Here are a few hopefully helpful settings tweaks and tips for any new or returning players to the game. The tweaks in this guide are mostly going to be around the ingame options and not involve edititing the config files, although there may be mention of it or a reference to another guide if I feel it helps enough to warrant it.

The gameplay settings are where arguably the most important tweaks are which is why it is being put up front.

FOV

Most people, if they are coming from other shooters, are most likely used to an FOV of somewhere between 70 - 90 depending on preference. In Tribes though a lot is going on around you and taking as much of that in as possible if important.

For this reason I recommend turning your FOV all the way up the the max of 120. It may seem high and feel a bit jarring to start with if you are used to lower FOV's but in the long run it is extremely important to help you compete.

Simulated Projectiles

This is by far the most important thing to change out of everything, if you were to only change one setting, this should be it.

DISABLE IT!

Simulated projectiles is basically where the game shows your shots being fired without any ping latency or even in the right place on your screen, the game is straight up lying to you about where your shots are going and is why, when its enabled, some shots will seem to pass right through enemies without hitting or doing any damage.

Myself, I played with this enabled for over 100 hours trying to improve with the assault rifle and spinfusor to no avail, and the game I disabled this my rifle aim especially improved 10 fold. (Although in all honesty it still needs work)

Other Settings

Mouse Smoothing should be disabled as it is simply a form of mouse acceleration and only messes with your aim.

Reduced Weapon Size is down to personal preference, and I myself often switch between normal and reduced size, but if you want to maximise screenspace and visiblity then it is good idea to have it enabled.

Damage Numbers should be enabled as it simply helps you know how much you damaged an enemy for, pretty simple one that.

On higher settings the game does look great, but when it comes to playing it, some of the effects can be very obtrusive and limit visibilty. The most obvious of this would be the rather intense bloom and lens flare found in the higher graphical presets.

Graphics Detail

To remove the sun glare and bloom using the ingame presets you would need to use at least "low" or less. This also helps overall visibilty with explosions not being as blinding and smoke easier to see though.

Very High And Low Respectively


This is one of those cases where editing the config file may be better if you want the better graphics but just want to get rid of the glare. A guide the editing of the config file is here:

https://segmentnext.com/2012/03/26/tribes-ascend-tweaks-guide-how-to-edit-config-file/

Texture Detail

The texture detail doesnt make a massive impact on gameplay, but if your game is limited at all by vram usage then turning this down may help

Other Settings

Vsync and framerate smoothing should really be disabled unless they are absolutely nessesary to make the game playable for you, due to the input lag associated with them.

Keep in mind here that these are coming from someone with only a couple hundred hours across my time playing, that may sound like a lot, but for a game like this and the players that are practically living gods, thousands of hours have been put in. So if you ever want advice from a real expericed player, ask one of the rank 50 players between games or catch them on the tribes subreddit here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tribes/

Now onto the tips that I found have helped me the most going from complete newbie, to at least competant. (sometimes...)

Situational Awareness

While a key part of most shooters and games in general, staying aware of your surroundings in Tribes is especially important.

Many people will want to get close and have a clean direct spinfusor shot to open up an engangement, so checking behind you every now and then is always a good idea to catch anyone sneaking up on you.

Another thing you can do to stay aware of enemy positions is to quickly tap the shift key to zoom in briefly. This will temporaraly bring up the markers and health of all enemies in view, including ones that would otherwide be to far away to have a marker visible on them. To add to this pressing alt occasionaly on areas far away that seem empty may spot someone who you would otherwise not see.

Combat Tips

As the spinfusor, the most used weapon in combat, has a large splash radius too it, it is best to stay off the ground and away from walls when you know an enemy is about to fire their spinfusor at you to avoid the splash. Also if you can force the enemy into a corner or otherwise near a wall you can use that to get some easy damage on them without having to otherwide go for a midair.

One of the games most recognisable features is its voice command system, named "Voice Game System" or VGS for short.

Accessing VGS

It isn't actually made all that clear how to use the system by the game so here is how:

"V" will open the menu, and from there the most common ones used would be the global commands which are accesed by pressing "G" afterwards.

Learning VGS

VGS is something you will naturally pick up over time, but if you want to practice there is a soundboard with all the commands on that follows the same keybinds as the game here:

https://ragbinder.deviantart.com/art/VGS-soundboard-288692906

Otherwide just remember that the letters infront of the words in chat is the key press sequence used.

I hope these tips will be of some help to new players getting into the game and give a leg up on other players. The games community is undoubtably very small, but the one that is here is very loyal to the game and plays a lot, so any other questions you may have feel free to ask in game or on the subreddit and myself and I'm sure many others will be happy to answer and help out.

Have Fun, Go Fast and Keep on Shazbotting!

Note:

If anyone has any other tweaks or tips they think should be added to the guide let me know either here on steam or in game (in game name "Loomy-Narty")