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Freelancer is a space simulation computer game developed by Digital Anvil and published by Microsoft in March 2003 for Microsoft Windows. The primary distinguishing feature of the game is that it does not end when the last in-game mission is completed. At that time the player has only explored a small part of the game universe, and is then free to continue to explore the rest of the region.

Background

The Exodus

A war between two major factions, the Coalition and the Alliance, has been waged in the Earth's solar system for decades (see Starlancer for the video game based on this conflict). Eventually, the Coalition gains the upper hand and the Alliance, sensing defeat, builds a group of five colony ships in secret. Each ship represents one of the major members in The Alliance: the Kusari (Japan), the Rheinland (Germany), the Liberty (America), the Bretonia (Britain), and the Hispania (Spain). Fortunately, all five escape the Coalition blockade and head toward the Sirius sector carrying thousands of colonists. The original introductory video to the game, which was not included in the finished product, implies that Earth was destroyed by an alien power not long after the Exodus.

The sleeper ships arrive at different times, in different locations. The Sirius Sector is a region of space with many star system surrounded by four distinct landmarks. In the 'north' is the gas, oxygen, and hydrogen rich Crow Nebula. In the 'south' is the volatile, yet mineral rich Walker Nebula. To the 'west' is the rocky Barrier, a massive and long asteroid-filled region rich in useful metals. And finally, to the 'east' is the mysterious Edge Nebula.

Liberty

Of the five sleeper ships, the Liberty arrives first. This allowed the colonists to choose a centralized location with a mix of resources and habitable worlds.

In time, Liberty became the most powerful House militarily because of the size of their navy (even though in-game their ships are actually the weakest), and developed the lowest crime rate. (This can also be explained from a story progression. Liberty corporations Ageira Technologies and Deep Space Engineering discovered ancient alien artefacts, and from them, developed the underlying technology behind Jump Gates and Trade Lanes, to which they hold exclusive rights.)

Rheinland

Arriving after the Liberty, the Rheinland selected the region adjacent to the Walker Nebula for its resources, specifically diamonds.

In time, Rheinland grew to have the second most powerful navy (although in fact with the strongest mainstream ships in the game), with a corresponding crime/terrorism rate. However, after the 80 Year War with the Gas Miners Guild, Rheinland's economy collapsed and the fleet was reduced to one battleship.

Kusari

The Kusari arrived next, and selected the region near the Crow Nebula. Much to the surprise of the colonists (who were hoping for planets with considerable landmass), the bulk of the planets in the area were very similar to their old lands: little land, abundant water. This was a blessing in disguise, however, as the Kusari quickly created businesses to farm seafood and hydrogen gas.

Kusari has the least powerful navy (although second strongest mainstream military) because of the lack of metals in the region; almost all metal used in Kusari is imported from Bretonia or Rheinland.

Bretonia

Bretonia arrived a full 20 years after the Liberty, due to the fact that the starboard engine was disabled during the Exodus. Bretonia chose a region in the Barrier because of the abundance of useable metal.

Bretonia has a slightly smaller navy (the third strongest in game) than Rheinland, but is the most economically powerful House. For example, Bretonia was the first House to pay off the debts incurred by building the Jump Gates and Trade Lanes.

Bretonia retains the royal family and aristocracy that the current United Kingdom supports, along with corresponding grievances such as the independence of Dublin and severe pollution of entire systems by industrial waste.

Hispania

En route to the Sirius Sector, the Hispania suffered major damage. Some suspected a Coalition spy, but nothing was confirmed. As a result of internal fractioning, half of the colonists decided to abandon the wreckage by the use of the Hispania's shuttles. The descendants of these colonists became the Corsairs.

Those that decided to take their chances with the drifting wreck arrived in a system with a habitable planet. The Hispania was unable to take the colonists to the planet, and therefore they used the escape pods to land. These became the Outcasts.

While both the Corsairs and Outcasts have since evolved into powerful criminal empires, it is interesting to note that these two factions are bitter enemies, despite (or, perhaps because of) their common ancestry: both factions believe the other group was the one responsible for the damage to the Hispania.

