Vehicles In Tribes 2

Starsiege:Tribes was meant to be an infantry take on what was formerly a mech simulator franchise. One of the talking points about Tribes is that it was one of the first games to offer vehicles in an infantry shooter. And this was a big deal for the game before skiing was “discovered”- vehicles took a back seat after that. In Tribes 2 base, Dynamix attempted to bring the spotlight back onto the vehicles and tactics dealing with them by implementing skiing as a severely nerfed feature. When infantry speed was brought back to Tribes 2, vehicles took a backseat again. Now, during the T2 Draft Tournaments, we are lucky to see 2 or 3 vehicle maps get played during a season. For some people, vehicle maps are fun. For some, vehicle maps suck. Most everyone can agree though, vehicles are not the focus of Tribes- it's all about the infantry.

In other shooters infantry normally walk and it takes them a while to get from point A to point B, and vehicles help them move around much faster. With the skiing, jetting, and disc-jumping in Tribes games, vehicles that aide your speed become negligible. In other games, vehicles have much more armor, can dish out more damage, and can take more of a beating than an infantry could. With the player’s ability to suit up in heavy armor with a mortar and shield pack in Tribes, this reality does not exist- heavies become the damage takers and damage dealers.

Not only could players do many of the things the vehicles could do, but it also often became inconvenient for players to get a vehicle ready. In the amount of time it took for a pilot to fix his vehicle station, order a havoc, and wait for 5 other players to load up into it, 6 fully suited heavy armors could already be at the enemy base with carefully planned routes. Not to mention, many of the vehicles had weird handling.

There needs to be incentives to use vehicles in a Tribes game that are different than incentives in other games. Vehicles ought to augment the abilities of the player, and of the team. Vehicles work the best when they are fill a “support role” in the game, and not distract from the infantry play. Some vehicles in Tribes 2 Classic were better at doing this than others. As well, vehicle weapons need to work in a similar manner to infantry weapons- the skill it takes to use them should be consistently proportionate throughout.

Mobile Point Base (or “MPB”) 

This is the prime example of a supporting vehicle- one that compliments the gameplay in a subtle yet effective manner, adding in another gameplay element without throwing it in your face. The mobile point base is essentially a deployable truck. When deployed, the MPB extends an inventory station, a base turret, and a medium-range sensor. All 3 of these things are powered by the MPB, and independently of the base generator. The ability to roll this wherever you want makes it great for keeping your team going even when your base is trashed by the enemy. As well, the developers of Classic added an additional teleporter function to the MPB. Players could teleport from the vehicle pad to wherever the MPB was deployed- this feature was neat, but not used much. This vehicle needs no gunners, or any other passengers other than the driver.

The MPB had very hefty shields, but it had a weak spot in the back where the inventory station was- damaging the inventory station would also damage the vehicle, so double damage could be done by focusing on the back of the vehicle. The MPB could be taken out in seconds by spamming mortars, grenades, and mines near the back, so MPB drivers would have to be careful about where they deployed it. The only thing this vehicle really suffered from was horrible wheeled physics which made it hard to get into position. But this flaw would be an easy fix for a developer. This vehicle is one that just simply needs to be there, moreso than others. It would not be a vehicle CTF map without it.

Wildcat 

The grav bike of Tribes 2, this vehicle always felt like it needed more of a purpose. The problem with the grav bike is that it wasn't notably a good killing machine in any way, even after a heavy chaingun was mounted to its front. While it was fast, the bike's physics were glitchy, because of the tessellation of the terrain. If you landed on a patch of terrain at the right angle, it could cause the bike to flip without much warning, often killing or fatally wounding its pilot. Experienced pilots knew how to tame the gravbike and pitch it upwards on terrain so this wouldn't happen, but piloting it in this way would slow it down considerably. Only the light armor could use the bike. And honestly, when I think speed in Tribes, I think of a light armor cruising along a route, not driving in a wonky hoverbike.

Players in light armor who were equipped with discs, mines, a chaingun, and a grenade launcher were every bit at dangerous and speedy as the grav bike. The only real role the grav bike served was to add insult to injury during blowout games, where players would stop taking the game seriously and goof off trying to run people over. Sometimes cappers would use gravbikes at the beginning of setup routes to get going fast without using a disc-jump, saving precious health- this was about the most helpful the gravbike could be.

Besides changing the driving mechanics to not be as wonky and tippy, I would likely want to increase the amount of thrust you take while ejecting out of the vehicle. And possibly give it a deadlier but slower gun that doesn’t require having to keep a constant bead on someone (a chaingun and wonky physics don’t really work together well…)

Instead of having the vehicle explode if you capsize it, I would think about simply just ejecting the player at much less damage sacrifice, requiring the player to go and flip the vehicle upright before using it (at a sacrifice of time spent flipping it). This would make the vehicle mechanics more forgiving and enable players to really get a feel for it. In game theory, having players die in order to learn something is generally frowned upon, but unfortunately this was what happened with the gravbike in T2. I mean, dying happens enough in an online game, but it shouldn’t occur on a vehicle because you hit a pebble the wrong way.

