Tribes: Ascend

And now I have three people who have offered me referrals...

May God have mercy on your soul.

"DURANDAL AND GLADOS WILL MAKE BEAUTIFUL CYBER SEX AND HAVE SNARKY PILLOW TALK" - The Freeman

Personally, I wish I knew about this before downloading.

Hah. I downloaded it back in open beta, so no guilt for me!

What's your favorite game mode, people? Mine's CTF.

"The fact that your food can be made into makeshift bombs alarms the Hell out of me, Scrye." - Charlatan

CTF too.

Capture the Flag. Capture and Control is a close second for the awesome chaos, but most of the maps for it really drag the game out (Raindance especially; the control point in each base are so piss-easy to defend that they almost only get captured when people abandon them out of boredom) and it's even harder for a team to catch up than in any other mode.

Semi-recently unlocked infiltrator, and I have to say it's my favorite class by far.

This is mostly because I can't aim worth a damn with any weapon, but the invisibility makes up for that one-hundred fold. Further, it's excellent for disrupting enemy defense, and getting techs to redeploy their turrets in non-strategic areas. All it takes is for the generator to go down once, and a melee kill or two, and suddenly all of the techs and probably a Jug are holing up in the generator room while your pathfinders can grab their flag un-harassed by light turrets.

Also, one-hit melee-killing sentinels. Simply delicious.

Now to save up for the Jackal and Throwing Knives...

Speaking as a Technician, I hate you. Speaking as a Brute, however...

Join us in our quest to play all RPG video games! Moving on to disc 2 of Grandia!

Capture And Hold is my new favorite mode. I love how dynamic it feels, since you can choose to make your way to any point you don't own and try to take it or hold down an existing point.

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

Sometimes you can even follow up a generator destruction by taking the flag yourself; you're still a light class after all. I pulled off a pretty sweet one on Sunstar where I used the cover over the flag disappearing to grab the flag right under form a pair of heavies' nose.

I'd advise you to keep at least one of the default weapons equipped at a time, because two Rhino or one SN7 round followed up by a melee attack is the most efficient way to destroy light turrets.

Okay, so I succumbed to the temptation that was a 50% off Technician Thumper and bought me some gold.

And I've just got to say, I'm not regretting it in the slightest. The Thumper is awesome!

Join us in our quest to play all RPG video games! Moving on to disc 2 of Grandia!

My first deal was the Energy Recharge pack for SEN.

Today it's the Wheel Deal perk. Apparently it knows how well I drive.

"The fact that your food can be made into makeshift bombs alarms the Hell out of me, Scrye." - Charlatan

Wait, there are sales?

EDIT: As it turns out, yes, there are. Decided to add some more Gold in preparation.

edited 9th May '12 5:23:37 PM by RocketDude

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

Yep, they added them with the Tartarus update. And apparently they learn, because today's (for me, they're personalized) is the Light Assault Rifle for -75% off.

...you Magnificent Bastards. If it weren't for the fact I don't play chaser that much and I need to save I would totally be dropping money right now, rather than holding my one hand away from my wallet with my other hand.

Shame/good thing they don't have any Soldier or Starwolf skins yet. If that popped up all my money would be flying at the screen.

edited 10th May '12 7:29:05 AM by TheInferno

"The fact that your food can be made into makeshift bombs alarms the Hell out of me, Scrye." - Charlatan

It does seem like a very good marketing strategy.

Although likely as a result I seem to be seeing a huge upswing in Technicians using Thumpers, and I'm pretty quickly getting the complaints people have about them. It's a damaging as a spinfusor despite being incredibly fast and damn near invisible.

edited 10th May '12 10:39:30 AM by thatother1dude

I dont see a downside. the assault rifle is terrible .

Today's deal for me was Prism Mines. Anyone else get them?

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

It's an SMG, and for a class that's not about offense in the first place it's pretty damn good.

I keep running into people with terrible connection that make it impossible for them to hit anyone or to be hit, and they of course immediately use this to capture the flag.