The game takes place 800 years after the Sirius system has been settled. The Alliance is almost a forgotten concept and the four houses of Liberty, Rheinland, Bretonia, and Kusari bicker while piracy runs rampant.

Gameplay universe

The Sirius Sector contains 43 star systems divided into several political regions: Liberty, Bretonia, Kusari, Rheinland, the Independent Worlds, the Border Worlds, and the mysterious Edge Worlds.

Each system contains a diverse mix of planets (many of which can be landed upon), space stations, Trade Lanes (for rapid travel within systems), asteroid and debris fields, dust and ice clouds, and many other stellar miscellany. Many of the planets and systems are named after places on Earth. For instance, the capital of Liberty is named Manhattan, and the system Manhattan inhabits is known as New York. This is presumably because the colonists do not want to forget just what caused them to have to abandon their home in the first place. (This is supported by the intro movie: "We have grown, we have prospered, we have flourished. But we will never forget..."). Other notable planets include New Berlin (capital of Rheinland), Crete (home planet of the Corsairs), Houston, Leeds (a polluted planet), New London (capital of Bretonia), Pittsburgh (a desert planet with mines), Stuttgart and New Tokyo (capital of Kusari).

Travel within each system is fairly simple – there are many ways to get around over long distances. The first is using the cruise engines, powerful engines that propel the player at fairly high speed at the cost of the ability to use weaponry. The second is using Trade Lanes, high-velocity shipping lanes that propel a ship at extreme speeds. The disadvantage to this is that pirates always know where the player is in a Trade Lane, as Trade Lanes are static, unlike the usually random courses that cruise engines are used for. A pirate group can disable a Trade Lane ring segment in front of the player, dumping the ship out of the channel and back to realspace, where they begin to attack, hoping to steal any items in the player's cargo hold. The third is Jump Gates and Jump Holes. A Jump Gate or Jump Hole is the only way to move from one system to another. Jump Gates are normally found near Trade Lanes, while Jump Holes are usually hidden a good distance away, inside an asteroid field or something of the like, mainly used by criminals. Jump Gates are man-made technology, while Jump Holes are a natural phenomenon, similar to a wormhole.

Liberty Space is in the center of the Sector and is the "safest" area to be in as the local villains don't have ships with any great firepower. Life gets harder as the player travels farther from Liberty; wandering into one of the border systems in a basic ship or with basic weaponry is a certain way to get the player character killed very quickly. The rough level of difficulty, in order from least dangerous to most dangerous, is as follows: Liberty, Bretonia, Kusari, Independent Worlds, Rheinland, Border Worlds, Edge Worlds.

Playing the game

There are two distinct game environments; either the player is in space or landed on a planet or station.

The space environment is visually rich, with star backgrounds created from sources such as images from the Hubble Space Telescope. The space around the player is populated with planets, stations, clouds of various types, Trade Lane rings and many other objects. Computer-generated ships (police and other patrols, cargo convoys and so on) move around. The space around many planets is a hive of activity. The environment is rendered very realistically (within the rules of the game universe that is). The player can switch between various viewpoints.

In space, the player is in control of a ship and is presumably trying to get from one place to another without that ship being destroyed. Control is through a mouse and keyboard; the game does not support a joystick interface. Maximum speed in normal flight is 80 m/s but a thruster can also be used to boost the speed to 200 m/s for short periods ("Kill Engine" allows the player to drift at high speed, while forward, backward and side Thrusters allow the player to stay at KE). In cruise mode the speed increases to 300 m/s but in this mode the weapons are disabled. (Any ship in cruise mode is usually difficult to hit but special "cruise disruptor" missiles, the Wasp and the Hornet, are available on the market.) Trade Lanes allow a player to move across a system very quickly (around 5 km/s). Ships have four flight modes - free flight, go to (a kind of autopilot that will fly a ship to a selected point avoiding obstacles), dock (used to land on planets and stations and to travel along Trade Lanes and through Jump Gates), and formation (in which a player can join a convoy and travel under their control).

While landed, a player can trade weapons and ammunition, commodities and even buy a new ship. Players can also visit the bar to pick up gossip or have their reputation "hacked" (more on this later) or select a mission from the job board to pick up a little money.

