I have had a long-running affair with the Tribes series since Dynamix and Sierra announced it as part of the Metaltech series back in the mid-90s. I had gotten used to the Sierra Games’ sim, which was based on FASA’s Battletech games, so I wasn’t sure how I was going to like the switch to a first-person shooter. After all, my experience with that kind of gameplay back then was limited to iD Software’s Doom, Quake, and of course, the original FPS that I played, Wolfenstein 3D. Although I might not consider it a first-person shooter, I feel that Descent falls into the same category. The feeling of being in a mech in the original Earthsiege (1994) games was awesome. I played them off and on, often times I would return for replay value. Later on, after Tribes was released, they came out with the mech sim game, Starsiege, which featured the same universe/backdrop that the rest of the series does.
Ah, the good ol’ loading screen for Tribes.
My first entry in playing Tribes was when it first came out. I played through the solo tutorials, but although you can shoot these dumb bots and get a feel for how the different armor classes work, and jet-packing all around the map. The very basic aspects of the game are transferred, and then after that, you’re on your own. The only way to really enjoy the game is to jump on a multi-player server and have fun. And of course, fun is relative. The fact is thatTribes is probably one of the most fast-paced FPS games out there, if not the fastest.
Dogfights are quick and utilize a wide array of weapons, from spinfusors (basically, glowing blue discs that impact with a nice-sized damage AoE), to plasma guns and cannons, mortars, mines, grenades, flares, and of course, my favorite… turrets! The original Tribes came with only three sets of available armor: light, medium, and heavy. What I always though was the best aspect of playing the game, was the mods… oh, the mods!
My clan (Clan Oni) was very much into two mod types: Rengades and Shifter 1.1/Shifter X. I wish I had kept all the videos I shot during those days, so I could put then online. Instead, I did a quick search on YouTube and found the following video that I think adequately shows the various classes from Renegades:
And here’s one from the Shifter mod:
Anyway, I wanted to give you a proper understanding of what Tribes is before I launch into my look at the latest incarnation. Do we all have a better appreciation for the game, now?
The login screen for Tribes: Ascend.
For those of you who don’t want to waste any time, let me just say this: Tribes: Ascend is a worthy successor to the lineage. After wasting my time with Tribes 2 and feeling better with Tribes: Vengeance, I feel like Ascend is what I had hoped would come next after playing the original for so many years. It carries on the speed, and picks up some of the better aspects of Vengeance that I thought were great changes (skiing, for one). Although they do add a lot of the mod changes into the base game, they’ve also integrated some of the ranking systems that we’ve come to expect from our FPS’, such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, and even Halo 3.
Ascend is a Free-to-Play game that really means it. While you have the option to pay for Gold in order to unlock more classes, weapons, and add-ons, you can also unlock the same items through gameplay. I started out a free player before I went VIP, and I did pretty well for myself with the basic weapons and earning experience points. Gold is the quickest way to get those unlocks, as the ratio of Gold to XP is kind of skewed. But play enough, you can rack up about 150,000 XP and spend it to unlock a few weapons or classes.
Since I play with my Technician armor the most, I equip this weapon every time and I ended up mastering it fairly quickly. Click on it to see the various bonuses.
Once you’ve acquired the various tools of the game, as you use them, usage allows you to master them. More exposure to them in the field will elevate the bonuses that you have with each one. Armor experience unlocks more health, or faster regeneration. Some of the toys you use, like the light turrets, will have a higher armor class and gain damage bonuses when firing at the enemy. When I play my favorite, the Technician class, my turrets will allow me to gain a lot of kills as people try to jump into my generator room to take it out in order to shut down the base guns and the radar dish. If they destroy my prized turrets, I’ll deploy them in a new spot just to keep things interesting.
As with the originalTribes, players recognize defensive and offensive patterns, so you have to vary it or else predictability is a killer. Just ask the Heavy Armor that insists on taking the same route into your gen room, and is surprised when you set mines down along his skiing path. Or the light armor that boosts toward your flag and then goes SPLAT against your sudden deployment of a forcefield on the other end. Those things are like brick walls to them, and given their speed, well… they leave a nice little splotch against the field and then I get the points for flag recovery.
My Technician-class armor character setting up defenses in the Diamond Sword generator room on the “Crossfire” map.
