Jetpack

Lore & Background

In the Tribes universe, combat is conducted by small, mobile units of soldiers deployed across alien worlds with extreme vertical terrain—canyons, cliffs, floating rock formations, and dense jungle canopies. The jetpack is standard-issue military hardware, a compact thruster unit mounted to the back that converts stored energy into sustained upward thrust. Every soldier, regardless of their loadout or faction, relies on it the way a ground soldier in a conventional army relies on their boots: it is the baseline of mobility.

The design philosophy behind the jetpack in the Tribes games is that no single piece of ground terrain should be permanently safe. A player who clings to a high ridge is only as safe as their jetpack fuel; an opponent can always boost up, barrel-roll around the corner, and appear directly overhead. This creates a constant spatial tension that flat-ground shooters simply cannot replicate. The jetpack is what makes a cliff face a contested position rather than a free vantage point.

Across the franchise, the jetpack's power management has been a central tuning lever. In Tribes 2, the system was refined so that fuel drains during sustained flight and boost, recharges when the player is on solid ground, and supports discrete maneuvers like a barrel roll that briefly reorients the player mid-air. The result is a movement vocabulary—hover, boost, drop, roll—that players internalize as naturally as walking and jumping in any other game.

Reader's Guide

Jetpacks are a gameplay feature in Tribes: Ascend, allowing players to gain vertical mobility. They are part of the class-based loadout system, where each loadout specifies armor type, weapons, items, belt items, and a pack. The game features three armor weights: light, medium, and heavy, with three loadouts per weight group.

Did You Know?

• The game entered open beta on February 22, 2012 and was officially released on April 12, 2012.
• After the Out Of The Blue update in December 2015, all monetization features such as paid classes, experience boosters, and weapons were removed or made free of charge.