FreeSpace Port ReCharged Dev Log 12: Think Fast!
- Iain 'Sessile_Nomad' Baker
- Jan 18
- 4 min read
In the last post, we investigated how I jury-rigged deployable Rally Points into FreeSpace Port Recharged (FSPR). These enabled the player to manage the movements of their wingmates and any pet warships they had available.
Now we will see what else I have implemented to aid the player in fighting smarter rather than harder.
The RTS Influence
You may have noticed that I have mentioned Real Time Strategy (RTS) games and the Homeworld franchise several times now. This is no accident.
I'm quite a fan of both the RTS and Real-Time Tactics (RTT) genres, and I am deliberately attempting to incorporate some of their design philosophies into FreeSpace.
Particular influences have been the first and/or first-person RTS hybrid games, such as Hostile Waters: Anteaus Rising, Uprising: Join or Die, and Battlezone 98 Redux.
There are, of course, practical limits to what mechanics can be implemented, so think of FSPR as a hybrid Space Combat Sim and RTT-Lite.
Pilot Cognitive Overload
Overcoming FSPR’s unforgiving difficulty curve demands the player make effective use of their most potent weapons - their wingmates. This may involve a degree of micromanagement, or ‘micro’ as it is often known in RTS games.
However, this runs the risk of subjecting the player to ‘pilot cognitive overload’. This is a common problem with campaigns that call for the player to manage wingmen while simultaneously dogfighting to avoid being shot.
There simply ends up being too many things to pay attention to at once, and the player's mental workload exceeds their mental capacity.
The IRL solution to this would be a two-person crew: a pilot to fly the craft, and a Co-pilot to handle other tasks. Alternatively, the bigger picture would be overseen by senior officers back at base, leaving the pilot free to concentrate on flying.
Cognitive Easing
So how could I expect the player to micromanage wingmates, call out targets for capital ships, and dogfight themselves without overloading the player?
In many RTS games, the solution to this is the ‘tactical pause’ or ‘pause-ordering’ as I call it. This controversial mechanic involves the action pausing while you give orders, then unpausing to have your digital minions carry them out.
This should work for FSPR too; however, there was a slight problem - natively, FSO has no such facility. Thankfully, there was a solution - the legends in the FreeSpace Modding community had created one.
TactiComms script demonstration by EatThePath
NB - This isn't FSPR, but it demonstrates the mechanic perfectly
Video by Dr Dan Bell
So I added it. I even ‘canonised’ it by giving it an in-universe explanation. To stop it from becoming overpowered, it doesn’t stop time completely; it just slows it down, so the player still needs to act quickly, and abusing it risks in-game death.
This helped a great deal by ensuring the player would not become overwhelmed in regular play.
Further Assistance
To further aid the player in maintaining situational awareness, community-created HUD icon addons were implemented as standard. These can be toggled on and off at will to ensure the player doesn’t suffer from information overload.
To further aid the player, I added additional in-mission speech to explain what’s going on at key events.
But by far the most important thing to consider is mission design. All the tricks described above would be for nought if the mission is designed so that the player must juggle too many things at once, or is expected to be in two places at the same time.
Thankfully, FS1’s relatively simplistic mission design avoided these pitfalls, and I was very careful not to introduce any.
That’s all for this week, folks. Next time, we will discover why all these additions were needed. 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.
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