Ok I gotta know something...

Shiv

How do people start from a near dead stop and suddenly increase at speeds that would make light look slow?

It's happened several times and I'm not sure exactly what they're doing. And I don't think it's lag either.

I'll see someone, start skiing towards them, and they'll be walking or even standing still, suddenly they just fly off in a blue flash.

Obviously it involves the spinfusor, so I figured they're trading damage for speed (rocket jumping basically), but half the time the person won't even be hurt after performing the maneuver, so I'm not sure exactly how they're using the spinfusor to jump start them if not for the splash damage effect.

But it must be very effective because even with my head start of skiing/jetting they'll out distance me.

thebeaz

Some games had the "rocket jump" before "jumping" was even a feature of the engine. Marathon had the "grenade" jump to get to secret areas all throughout the game (though I was incapable of properly doing them way back then).

And holy shit... after I typed this I looked for "rocket jump" on Wikipedia and it says that Marathon had the first vertical grenade jump. That was a lucky guess That's kind of funny.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_jump

Unless you were joking then I missed it.

kamishizuka

I sort of miss the dumbfire rocket launcher from T1. Made heavies a little more maneuverable.

Alviss

Shield pack.

Tarzul

That blue flash would be the spinfusor. If they aren't taking any damage, they're using a shield pack. Try it yourself, suit up with a shield pack, turn it on, shoot the ground opposite the direction you want to go, turn it off right away.

Blakhart

What mod were you playing?

Shiv

Classic. And from what I understand, everything moves balls-to-the-wall fast on classic anyhow but still, these guys were zipping off into the sunset faster than I've ever seen.

teratos

In Classic it is pretty easy to cruise around 100kph with no jets/no heat on most maps. With a disc and some jets you can be going up around 180kph even if you're new to T2:Classic.

Scouts can be going considerably faster, and of course, the more experienced players go unbelievably fast.

NOTE: I mostly just HO these days, and I'm pretty slow.

Tasogie

When your mid fielding an a capper gets through, many of the fielders in base would spin round back to the target disk jump spin round an your goin balls out after em from a standing start, trick is at that  point most fielders have used their health up an are in no shape to rumble. But its fast, instant, an if you do it right a good chaser will obliterate you.

As a heavy my fav was Mine/Mortar jump to start my HO run, in T1 I would boost it to ultra-high altitude an come down almost vertical on the target (with the scripts I had I could drop everything that possibly went bang on target before I hit the ground an died....Most HO in AusTWL used this tactic. (2 or 3 HO together, was called Carpet bombing since there was nothing left standing after this hehe.