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Comment by Argorak | Hacker News Reader

The interesting thing about the weapons was that most were rather slow-moving and projectile speeds were very important. So motion prediction was far more important than for modern shooters.

Shooting someone out of the air with a rocket launcher was a feat.

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Shock combos were an especially fun one. You had to predict where someone would be and get a shock ball (probably the slowest projectile in the game) near them, then shoot the ball out of the air with a scan-hit beam to blow it up.

I'm really excited to see what they're doing here.

Right. My favourite stunt with the shock rifle was shooting a ball straight or down, then jumping over an obstacle and then hitting the ball to kill another player. Very impressive to look at, but actually doable with a bit of training.

I hope they include the impact-hammer + teleporter puck combo. It was SO FUN blasting that puck across the map then teleporting to it, not to mention trying to defend against such a move with the shock combo.

I loved that move, teleport behind someone and then shock ball them whilst they try to figure out where you are whilst getting the hell out of the way since they;re anticipating you attacking them.

One reason I loved the original Tribes game where the main weapons were slow moving like the spinfusor and grenade launchers.

That, coupled with the high mobility (Jetpacks!) of the players lead to real duels that could last a while.

Phew, I spent far too many hours on Katabatic. :)

Tribes is a great game favoring mechanics over realism.

Such an amazing game and the modding community was huge.

I played PB_mod from 00-04'.

This is true for Quake 3 Arena too. Mid-air rocket shots is impressive to pull off and are dominantly portrayed in frag videos like Annihilation.

Yep, though Q3 sported more very fast moving or instant hit weapons (Shotgun, Plasma, Minigun, BFG, Railgun). On the other hand, Q3 also had faster player movement speeds, making hits even with fast weapons an exercise in tracking.

I still love playing Q3 as well, especially because of the driving soundtrack ;).

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