Jericho Tank

I can find one or two roles for the Jericho, but there is only one that I really agree with in the overarching metagame.

The Jericho is a powerful hovertank that can really take a beating. Running tanks into other tanks often causes them to blow up and cause Unexpected Errors for players, to the frustration of many- this has actually been exploited in recent tournaments in order to stop flag standoffs. The tank turns fairly slowly, but it can strafe and move in any lateral direction very fast- which is very out of character for a tank. Its shields run off the same energy reserve that is used to power its boosting- but its energy reserve is so huge that the tank is pretty much undefeatable when used by an experienced tank pilot. Missiles don't do much to the tanks when they were shielded- neither do mines, mortars, or shrike blasters. You have to coordinate an attack with one or more of these to take one down.

The tank has a pilot and gunner seat, so it takes 2 men away from battle when used. The guns on the tank are unreliable when the tank is moving, due to the crazy projectile inheritance- but tactics were developed where a pilot would position the tank at an ideal spam location and exit the vehicle and target the spam point with his TL, giving the gunner a bullseye to aim for. This is something a walking heavy and light armor could do already, without the aide of a vehicle.

During a game, people using a tank effectively either find themselves high-arc spamming from afar, or spawn-camping the enemy turf, running them over and mortaring them at point blank, putting them in disarray and making it hard for them to amass an effective strike against them. Neither of these are notably hard to do, but can be extremely effective.

There is one supporting role that I find commendable for the tank, is that is a defensive flag-holding role during heated standoffs- flag standoffs are interesting in that they can abruptly change the pace of a game and help a losing team turn the momentum of the game to their favor if they come out on top during one. To be fair, tank standoffs can get fairly boring for the watchers- nothing can happen for long periods of time due to the difficulty in taking a tank down- this would have to be addressed. However, if the tank was to fulfill a role at all, turtling the flag would be the role most people would be comfortable with (it'd be better than a normal infantry base turtle, at any rate). The discussion lies in how to go about making it interesting.

A possible solution would be giving people the ability to board tanks if they got close, somewhat like Halo. The challenge for the boarder would be doing it without getting run over, and for the tank pilot, it would making sure he was able to maneuver to successfully run a player down without being boarded. Or maybe even make it as simple as making concussion grenades effective on players even inside vehicles. To further emphasize the defensive nature of the vehicle, weapons would need to be switched out to something a little more defense-friendly.

Another possible solution- that would be killing two birds with one stone- would be making the infantry ELF gun more useful by having it quickly drain the energy from vehicles, assets, and players alike. The lock-on feature of the ELF would probably be removed to counter-balance this, but if someone was able to get close enough to a tank, avoid getting ran over, and keep a steady bead on the tank with the ELF gun, a tank could be shield-less and vulnerable in seconds. This would make for a type of interesting standoff game I would like to see.

Shrike

This is the ‘jet fighter’ of Tribes 2- which is a bit of an inaccurate term when considering how it behaves. But to a player new to the game, that is what the vehicle resembles at first. Actually, the vehicle is a “turbo-grav”, which is somewhat a cross between a helicopter and a jet. It can hover in place with vertical jets, and you can use the vertical jets to propel it forward by nosing the vehicle down, or propel it backward by nosing it up. But the second you engage the forward jets, it becomes an agile aircraft, able to fly fast (usually faster than heat-seeking missiles) and take turns rapidly. It has two front-mounted blasters that can slice through players and vehicles rather quickly (again, using the same energy reserve as the one used to power its shields).

Killing enemies is made possible by shooting, or ramming, as with most vehicles. Some shrike pilots have become ridiculously good at doing both. It is not an easy feat, due to its mechanics- the craft is directed very loosely by the mouse, requiring precise mouse movement and understanding of the “directional lag” the ship has. It is easy to miss your intended ram target and instead crash into the ground in a ball of fire. But when a pilot becomes good at ramming, he sways the battle of a vehicle map. Shrike pilots can put a serious dent in the enemy offense by ramming heavys in the midfield as they are making their way to the friendly base. In the midfield, they are also in an amazing position to ram enemy flag carriers- and they can easily keep up with even the fastest of cappers.

Shrikes can also be used by medium armors to get to speed rapidly before ejecting en route to the flag stand. This makes medium flag capping a favored method of flag capping on vehicle maps due to the increased punishment a medium armor can take compared to a light.

