Farming Guide

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There were a few negligible additions and revisions to this tutorial that I lost access to when TWL shut down their Tribes forums earlier this week, so I'm going to post the tutorial as is. You'd be hard pressed to find a successful farmer who did not do what I prescribe here. Although I wrote this myself, much credit should be given to the players JT, Redeye, Caylen, Mooley, Wyze, and Thaen, for teaching me everything I know about farming. Much <3 for Tribes!

The Role of Farmer in Tribes 2 CTF

Tribes 2 CTF is notably different than most CTF games because there is a base game. In order to keep your flag offense and flag defense going, you need defend and repair base assets- the inventory stations, generators, sensors, and turrets. This makes a game of Tribes CTF a game about duality between “Production” and “Production Capability”. The game is not won by flag captures alone. You need to maintain your ability to capture- it's just as important. The base in Tribes is the pit crew to racecar driving, the off-season to a football team, and the rest to an injured athlete. All the talent in the world will not win you the game if you not pay attention to the base game. At the same time, you can overdo it- the goal still remains, you need to capture those flags, that is the primary objective.

There is no other role that you can fill, that will make this duality more obvious to you, than that of a farmer. As a farmer, you fill many defensive roles at once. You could be repairing a generator one moment, to fighting a HO the next moment. You could be laying down a turret farm. You could be filling in for your LOF or HOF while they were away from the stand. You could be holding a flag during a standoff. You are making critical decisions from one fleeting moment to the next, based on what is needed most from your team in order for it to run the most efficiently.

Farming, to an outsider, might seem like an easy job. But a farmer who does a good job will tell you, it's usually not easy. Generally stated, the maintenance of the base and turret farm is the farmer's unique responsibility. This does not mean that the farmer has to do this alone. It just means the tasks are assumed to be done by the farmer. If the farmer asks for assistance, his teammates should be ready to comply within reason.

The Responsibilities of a Farmer:

Defend the Base and Flag

This is worth mentioning first, as a bit of a disclaimer. Some farmers fall into the trap of farmer “tunnel vision”, only focusing on deploying and repairing equipment. It's understandable- it's really easy to get lost in, there's a lot to it. But a farmer needs to be be giving equal attention to maintaining the base, and fighting. There will be some situations on some maps where a good farmer doesn't really “farm” much, if at all. It all depends on what the team needs at the moment. A farmer doesn't need to be a superb fighter- although it certainly helps. But at the very least, a farmer should have a working knowledge of how to be an LD, a LOF, a HOF, and an HD- just in case the time comes to fill those shoes at a moment's notice. A farmer will often find himself defaulting to LD anyway, if his base ends up completely trashed.

Remember- the primary objective is to get flag captures. Imagine a long flag standoff. Both teams are working hard at protecting their capper, and attacking the enemy capper. If you were on the side that broke the standoff and got your flag returned, wouldn't it comfort you to know that your farmer was competent enough to fill in for your HOF who just got taken out, in order to keep the flag home those few extra seconds to get those points on the board, instead of expertly deploying a turret in the right place?

Okay, now to get into the nitty gritty of farming.

Deploying Inventory Stations – Deployable inventory stations are self-powered provide players anything their desired loadout needs short of an armor swap. The effectiveness of the deployable inventory station cannot be understated. It can literally be thought of as a base's auxiliary systems during times of trouble.

Through use of deployable inventory stations, your team receives many benefits. Teammates can heal and reequip within seconds. Turrets can be loaded up to be deployed in a hurry. People respawning can load into many useful light armor loadouts without having to visit a base inventory. Repair packs can be loaded up without needing to have access to or knowledge of the few repair packs scattered around the map. Your team can continue to function under a cluster (light armor only) strategy even if your base is trashed by the enemy. Deployable inventory stations have even been used by some top-tier farmers to block enemy attackers from accessing certain base entrances- while I'm not opposed to this idea, I normally do not do it because it also blocks friendlies from using the same entrances.

Besides protecting the generator and filling in for the LOF/HOF during times of trouble, deploying inventory stations (or delegating deployable inventory station deployment) is one of the most important roles a farmer has in the over-arching gameplay. It is the primary way you can ensure your team will continue to function throughout the course of a map.

Turret Farming

One of the responsibilities unique to a farmer (the one from which the farmer gets it's name) is deploying a turret farm. There are two types of deployable turret- the Landspike, and the Spiderclamp. Landspikes can only be deployed on terrain. The landspike projectiles move slower, but do more damage. Spiderclamps can only be deployed on structures and rocks. Spiderclamp projectiles move faster, but do less damage.