Before, I mentioned how fast the game can be. Ascend injects nitrous into the speed of gameplay, and seeing some of these guys float in and zoom by, you have to adapt and keep up as much as possible in order to successfully play and give as good as you get. Otherwise, you’ll be spending a lot of time respawning, and that’s no fun for anyone. The greatest thing about the game though, is that if you don’t think you can keep up with the speedsters, you can opt to defend the base or the flag through various means. The game gives points for defense and repairs just as much as kills and captures. And while everyone else on the game is more interested in taking flags and flying across the map, they’ll need someone to defend against the raiders who’ll baserape like crazy.
One of the best parts of playing is being able to ski!
And they will not hesitate to rack of generator and turret kills, people, trust me! On certain maps, there are numbers of choke-points for entry, and if you know the maps well enough, you can set up your defenses in the proper areas. Drop a turret in a spot they won’t see until it’s too late, but then get ready to have it destroyed the next time they come through. Make sure to set down some motion sensors/detectors to combat those pesky stealth guys, because you won’t see them until it’s too late. Or even at all… man, they’re sneaky bastards!
Dogfighting out in the field takes on a new dimension with the ability to ski. Skiing is essentially letting your momentum carry you along the slopes/angles of the map. If you fire your jetpack at the right time, when you land, should you do so on the downward slope of a hill or a mountain, you will pick up speed with you engage your ski thrusters.
All in all, though, I love this game. It has mixed everything I loved about the original with spectacular graphics and excellent features. I found this great video on YouTube that does a great job of portraying what I do on a nightly basis, now (courtesy of Gamespot):
If you’re interested in playing Tribes: Ascend, then feel free to use my referral link to download the game. I appreciate it! I’ll leave you with the full set of screenshots from my gameplay, below.
Last week, Star Trek Online held their second anniversary event. As I did with the previous year’s anniversary event, I was there waiting in line for the events to begin along with what seemed like everyone else on the game. This year, however, with the release of the new Free2Play portion of the game, the crowds to even get onto the server were so large that it took more than a few minutes to actually get to the character select screen. Once you were in, though, you could earn the new class of ship, the Odyssey-class, through a mission pickup right outside of Admiral Quinn’s office, from an NPC. As soon as the NPC popped for the event, the crowd swarmed this guy and suddenly everyone was off running that mission to test out the newest class to hit the game.
… this is not a recommended class for Tactical or Science officers.
My Odyssey-class USS Bonhomme Richard, with full Borg gear (in-game screenshot).
I want to make one thing clear; there are several different “original” classes of ship within Star Trek Online. Most of them are variations on the canonical classes, such as the Thunderchild-class (redress of the Akira-class), the Bellerophon-class (redress of the Intrepid-class), and then there are several truly original classes that have no basis whatsoever, such as the Avenger-class and the Dervish-class. My reactions to the 100% original classes has not been positive. In fact, although I did use the Dervish for my Tactical Admiral for many months, I only used it because of the benefits rather than the design. I personally think the Dervish (and the variants) design is lacking in many ways, and honestly believe that Cryptic needs to hire someone who knows Trek a little better before trying to strike out on their own.
The new Odyssey-class is not a Cryptic design. They opened up a contest a little under a year ago where players like you and me could submit designs for this new class. The winner was Adam Ihle, which was, quite frankly, the best-looking design out of the others that were submitted to Cryptic. If you take a look at the link, you’ll see the ones that came in second, third, and fourth… and all I can say is, if they had gone with any of the others… blech. I think they made the right choice, but Odyssey isn’t without its problems.
The Odyssey class is the largest vessel ever created by Starfleet. Its massive size makes it very resilient, but its turn rate is reduced by the bulk of the vessel. The Odyssey’s unique split saucer pylon reduces subspace turbulence which allows higher warp speeds and increases the duration the ship can maintain Slipstream Drive. The Odyssey is designed as an extreme long-range vessel, and can operate for long periods of time away from support. Because of this, it is the most versatile cruiser ever developed by the Starfleet Corps of Engineers and features a Universal Lieutenant Commander Bridge Offer Station that can by operated by any Bridge Officer class.
— Stephen D’Angelo, Executive Producer, Star Trek Online.
