At the bottom of this drop a player must land on a slope which will convert the downward momentum into horizontal speed. Generally, skiing involves starting with a large drop to build up speed from gravity. While the basics of skiing are easy to learn, using the technique to accelerate to high speeds can take a lot of practice. 'Any fool can slide down a hill.' Quote from in-game training. The game also had a training mission explaining how to ski for new players. Many maps were designed with skiing in mind, containing large rounding hills perfect for practicing.

When Tribes 2 was released, skiing had been incorporated as an actual feature in the game. Eventually, use of these methods became commonplace on Tribes servers and Skiing was born. Used with Tribes' jetpacks which allowed them to fly, players could now travel across maps faster than they could with vehicles. Meanwhile, other players had already been using the spinfusor's explosive knockback to accelerate themselves. Some players believed that including 'crouch' commands improved their speed, made them harder to hit, or just looked funny. These scripts became a necessity to download alongside the game, or code yourself. Players used the in game client side scripting language and greatly improved the efficency by automating the 'jump' command, sending it hundreds of times a second. When this technique was first used, it was widely believed that players were cheating somehow. Early on, the players learned that if you spam the jump button while on the side of a steep hill, the game's physics would propel you down the hill and allow you to fly extremely fast across the map. Many of the maps were large even compared to those in Tribes: Ascend, leading to fairly slow attacks on enemy bases. At that time, players had jetpacks to move around the map, but had to run or use a vehicle to travel long distances. Skiing dates back to the beta of the original game in the franchise Starsiege: Tribes. Used in concert with the jetpack, skiing can allow players to cross even large maps in seconds, leading to Tribes: Ascend's claim to the title 'World's Fastest Shooter'. It involves using the slopes on a map to quickly accelerate and move around more quickly. Skiing is an essential feature of the Tribes franchise that sets it apart from other games.

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