Briefly stated, landspikes are more effective than spiderclamps, and a majority of the time spent deploying turrets is spent deploying landspikes. Spiderclamps are used to augment an already formidable turret farm.

A farmer needs to set up a turret farm in a small window of time, so he can turn his focus to more pressing matters. Because of this, a farmer cannot be hassled to run to a base inventory station every time he wants to pull another turret, so he should bring a deployable inventory station with him to the farming site, and use this to load his turrets. There are a few reasons for this:

• A deployable inventory station lets a farmer load up a turret in a fraction of the time.
• It cuts down on the time it takes to travel to a base station.
• If tucked out of the way, it can also serve as a station others can use to reequip themselves.

A farmer also cannot be hassled to run and grab another deployable inventory in the middle of farming if his station is discovered and destroyed by the enemy. Because of this, a farmer should learn and utilize the technique known as “Spewwing”. With this technique, a farmer can throw multiple turrets down onto the ground within a short time, which he can then deploy later. This minimizes the time spent at the inventory station, and eliminates the consequences of the station being destroyed.

Spewwing:

1. Deploy the inventory station somewhere close to where you desire to set up your farm, but out of the way of enemy sight.
2. Choose your desired turret loadout, and walk up to the deployable inventory station to load up the turret.
3. While in front of the inventory station, aim yourself in the direction you want to spew. Jump and simultaneously throw your pack (default bind is CTRL+R). This will throw your turret onto the ground to be deployed later.
4. When you land in front of the inventory station, you will automatically load another turret. Repeat the above step until you have about 3 to 4 turrets sitting in front of you on the ground.
5. Proceed with picking up the turrets off the ground and deploying them normally.

Location is just as important as speed when setting up a turret farm. You need to decide what requires coverage- the flag, or the base (or the MPB, on vehicle maps). On some maps such as Damnation, an enemy capping route just happens to run by a base entrance- this makes the most efficient location for a turret farm obvious. But in cases where the flag and the base sit further apart, you need to keep multiple things in account when selecting your farm location.

• How many flag routes does the enemy team have access to?
• How many entrances does your base have?
• Do you already have a competent flag D that can handle themselves?
• Do you already have a competent base D that can handle themselves?
• How good are the enemy cappers? How good are the enemy HO?
• Do you have access to a MPB? Is it exposed, and would it benefit from turret coverage?

Usually, if you can answer these questions, you can determine where your turret farm would best be deployed. Once you know where to place your farm, you can then pick the optimal location for individual turrets. Some top-tier farmers have specific turret locations memorized for each map. I'm personally not as detail-oriented- and I believe this comes down to preference; there are trade-offs to each approach. If you have certain locations you always put your turrets, you become predictable to the enemy- and you potentially waste time in perfecting the placement. If you improvise on your turret farm, you might not always get the most optimal coverage or use the terrain to the best advantage. In reality, performing somewhere in between is probably good for most cases.

If you're going to improvise on turret placement, there are a few good rules of thumb to go by:

• The farther apart your turrets are, the better. If you cluster them too close together, they are easier to take out en masse. A wider farm will be harder to take out, and more irritating to deal with.
• Hide your turrets as much as you can. Place them in dark areas on the terrain, on top of grass patches, or just beyond ridges facing away from the enemy base.
• Usually, the higher up a turret is, the more coverage it will have.

Swapping Turret Barrels

One of the neat but unnecessary features of Tribes 2 was the ability to swap out the barrels of the base turrets. It's great to have this amount of customization in a game- it's one of the things long celebrated in Tribes. That being said, not all turret barrels are created equal. You should almost always be using the Plasma Barrel on your base turrets. There are a few exceptions to this rule.

Vehicle maps, and maps that don't offer cappers low routes, promote the use of missile launcher barrels. Missile launcher turrets will automatically lock onto any enemy airborne vehicles in range. They will also lock onto any enemy cappers that have a heat signature resulting from jetting too much. A great example of a map where you should use missile barrels is Titan. Between two missile turrets, and a few D players using missile launchers, an enemy capper hardly has enough flares to evade all the missiles being launched at him.

While very specific, if a base turret is near the flag, and the flag is standing on a high flagstand or over looking lava, your flag D benefits from placing an ELF barrel on the base turret. It will zap enemy cappers from energy and half the time will send them off the path of the flag- and into lava.