There are a few vulnerabilities to the shrike- and these are worth noting because without them the shrike would be horribly overpowered. A well-placed mine-disc will blow up any shrike up instantly. And shock lancing a shrike will send the shrike toppling, often crashing into the ground below if the pilot is close to the ground.

While the shrike is extremely powerful, I would not argue it is overpowered. The ability for a shrike pilot to own the midfield is more of a flaw with the map rather than the vehicle- a well-constructed vehicle map has hills and other various obstacles placed randomly that a shrike pilot will need to avoid, while still keeping lanes open for evading missiles. A wide-open vehicle map just doesn’t fly, because of shrikes, but also because of many other reasons. (I'd use Raindance here as an example of a wide open map).

Thundersword Bomber

The Bomber can hold up to 3 people- a pilot, a bomber, and a tailgunner. While the pilot doesn’t have anything in the way of weapons, the bomber has access to a rapid-firing plasma cannon, and a regenerating payload of bombs, each bomb doing the damage of a mortar round. The bombs can be dropped at rapid succession, but after unloading around 10 or so, there is a cooldown period while bombs are being regenerated. The bomber doesn’t really technically aim the bombs, the pilot does that by adjusting the bomber’s pitch and speed- the bomber just decides when to let the bombs fly, by determining whether a faint bomber reticle on the ground is located over the specified target or not. The tailgunner position on the back is an open exposed position where a passenger stands and can utilize all of their weapons, but is vulnerable to nades, mines, and weapons fire. The bomber is a bit harder to control compared to the shrike, and requires some skill by the pilot. It requires knowing how and when to evade attacks and travel to safety, and requires knowing good bombing routes to give the bomber limited exposure.

If a good bombing team is able to set up a bomb route before the other team can get other vehicles up, the other team is more or less screwed. The bomber is extremely powerful- its only real threat is missiles and shrikes. And if your tailgunner is a heavy armor carrying flares and an ammo pack, you have more than enough flares to evade missiles for half the map, or more. That tailgunner can also launch missiles at enemy shrikes, making all but the most experienced shrikers incapable of keeping a bead on the bomber to take them out. And even then, if a bomber manages to take out the enemy vehicle pad, they can usually keep it down with successive bombing runs. AA turrets and other fire are easily avoidable by the bomber.

You can’t ever really feel like a bomber earns their kills- they aren’t really doing much at all. The pilot does most of the critical thinking, and most of the work- but hardly gets enough credit for what they do.

The bomber is not effective enough for what it does. Sure, it keeps 3 people alive for a good deal of time, and in the process of their lives they can kill a lot of people. But the length of a single bombing run is short, and the time duration between bombing runs is too lengthy- even if a bomber crew was able to take out multiple priority targets in one run, by the time they swing back around most of the damage would already be accounted for. As well, consider the fact that the most important base assets are inside, protected from the bomber. And it takes at least 2 people to run a bomber, if not 3 if they want to survive for any amount of time. If all 3 of those players were instead running as HO on decent routes, they would be able to sustain constant pressure and aide or distort the flag game much longer and much more effectively than a bomber could (and remember, the flag game means everything).

Any good aspects of the bomber- including its emphasis on teamwork- are overshadowed by all of these harsh realities of the bomber. In another shooter game, the bomber would probably fill more of a role. But in Tribes, its role is that of an annoying gnat that occasionally be effective when the stars align. It might be possible to adjust it, but I doubt it…

Havok

The Havok is the aerial transport of the game, and two similar vehicles were found in the first Tribes. The Havok is essentially a heavy turbograv with platforms along its hull for up to 5 other passengers to stand on. There are no weapons. The havoc essentially moves like the shrike and bomber, but much more slowly and gradually. Havok passengers are exposed but are able to use all of their weapons freely, just like the bomber tailgunner. The havoc could be used as an aerial platform, keeping all occupants in the air and firing- but most people quickly learn how ineffective that can be. The havoc in Tribes 2 was mainly used to shuttle HO (or other odd stealth roles) across the map to the enemy base in one payload. However, this was not very effective. It’d take forever for all the spots to fill up, and once HO dropped onto the enemy base, they would get in each others' ways, accidentally mortaring one another to death. A HO in Tribes 2 classic with the right routes could get to the enemy base in a fraction of the time it took for a loaded havoc to get there.

As true as this is, I still think there is a spot for an aerial transport in the game- just not one that allows 5 passengers. In Tribes 1 a light personal carrier existed with only two passenger spots- and I think that is reasonable. It does not imply the pilot needs to sit around forever to load up, and because of its decreased payload, could probably be given a bit more maneuverability and survivability. The havoc is touted by many Tribes 2 base players as being a staple to the series, and that should be respected to some point. A smaller havok does fill my canon of a vehicle aiding the gameplay, and not providing distraction from it.