Tribes: Ascend has never been extremely popular, but it always had a decently-sized core of extremely loyal players, which at one point included me. Unfortunately, through a series of poor decisions Hi-Rez Studios managed to not just run the game in to the ground, but pierce the Earth's core as well. Eventually the developers were pulled from the project and Tribes: Ascend slowly faded in to obscurity, with only a faint echo of "SHAZBOT!" in the distance to remind people of its existence.

Until rather recently when Hi-Rez Studios decided to do right by their fans and bring new life new life in to Tribes: Ascend in the form of an absolutely titanic update. They also promised that would be only the first in a series of updates, and judging by the large patch that appeared on Steam a few hours ago, I would say that they did not disappoint. Here are the patch notes:

Gameplay:

• Hellfire is now available to play for CTF and Blitz and has been added to all appropriate server map rotations.

• Votekick percentage increased to 45%, up from 35%

• Changed votekick message to include player who initiated the votekick.

• "Vote by [votekick_starter]: kick [kickable_player]?"

• Ammo pickups now yield the same 400 hp heal on all armor types when

- Light - Heals for 400 HP, up from 300.

- Medium - Heals for 400 hp, down from 462.

- Heavy - Heals for 400 hp, down from 520.

• Blueshift has been removed from map rotations by community request. This map will still be available to play on custom servers.

Equipment Changes:

- All rapid fire weapons have had RNG based spread completed removed in favor for precise shots based on player skill only.

• The following weapons have had their damage falloff values adjusted to 80% damage at range. This is to normalize the falloff between other similar weapons.

- Falcon

- NJ4

- X1 LMG 

• Saber Launcher

- May now fire without locking a target. This will result a dumbfire missile with no tracking ability, similar to the old Titan Launcher.

• Tracking Missile

- Target vehicle is locked with the same previous method and timing

- Damage increased to 1350, up from 1200

- Impulsed increased to 85000, up from 80000

- Range increased to 360, up from 220

• Dumbfire Missile

- Impulsed increased to 85000, up from 80000

- Range increased to 360, up from 220

- Damage set to 370

- Direct impact damage multiplier set to 2.0

- Impulse set to 85000

- Range set to 300

- Speed set to 3000

- Inheritance set to 50%

- Size set to 15

• Mortar Launcher

- Mortar direct impact timer increased to 0.75 seconds, up from 0.5 seconds.

- When hitting a vehicle the shorter timer is now used.

- Damage lowered to 1300, down from 1400.

- Direct hit bonus increased to 1.154, up from 1.0. Now deals 1500 damage on direct impact.

- Minimum damage decreased to 600 damage at max range.

• Thrown Disks

- Decreased damage to 350, down from 600.

- Increased direct hit multiplier to 2.0, up from 1.5. Now deals 700 damage on direct impact.

• Heavy weapons impulse reduction

• The following weapons have had their impulse values reduced to 85,000 down from 90,000.

- Heavy Spinfusor

- Heavy Bolt Launcher

- Heavy Blinksfusor

• Plasma Gun

- Fire interval reduced to 0.5, down from 0.6

- Damage reduced to 270, down from 280.

• NJ5 returns to Medium armor.

- Fire interval set to 0.2

- Damage set to 150

- Falls off to 80% damage at at max range of 6000.

• Impact Nitron

- Increased radius to 400, up from 350.

• Shocklance

- Damage increased to 600, up from 500.

- No longer drains energy for up to 250 bonus damage.

- Damage dealt from behind remains at 2x.

- Removed impulse given to hit target.

• Fixed a long standing issue where beams from sniper rifles would not connect with a target when successfully hit at long distances.

• Fixed an issue preventing players from equipping a repair tool at a repair station when they have the ELF gun equipped.

• Fixed an issue where the Flak Cannon / EFG would not reload at various stages in its clip.

• Fixed an issue where the Flak Cannon / EFG would award multiple kills on a single target. 

Vehicles:

• Vehicle ejection speeds have been increased.

• Light ejects at 50% vehicle speed, up from 40%

• Medium ejects at 40% vehicle speed, up from 35%

• GravCycle

- Health reduced to 1400, down from 2200.

• Shrike

- Health reduced to 1400, down from 2800

- Energy regeneration per second reduced to 10, down from 20

- Reduced impulse from weapon to 2500, down from 10,000

- Explosion radius reduced to 200, down from 250

• Fixed an issue where many projectiles were being killed on direct impact with a vehicle and not dealing damage to them, especially while stationary.

Misc:

• Additional network optimizations to improve performance.

• Tweaked load balancing logic to try and keep players on the same physical server between map transitions.

• Lowered minimum mip settings to allow players to adjust their INI settings for extremely low texture resolutions.

• Fixed an issue where the weapon HUD would turn back on after match completed even though it had been disabled.

• Fixed an issue where the laser targeter target location wasn’t being properly set while in 3rd person camera mode.

Update 1.3 is available both through Steam and the in-game launcher, so put on your space-skis and start going fast!