Tribes 2/Weapons/Spinfusor

The spinfusor, or disc launcher as it was called in Tribes 1, is far and away the most popular weapon in the game. In many mods, the spinfusor appears among the weapons with which you spawn. The spinfusor fires disc-shaped projectiles in a straight line that explode on impact. In most mods, it has a reload time of about two seconds, and does enough damage to handily kill a light armor in two shots. Almost every player in the game uses a spinfusor in every one of their loadouts, as it is a very effective weapon at taking out enemies and can be used effectively at both close and medium range against targets both on the ground and sometimes in the air.

Usage

The spinfusor is one of the most versatile weapons in the game, along with the chaingun.

Dueling

It can be used in duels with great efficiency. If you shoot the ground that your opponent is landing on (known as a groundshot), you'll deal a large amount of damage. The projectile is very accurate and explodes on impact at any range, so with practice you can easily hit groundshots on targets anywhere in your vicinity. It can also be used handily on targets in the air. The projectile moves fast enough that it is hard to dodge even at medium range, and the explosion will knock your target off course, and sometimes propel him into the ground hard enough to kill him instantly. The chaingun is usually always a better option if your opponent is in the air, but many players will disregard that fact and use discs anyway.

Mid-airs

Many players pride themselves on being able to hit their opponent with a disc in mid-air (known simply as a mid-air or MA). The game type LakRabbit, along with a few of its predecessors, is one of the more popular game types in the game, where the way to earn points is by hitting players in mid-air. While most mid-airs occur at close and medium ranges, it's also possible to hit them at long range with a combination of luck and good prediction skills. Many players have made movies of themselves composed entirely of hitting long-range mid-airs and other mildly impressive feats. When you look at it objectively, though, the ability to hit mid-airs is rather over-rated in competitive games, because it's extremely unlikely that you will be able to kill someone faster in the air with discs than you could if you practiced with the chaingun instead. However, there are admittedly some emergency situations where the spinfusor is the better choice.

Spamming

Another common use of the spinfusor is long-range spamming. Any stationary target is susceptible to spinfusor spam. The most common targets are spider clamp turrets, landspike turrets, and deployable stations. Most base equipment is too heavily shielded to be effectively destroyed by a single disc spammer, but two people disc spamming at once can blow up almost anything very quickly. On some maps with outside inventory stations, disc spam can be used to both destroy inventories and keep the other team from repairing them.

Mine-disc

In Classic, the ability to destroy mines with discs before they are deployed was added. This feature was originally present in Tribes 1, but was removed in Tribes 2 and wasn't seen again until Classic was made. If you throw a mine at something and then shoot it with a disc, both the disc and the mine will blow up, dealing and incredible amount of damage. You can kill a light armor from full health in one shot with a mine-disc. Mine-discing makes any close-range disc shot deal almost twice as much damage and can be used in combination with any of the close-range tactics mentioned above.

Disc-jump

A disc-jump is the act of shooting a disc at your feet while you are skiing. The general idea here is to give yourself a great boost in speed at the cost of health. Disc-jumping does not work well in every mod. In Base, the gameplay has been slowed too much, and the disc kickback strength is too low for disc-jumping to be at all affective. In Classic, however, disc-jumping will give you an incredible boost in speed and is a tactic used by every player in many different situations. Some of the more common uses are a capper disc-jumping while on a route in order to cap the flag faster, a defensive flag chaser disc-jumping to catch up with an enemy capper, and heavy offense disc-jumping to gain speed or altitude to get into the enemy base faster.

Technical info

	Base	Classic	Version2
Damage	0.5	0.5	0.5
Blast Radius	7.5	7.5	6.5
Reload time (seconds)	1.75	1.75	1.38
Project speed (dry/wet)	90 / 50	95 / 55	90 / 80
Projectile lifetime (ms)	5000	5000	5024
Inherent velocity factor	0.5	0.75	1.0
Kickback strength	1750	2000	2850
Ammo (Light/Medium/Heavy)	15 / 15 / 15	15 / 15 / 15	15 / 15 / 15