FreeSpace Port Recharged Dev Log 05: Missiles Inbound!
- Iain 'Sessile_Nomad' Baker
- Oct 26
- 3 min read
Welcome back, friends!
In the last dev log post, we looked at how I upped the ante with FreeSpace's guns. Now we will investigate how I did likewise for some of FreeSpace's other weapons.
The next thing to tackle was how missiles, rockets, and bombs behave in the game. In the original version, only certain missiles - specifically those labelled as ‘bombs’ - could actually be targeted and shot down. These were the big, slow-moving missiles that bombers would launch at warships, and it was up to the player to intercept them before they hit their mark.
All the other missiles? Untouchable. Even if you managed to hit them with a stray shot, they’d just keep on going.
To be fair to Volition, when the game was first made in the late 1990s, shooting down missiles in real life was pretty rare, so the design made sense at the time.
(You may remember the purportedly lacklustre performance of Patriot missiles when it came to intercepting Iraqi scuds back in the 1991 Gulf War.)
Current Events
However, more recent events, such as the rocket attacks against Israel, the war in Ukraine, and the missile and drone attacks on shipping in the Red Sea by the Houthis, have demonstrated that the situation has changed. Indeed, intercepting missiles in flight with other missiles, guns, and even lasers has become commonplace.
Since times have changed, and the expectations for in-game realism and excitement along with them, I decided it was time for an upgrade!
So, I decided to shake things up and make every missile, rocket, and bomb in the game targetable and destroyable. Suddenly, the gameplay felt a lot more dynamic! It was especially fun to see the AI start shooting down missiles that were heading for their wingmates. This little change added a whole new layer of excitement and strategy to every battle.
Tilting the Balance
To keep things exciting, I wanted these weapons to still feel like a real threat. So, I made them much faster than before! Now, you can technically shoot them down, but you’ve only got a second or two to react. 'Twitchy' reflexes are needed here, and this adds some nail-biting, high-risk, high-reward moments to the gameplay.
The increased speed did make things a bit trickier, though - it became much harder to dodge these missiles if you weren’t actively trying to shoot them down! My solution? I made countermeasures more effective against them.
This worked… maybe a little too well! Suddenly, missiles didn’t feel like much of a threat again.
Fix one issue, create another. Such is life…
Striking the Balance
To balance things out, I decided to make each missile much more powerful if it actually hit you, and I gave everything a blast radius. Threat restored 😊
This also solved another annoyance I had with the original game: missiles fired at the player just weren’t that dangerous. With full shields, you could shrug off a missile strike pretty easily on most difficulty levels.
In contrast, I remember playing Wing Commander back in the early 1990s on my Amiga 500 (and later Amiga 1200). In that game, if you heard the dreaded ‘missile locked on you’ tone, it was brown trousers time, because missiles fired at you in that game were far deadlier than gunfire, and eating one would leave you severely damaged or just plain dead.
So now FreeSpace had this too. I was a happy boi - even if my underwear bill increased exponentially 😜
That’s all for this week, folks. Next time, we will channel our inner 'The Expanse' and talk about PDCs - Point Defence Cannons! See you all there.
Links to previous posts in the FreeSpacePort ReCharged Dev Log
Iain is a 40+ author and gamer from England, who started his gaming journey on the Atari 2600 36(ish) years ago. His specialities include obscure cult classics, retro games, mods and fan remakes. He hates all sports games and is allergic to online multiplayer. Since he is British, his body is about 60% tea. He can be reached via email at nomadsreviews@gmail.com
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