Click for a closer look at the Odyssey-class design...
Again, I want to stress that this is not a Cryptic design. But the explanation for the various design choices are nothing short of bullshit. Okay, granted, Star Trek itself is fictional, but there’s a certain standard of keeping to the established explanations for How Things Work within the universe. Over time, you have a large number of references to pull from, and I often think that Cryptic is either too lazy to use them or just phones in some of the explanations for why a ship looks like that.
The split-saucer pylon, which is more commonly referred to as the “neck,” is a design element borrowed from an earlier design of the Oberth-class frigate. The Oberth-class was shown in the form of the USS Grissom from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. This class also uses the same concept, which is kind of cool since its a stylish departure from the normal solid neck look of the Galaxy, Excelsior, Sovereign, and of course, the original Constitution-class starships.
My problem is with the explanation for why this element is used. I quote from the blog excerpt above, “The Odyssey’s unique[sic] split saucer pylon reduces subspace turbulence which allows higher warp speeds and increases the duration the ship can maintain Slipstream Drive.”
Okay, first of all, what a crock of shit. That’s like saying that the Space Shuttle’s wings make it easier for it to fly in space. It doesn’t. You don’t determine higher warp speeds based on the design of the ship, you base it on the ability of the warp coil to sustain a higher energy output to allow a ship to enter the subspace interfold layer at a higher rate. You could form a subspace field around a brick and as long as the coils generating the field are solid, you can hit higher warp speeds, no problem. I think Cryptic needs a lesson in Trek’s mechanics before they approve drivel like this.
… as my engineering admiral… the ship is a match made in heaven.
Bonhomme Richard packs a punch in combat.
My Trekkie (or Trekker) rant notwithstanding, within the game itself, there are a few hazards I’ve run into with the class during combat. First of all, this is not a recommended class for Tactical or Science officers. Tactical officers need maneuverability and DPS. Science officers get maneuverability from the smaller classes like the Nebula and Intrepid-classes. The Odyssey is the aforementioned brick: it doesn’t turn on a dime, but it has a really tough hull and can tank like no other class on STO right now. It does come with a Universal Lieutenant Commander bridge officer station, which makes it usable by Tactical or Science, but the fact that the only Commander-level station is for Engineering seals the deal for me. I’m only going to use this with my Engineering officer. I can’t justify switching off my other characters to use this class because there’s just too much of a sacrifice to required abilities within combat and flight.
Playing as my engineering admiral, however, the ship is a match made in heaven. Even though the cruiser lacks the swift handling of the Sovereign-class, this is easily corrected with a Rare (blue) or Very Rare (purple) RCS Accelerator console. Double them up, if you need to. Once I installed that console, I found that I could turn as quickly as I could while helming my Sovereign or Galaxy-X vessels. The only drawback to the Odyssey as an engineer is the loss of the extra tactical slot from my Sovereign-class ship. Otherwise, it’s still a four-fore and four-aft weapon ship, four ship devices, and a four/three/two on consoles. It carries +10 to both Shield Power and Aux Power, with a maximum warp of 9.996 (faster than any other ship on the game), and the new Advanced Slipstream Drive will blow past the normal Vice Admiral Slipstream by nearly 30% (Warp 28.00). The duration of the ASD is also increased; you can fly the entire length of a sector without having to cool down, but once you hit the edge, there’s a two minute cooldown period before you can use it again. With the addition of the Borg warp drive, the max warp still hits 14.00, so there’s no advantage there. But for Aegis, MACO, and Omega users, you will see a big increase in warp speed.
Additionally, what makes this class even more of a tank is the additional hull points on top of the standard. A stock Odyssey comes with around forty-five thousand hull points, but when you add on all your bonuses? Well, I’m rolling around in STFs with fifty-six thousand-plus hull points. I’m going toe-to-toe with Tactical Cubes and can hang in a firefight for much longer, especially with all my health buffs and abilities.
I’ve pretty much decided to switch to this class permanently for my engineer. What I’m looking forward to the most is Cryptic’s class variants for Odyssey, because right now, there’s only one skin available. But the size of the class provides a big opportunity for Cryptic to make a little money by selling off more ship costumes for it. I’m very curious to see where they go from here.
And I’m still waiting for my damn Ambassador-class!