Honestly, there's two camps. One says that the Thumper is overpowered, one says the SMG they have is overpowered. You can't really win with any argument on balance (except for Plasma Gun was OP, pretty much everyone will agree with that one, even me in retrospect. )

I don't really have a problem as long as I stay mobile, my Spinfusor (XP-unlocked and mastered =D) is more than a match for a TCN Thumper. Their grenades are nasty, but mine are nastier.

Plus I can always go BRT and start throwing fractals.

---

On a related note, anyone notice that the community is pretty ridiculously split on what's OP? I had someone (a RDR using the Plasma Gun) complaining that the Spinfusor is OP. Uh.

edited 10th May '12 6:52:16 PM by TheInferno

"The fact that your food can be made into makeshift bombs alarms the Hell out of me, Scrye." - Charlatan

I thought most people stopped complaining about the TCN4 when they changed it from being hit-scan to projectile-base. I wasn't playing back then, but can definitely see what they would be talking about.

Try playing against one as Infiltrator or even Raider, especially when you don't have a Stealth Spinfusor, Plasma Gun, or Grenade Launcher.

edited 10th May '12 7:45:50 PM by thatother1dude

Pfft, I have submachine guns. Bullet spam makes up for lack of explosions. Then again, I have the Grenade Launcher.

edited 10th May '12 7:52:22 PM by RocketDude

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

Oh god INF must die. I'm sorry, I freaking hate it when I get two of those guys in my gen and the minute I go after one the other attacks from behind arrrgh. Still, I don't see how the Thumper is any better than, say, a Spinfusor. Does it do more damage?

"The fact that your food can be made into makeshift bombs alarms the Hell out of me, Scrye." - Charlatan

Well, it holds more ammo to begin with, the projectile has a timed detonation, and explodes on impact. Otherwise, dunno.

EDIT: Well, and it has a fairly quick reload, but I don't know if it's significantly faster than the Spinfusor's reload.

edited 10th May '12 7:56:30 PM by RocketDude

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

The timed detonation is a non-issue indoors, because most of the places are so small it doesn't go off before it hits (except maybe the Temple Ruins gen). I could see the projectile drop helping, but if you're used to the Spinfusor it's not that big of a deal (and even might be a hinderence). The splash is the same, but the TCN does more damage against gens and vehicles compared to the Spinfusor.

Which doesn't matter for a defensive TCN. Though the other thing it has is I think the Thumper projectile flies faster, which could honestly what makes the difference indoors. I've just been torn apart by way too many INF to feel bad for them when they fight a TCN with a Thumper.

Now, the Raider having trouble... that I understand, before the Raid & Pillage update they were pretty meh. Still, that's less a problem with the TCN Thumper than it is the RDR's Primary stuff other than the Plasma Gun sucks for 1v1 combat indoors. RDR's biggest asset in that case is Whiteout + GL spam, I think, and not many people have both of those.

edited 10th May '12 8:09:27 PM by TheInferno

"The fact that your food can be made into makeshift bombs alarms the Hell out of me, Scrye." - Charlatan

If you're outnumbered, you're going to be disadvantaged.

It's not—they're extremely similar—but that isn't saying a lot. The Thumper isn't too powerful for any class, it's too powerful for to a class that already has such great support abilities. It's like if they let the Engineer in Team Fortress 2 use the Rocket Launcher.

A lot of people hate the Falcon for the same reason: it's objectively inferior to the Assault Rifle—a weapon almost everyone replaces as soon as they can—but if a Sentinel has it they have a pretty good chance of killing you even if you meet them at close range. The Nova Blaster was at least really hard to aim.

The ARX buster is actually very good indoors because you can pop in and out of cover while sending out a barrages of sticky bombs. This is a lot less effective against Thumper Technicians because they do their damage all at once. It's a pretty huge game-changer when you factor in how much the obligatory turret and motion sensor at every entrance weakens the Raider.

edited 10th May '12 9:04:45 PM by thatother1dude