FreeSpace Port ReCharged Dev Log 08: Capital Ship Weapons
- Iain 'Sessile_Nomad' Baker
- 10 hours ago
- 5 min read
Welcome back, friends. In the last post, we saw how I ensured bombers remained a credible threat to warships even after rapid-firing Point Defence Cannons were introduced. This time, we will investigate how I improved the combat between warships. Let's dive in.
Capital Ship Combat in Vanilla FreeSpace One and Two
Warship-on-warship combat in FS1 tended to be underwhelming, with ships trading shots at close range with their slow, visually unimpressive ‘blob’ turrets to little effect. Bombers were definitely the main threat, and the warships themselves were little more than navigation hazards. (With one exception, but I won’t spoil the surprise.)
Warship vs Warship Combat Vanilla FreeSpace One
FS2 flipped that script by introducing beam weapons. These were more powerful than FS1's ‘blobs’ - in some cases by an order of mag. Think the difference between IRL conventional explosives and nukes. Capship beams were now the primary threat, and capital ship duals could be over in moments.
Warship vs Warship Combat Vanilla FreeSapce 2
NB - the Warship AI in FS is a bit dumb. Normally, the mission planner would choreograph their movements in advance. But in the demonstration above I let them 'off the leash', with predictable results ;-)
The main task of a fighter pilot in these engagements would be ‘defanging’ enemy warships by taking out their beam turrets, ideally before they could fire. Thankfully, most anti-warship beams had a long wind-up and cool-down timer and thus fired infrequently. The player would often need to make a mad dash to destroy these turrets before they could shoot, or between volleys.
This created moments of do-or-die action that got the adrenaline pumping, but once the beams were defanged, the warship became little more than a navigation hazard again, which wasn't ideal.
Bringing out the Big Guns
I wanted to bring some of that nail-biting do-or-die action to warship combat in FS1, while keeping the later introduction of beams in FS2 a major development in both lore and gameplay.
Ideally, I wanted beams to supplement the weapons that came before them rather than replace them. Therefore, they would need to complement each other for when I get around to 'ReCharging' FreeSpace 2.
I wanted them to add variety to the gameplay and mitigate the ‘defanged warships become navigation hazards’ trope.
After a little 'brain sweat' - and seeking inspiration from other campaigns such as the criminally underrated Exile - I developed a clear multi-pronged idea of how to do this.
An Orion Capital ship faces off against multiple smaller warships
Firstly, I made the large ‘blob’ weapons effective anti-warship artillery, worthy of the size of the turrets they were mounted on. Compared to the later beams, they were less powerful, but were longer ranged, had a higher rate of fire, and some large ships might mount five or so of them - on triple mounts like some WW2 battleships.
To aid recognition (and eye candy), I added trails to all anti-warship projectiles. That way, the player will know that these will not target them or their wingmates, but the player and their wingmates had better target THEM pronto if they want to save any friendly capital ships in range.
It would become all too easy for the player to hug their friendly warships and wait for the enemy to come to them, so I also introduced several weapons and gameplay mechanics that would force the player to be active and aggressive in their play styles if they want to keep their warship charges safe. One such mechanic was capitalships firing torpedoes.
VLS Missiles
My first introduction to the VLS (Vertically Launched Missile) concept was those mounted atop the Vaygr Battlecruisers from Homeworld 2. They looked cool as hell, and I fell in love with them. Seeing videos of their IRL counterparts did little to dampen my enthusiasm, so I just had to have them in-game.
There was a slight problem, however - FreeSpace doesn’t have them natively, so to add them, I would have to get a little creative…
Or I would have done, if it were not for other creators having had similar ideas in the past, who had already worked out how to do it. So, all this cheeky little 'Sessile_Nomad' need do was copy their homework. Success!
These capital ship-launched torps needed to be balanced against the PDCs, much like the bombers discussed previously.
After much experimenting - and fine-tuning - this equation too was balanced. As suspected, fast-moving swarm torps were the solution.
These became among the game's most powerful weapons. They possessed a very long effective range, so any vessel armed with them would be a threat from across the ‘map’. However, they were unlikely to get through to their target from such a distance since the ‘intercept window’ would be quite lengthy, giving the player, their AI wingmates, and PDC screens plenty of chances to shoot them down.
However, they became increasingly dangerous as the distance decreased, since the intercept window becomes ever shorter. Rest assured, the player will be plenty busy intercepting warheads before they land on foreheads.
Since the number of anti-warship weapons on most craft had now increased, it takes longer to disarm them than their beam-armed FS2 counterparts, which alleviated the “becomes a mere navigation hazard” issue.
That’s all for this week, folks. In the next week will see these weapons in action as we look at the largest battles of all - fleet actions. See you all there.
Previous dev log posts
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
Nomad’s Reviews now has a YouTube Channel - Nomad's Reviews Plays.
Comments