What is Speed Cap in Tribes: Ascend

[penelope]

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Ok during the Alpha player doesn’t had any option to speed cap on any movement type although after alpha I have found lot of "Heavy Flag Capping” and this problem where all player able to accomplish same high speeds in Heavy Armor as they could within Light Armor. I just saw a video showing off that the speed is in fact capped at a certain point and that cap changes for each class. I'm hoping this is only for that alpha build (as they were showing it off in PAX and what-not. Those people didn't really need nor did they know how to get that fast in the 1st place). If it isn't I wish I could cancel my pre-order. I always liked Tribes for the fact that the skill ceiling is so high up there, almost no limit. But the more I look into the deep Gameplay the more I’m disappointed. Honestly this is something I feel like should be removed. I might not be a "vet" of Tribes, but I can see how this would ruin a lot of the game and not reward people who take time to learn good routes and how to properly ski. Not to mention how if you’re not the "right" class and someone takes your flag, with the speed cap we don't have no chance to catch opposition player.

[VazV]

I don't think there should be a coded cap in the game either. a players maximum speed should be limited by their individual skill and the height of the available hills around them. Yes I’m sure we could get up to 300, 400+ in broadside, eventually, but it's harder along with this we also need to turn eventually, and that will inevitably rob you of some energy. Not to mention that once we have hit the 300, 400 range your point of aim for DJing changes since you're starting to move so fast that unless you lead properly, you're out of DJ range of the disc by the time it hits the ground... either way it become progressively harder to add momentum. i think the fastest i ever got going was somewhere around 600, which probably would have taken me across a map the scale of katabolic in 3-4 seconds... and forget about turning in a reasonable amount of time to make a flag grab. This is I think ok because this game made some maps where speed cap are very useful for all player.

[Orochimaru]

First of all I like this game very much and, if the cap is so high that it's impossible to hit, then it doesn't really matter. But from what I've heard, it seems that maximum speed is one of the ways they are planning to "balance" the classes. Not just the armors, but the individual classes. Now, that could be untrue, and I definitely hope for this system. As I know speed cap functions as a soft cap on horizontal speed in the sense that although you can temporarily be pushed above the cap by a disc or whatever, the game then drags you back down to the speed your class is supposed to be going at. Pathfinder gets capped at 200 horizontally, Soldier at 180. Keep in mind the Speedo in the game reads absolute speed, not horizontal speed, so you can easily be falling out of the sky at an absolute speed of 280+, without being over the cap. Although values are so low in the current build that you easily hit them when skiing into any half decent hill, so without any of this custom map malarkey you will be limited by the soft cap on normal maps doing simple routes. At the moment, this means there is no advantage to finding a big difficult route that gets massive height and lands on a huge bloody mountain - you end up coming off it at the same speed as any other half decent route. You also aren't penalized heavily for adjusting with jets during the fall landing. You'll take falling damage, but you still end up coming out of the slope at softcap.

[Chakradevroy]

Yes I agree with the above post because the speed cap definitely looks like the way the Unreal engine is handling certain physics. Each class probably has a mass setting, which would have different outcome on the surface friction. Somewhat the greater the mass the more inertia type effect you would encounter. Air resistance would also impact this. Lighter objects, in this case, light armor movement would be greater impacted by air resistance than the heavy armor. Assuming that the players mass varies accordingly. I don't believe there is any actual soft cap set, per se, but rather the energy being applied is not overcoming any surface or air resistance. The only energy here is either the players built up momentum or any horizontal impulse that the jet may have. These game engines have extremely complex and accurate physics in them these days, this is how actually implemented soft caps. However in my experience with the Crysis engine, we had similar experiences with engine physics involving air resistance and surface friction. This wasn't viewed as an issue though.

[AlisaDsa]

I really have no idea why you would have a speed cap per class. It just... feels wrong. Not only do you now have a subset of classes with restricted mobility due to weapon limitations, you now have classes that are just plain faster than others with nothing you can do about it. I know the Hi-Rez decided to bring the overall speed of the game down while making it easier to attain "moderate" speeds. This makes the mouthbreathers feel like they're actually doing well, when in fact, they're only doing well because the rest of the players are so restricted that any difference in skill doesn't matter.

[Enos]

During Alpha devs saw a lot of "Heavy Flag Capping"; We saw it as a problem that players were easily able to achieve the same high speeds in Heavy Armor as they could within Light Armor. There was not enough player skill requirement to achieve those high speeds with Heavy. And not enough differentiation in movement/speed/control between Light and Heavy. Devs implemented Speed Caps per class. And received a lot of community feedback and suggestions on alternate ways to solve the problem - mostly around changing physics variables related to air-control and acceleration per armor type. In latest patch we have tweaked physics around falling, skiing, and jetpacking. And we have given Light, Medium, and Heavy armors different flight characteristics at high speeds. But without any actual speed cap.