Some farmers advise the use of mortar launcher barrels on some maps, in order to “dominate”. I honestly don't advocate this at all. Mortar turrets have a tendency to kill teammates just as often as they kill enemies due to the large unforgiving splash damage. They should only really be used on large spawling vehicle maps where are teamed with incompetent people- and even then, you are probably doing more harm than good. Just... don't do it. Save your face. Don't frustrate your teammates.

To reiterate, 9 times out of 10, you need to be using a plasma barrel on your turrets. On the maps where other barrels are suggested, they are often set to those barrels by default. This means you hardly ever need to switch your turret barrels out. It's good for a farmer to at least know how to do it, in case the time ever came to need it.

Managing a Sensor Network

There are other deployables a farmer has access to that augment the base in various ways. A good farmer will either deploy these himself or delegate some of these tasks to other competent members of his team.

Pulse Sensors – Pulse Sensors are the smaller deployable cousin to the medium and large base sensors. Any enemy caught within the radius of a functional deployable pulse sensor will have their IFFs lit up on friendly HUDs and Command Screens. When base sensors are destroyed, it's good to have deployable pulse sensors up for backup. These can also be used to augment your already existing sensor network, showing you were enemies are setting up around the perimeter of your base. It's worth noting that enemies carrying a Sensor Jammer Pack or Cloak Pack will not be picked up by pulse sensors. As well, it only takes a single disc to render a pulse sensor nonoperational.

Motion Sensors – Any cloaked or sensor jammed enemy caught within the radius of a motion sensor will have their IFFs lit up on friendly HUDs and Command Screens as long as they are moving around. These are critical during flag standoff situations, where the enemy will try to sneak past your defenses in order to attack your flag carrier or strip the flag away from him.

Cameras – You can opt to replace your grenades with tossable cameras that latch onto any surface. Cameras can be used by you or any friendly to get a remote controlled view of any area by use of the command screen. The more practical use of cameras, however, is to render enemy sensor jammer packs inoperable, allowing friendlies to see enemy sensor jammer IFFs even if they are trying to jam your sensors.

Another benefit of using Pulse Sensors, Motion Sensors, and Cameras, is that turrets will use their effective viewpoints to augment their own. This means that turrets will be able to fire at cloaked and sensor jammed enemies, will be able to lock onto and fire at enemies sooner, and will be able to sustain a lock and fire at enemies for longer periods of time, within reason. While maintaining a sensor network is not a top priority, there is no reason why one shouldn't exist, especially during flag standoffs.

Repairing

The one thing a farmer is reluctant to do, but automatically comes with the role of maintaining the base- repairing stuff. Not to worry. Not only is it easy, it requires very little time to do it- if done right.

When you first load into a map that is foreign to you, you should learn the location of the repair pack as soon as possible so you know where to B-line it to in case you need to go on repair duty. Once you have the repair pack, set out to repair what needs repairing. Use the following as guidelines.

• If multiple things need repairing, prioritize them. There is no sense in repairing an inventory station if the generator is not working (it is outstanding how many people do this). Repair the generator first. Then move to inventory stations. Then move to base turrets. Then everything else.

Here is a generalized repair priority list:

1. Generators
2. Inventory Stations
3. Vehicle Stations (If on a Vehicle Map)
4. Mobile Point Base (If on a vehicle map)
5. Base Turrets
6. Deployable Inventory Station (you will often need to replace before repairing)
7. Turret Farm
8. Base Sensors
9. Other Sensors

• Only repair assets to operational condition. Nothing needs to be repaired to perfect health. It only takes two mortars to destroy most assets anyway. The saving grace of the repair pack is that the time it takes for a Heavy Offense to fire off a mortar and reload is almost the same amount of time it takes for any asset to be repaired back to operational condition. Use that to your advantage. Once the asset is glowing, move onto the next thing that needs repairs.

• Do not try to repair every single asset in your base at one time. Remember, there are many things that need your attention. The flag game is the most important. And you should be preventing the enemy HO from being able to get into your base again. Your other teammates are very capable of repairing things if they really need to. Repair a few things to keep the team back on it's feet, and move on. Place a beacon near the operational inventory stations if you need to- that tells your teammates “Hey, this one works, go here.”

• Do not eat repair packs! I'm surprised how many top-tier players still do this. If you have picked up a repair pack, and plan to use an inventory station to load into any loadout that doesn't have a repair pack, throw the repair pack before you use the station. Repair packs are always useful to have around. It's good to hoard them. There is no reason you need to despawn one. Always throw the pack! It's alright to forget now and then, but any top tier player should be scolded for doing this frequently. This goes for non-farmers as well.