle that is unoccupied by a player after about 60 seconds will self destruct. This is presumed to help ease vehicle caps being affected by vehicles that are lost in a difficult location, such as on the outskirts of a map or within the enemy base.
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Available Vehicles
Grav Cycle
The Grav Cycle is a vehicle with motorcycle-type roots. A second player can ride the back and use their weapon. It is exceptionally fast and useful for chasing flag runners. Similar to the shrike, it features a boost that helps It accelerate faster and gives it extra speed and height off hills, similar to the player's jet pack. Unlike Beowulf, the Grav Cycle's steering is completely controlled by mouse (the A or D key does not steer the vehicle). Thanks to the high mobility, hitting anything at high speed can do severe damage to the Cycle, so it takes practice to master driving. The Cycle is extremely vulnerable to explosives - 2 hits of light spinfusor takes it out - though bullet weapons will not do any damage. It's properties make it a very effective high-speed transport.
The vehicle is armed with an 8-round explosive projectile gun, with a high rate of fire and a long reload time. The gun is placed at a very low position on the front, making it hard to hit enemies on flat ground. Thus, its firepower should mainly come from the passenger on board, who can be equipped with all sorts of weapons that best suit the purpose of the attack.
Statistics
- Cost: 500 Credits
- Health: 1400
- Energy: 100
- Speed: +120 km/h
- Damage: 250
- Magazine size: 8
- Ammo: Infinite
- Reload Type: Single until full. (Reload can not be interrupted)
- Reload Time: 3.81
Tactics
The Grav cycle's high speed makes it useful for chasing down enemy cappers.
The vehicles very high mobility also makes it a good fast attack vehicle, where a good driver drives circles around the enemy base at high speed, and the passenger, as Juggernaut, can rain down mortars or, even better, the MIRV Launcher at the enemies. If mastered, the Grav Cycle can even be used for attacking the enemy generator (except in the map of Crossfire, where the generator is nearly inaccessible by vehicles) allowing the attackers to enter and escape from the enemy generator room in a flash.
The vehicle can also be used to grab the enemy flag. A player can travel in it to the enemy flag, eject from the vehicle and grab the flag all at high speed. This saves energy for use after grabbing, etc. Because of the vehicles armor it can protect the flag holder if they mount the bike. If you have two well coordinated people, they can easily make two early caps before the defenders have a chance to get organized. Precaution is needed with the passenger as their weapons will still damage them. Never attempt to capture the flag while on the cycle, the game will treat the flag as another static object and bring you to a dead stop and damage the cycle. When the flag is not locked into place the cycle will simple nudge it aside should they collide. Do not attempt to remount the cycle with the flag as you will be placed in the rear passenger seat and likely killed.
Dismounting the Grav cycle at high speed combined with use of pathfinder's jump pack can launch you forward at incredible speeds, good for grabbing the flag.
The Vehicle is also incredibly useful for hunting light to medium classes who are traversing flat ground. To maximize ramming effectiveness it is a popular tactic to turn the bike to a diagonal angle at the last second to reduce the chance of missing.
Video Guides
Guide to Grav Cycle by NeverStormgaming
Shrike
The Shrike is a flying vehicle. With default configuration, left-click fires the Shrike's primary cannon, which has a four-round magazine. Right-click uses the afterburner, which provides a speed boost in-flight. In contrast to previous Tribes games (Tribes 2, specifically), the Shrike cannot fly right or left, but the afterburner still doubles as a vertical jet. By pointing directly upwards and then turning (gimble locking), the turn speed of a shrike is greatly increased. It is safe to accidently knock into friendly shrikes as you will take no damage although the physics of the two vehicles colliding will make for an odd break away. Shrikes cannot be purchased by heavy classes.
Statistics
- Cost: 4000 Credits
- Health: 3200
- Energy: 70
- Speed: km/h
- Damage: 350
- Magazine size: 4
- Ammo: Infinite
- Reload Type: Single until full. (Reload can not be interrupted)
- Reload Time: 3.86
Tactics
Shrikes are most often used to chase the enemy flag carrier as it's generally very easy to catch up with a Pathfinder. Hitting a light or non-shielded medium class midair will instantly kill them, and take off a large portion of a heavy's health. Another common use is to destroy Beowulf tanks that are in a particularly difficult place to reach by other means.
Video Guides
Destroying Shrikes
While there is only a single real anti-vehicle weapon in the game, the Saber Launcher, you can't rely on Doombringers to deal with shrikes by themselves. Shrikes take additional damage from all explosive weapons, and attacking them whenever possible is highly encouraged. You can often bait the pilot to ram you mid-air; while you will most likely get run over and killed you'll be in the perfect position to land a very hard hitting projectile on the shrike before you untimely demise.
Explosive weapons such as the Spinfusor or Thumper may be hard to land on a fast moving flying vehicle, but Assault rifle and SMG projectiles can rip them to bits too and much quicker than most people think. By keeping the pilot under constant pressure from rapid-fire projectile weapons you also minimize the effectiveness of approaches the shrike can make. A shrike can also easily go down if the pilot is killed, resulting in a one shot kill on the vehicle. Using the disk strategy requires that you aim where the pilot will be, rather than where he is. However if the pilot if flying straight at you in an attempt to ram you then a single devastator spinfusor shot will destroy the shrike unless it is at full health since it does over 3000 damage.
It is possible for a Sentinel to use his sniper rifle to snipe the pilot out of his shrike. This is incredibly difficult to do, but it can be the only way to take out shrike pilots who are adept at dodging explosives.
Beowulf
The Beowulf is a tank-like vehicle. The primary cannon does significantly more damage on a direct hit than with splash damage. Like the other vehicles it has a boost, but instead of making it accelerate faster it makes it turn faster; which is a great boon if someone is speeding by you with your flag. A player may switch between the main cannon and the gunner seat by pressing F1(Cannon)and F2(Gunner).
A second player can enter the vehicle and use the machine gun on top of the turret.
The following bug has now been fixed as of 10.1004.0
The Beowulf has a bug that allows it to take full "direct hit" damage from the splash damage of all explosive weapons. For example, a direct hit with a spinfusor shot does the same damage as one that hit with only the very edge of its splash radius.
Statistics
- Cost: 2500 Credits
- Health: 8000
- Energy: 70
- Speed: km/h
- Cannon Damage: 2000
- Cannon Splash damage: 500-1000
- Cannon Magazine size: 1
- Cannon Ammo: Infinite
- Cannon Reload Type: Single (Reload can not be interrupted)
- Chaingun Damage: 100
- Chaingun Magazine size: 100
- Chaingun Ammo: Infinite
- Chaingun Reload Type: Clip (Reload can not be interrupted)
- Reload Time: 3.82 (same for both Cannon and Chaingun)
Tactics
These vehicles exist in the game files, but are not currently usable.
HAVOC Transport
The HAVOC is a vehicle that is currently unused, but exists in the game files, and appears in the Tribes Ascend Trailer. It previously appeared in Tribes 2.
It appears to be able to carry 4 passengers and a pilot, however it is unclear if there is a spot for a tail gunner like its Tribes 2 counterpart. Although "Switch to Seat 6" appears in the games Key Bindings.
HERC
The HERC is a very large tank that exists in the game files, as an untextured model, and it is referred to by several unused audio files.
It is unclear whether it was intended to be player controlled, or an uncontrollable part of some new gametype.
Other than its massive size, it has nothing in common with the HERC of Starsiege/Earthsiege fame.