There are several ways to make a living. A ship can be flown to take on missions from the job board to gain money, or the player can move cargo around, buying low and selling high. Asteroid fields can also be mined by firing on the smallest asteroids, garnering commodities to sell. However, mining takes great amounts of time to fill even a fighter's cargo hold, and it is really quite boring to shoot at rocks for hours on end.

Single-player

The player character is Edison Trent, a recent arrival on Liberty after the space station he was on (Freeport 7 in the Sigma-17 system) was destroyed by unidentified attackers. At this point the player has no ship and little money, as Trent invested a large sum of credits on a deal with Sam Lonnigan, a Samura representative whom promised one million credis for one ton of Boron, He was rescued from the station but sustained critical injury.

From this point the player must play through a series of missions which will take him or her through a story of political intrigue and a secret alien invasion, intermixed with fast-paced battles. After arriving on Manhattan, the player is left with nothing but 500 credits and the decision to go to the bar. Once there, the player meets Jun'ko Zane, a Liberty Security Force officer who needs a freelancer. She offers the player a basic used ship and some credits in return for escorting a shipment of food and medical supplies from Fort Bush to Pittsburgh. Upon accepting, the player's new ship will be moved to the launch pad, and it can be launched to space.

Upon launching, the player meets up with the mission CO, Michael King, another LSF agent. While the player is heading for the Trade Lane, the Rheinland cruiser RNC Donau, carrying Admiral Schultsky, who is heading to a high-level meeting with President Jacobi over the strained tensions between Rheinland and Liberty, is preparing to dock at Newark Station, one of the two stations around Manhattan. Suddenly, Newark picks up several unknown contacts: five strange heavy fighters are heading straight for the Donau. Newark warns them to stand down, or they will open fire, but the enemy contacts refuse. Before Newark, the Donau, or any fighter can shoot, the hostile contacts launch several salvos of powerful missiles, which destroy the Donau. There are no survivors. After this, the player and King are dropped into the middle of the battle, and King tells the player to help the fighters around Manhattan take the enemy down. Once the last fighter is destroyed, King learns that the planetary defense grid was off-line; this is how the fighters got so close to Manhattan without being detected earlier. The player and King continue on to Fort Bush, where they successfully escort two transports to Pittsburgh. On the way, they are attacked by pirates. Once they are fought off and Pittsburgh is reached, it is revealed that the convoy was a ruse to draw pirates out of hiding. It has confirmed what the LSF has suspected: the pirates have a base close by, because they would never attack something as big as a transport too far from a base.

Once the player gets repairs and outfits his or her ship, he or she launches once more, and links up with a squad of LSF fighters. The player begins a search pattern, but has barely begun when Prison Ship XT-19, in orbit around Maine (Pittsburgh's moon), comes under attack. King immediately diverts course with Epsilon wing and the player to help. The ship is nearly destroyed by the time help arrives. Once the group of attacking Rogues are successfully fought off, King and the player resume their search pattern and receive another mayday, this time from another LSF patrol: Beta Wing. Upon helping the crippled fighter, the player learns that his group was exploring a particle cloud when they came under extreme fire. Beta 4 supplies the coordinates, where the enemy base is discovered. The player is required to take out two missile platforms to clear the way for the torpedo bombers. Once this is done, Delta Wing comes in and destroys the base with torpedoes, and the freelancer's first mission is completed.

The player is much different from how he or she was when he or she was first deposited on Manhattan: Now owning a ship, a small reservoir of credits, and some experience, the player has taken his or her first steps into the game. Between missions the player is free to explore, take on jobs, trade cargo and so on until his or her net worth reaches a certain level.

In the next segment, the player captures an artifact smuggler, escorts another convoy to a research station, finds Lonnigan, who seems to have gone insane and ultimately gets sedated by a security team, answers a mayday from said research station, and Jun'ko eventually reveals that people around her are disappearing. Arrests have quadrupled within the LSF. Jun'ko says she will try to find out more. After a while, the player returns to Manhattan to find Lonnigan, who holds Trent at gunpoint and warns him to get out of Liberty before running off.

When the player meet up with Jun'ko again, a thief has handed Trent a strange alien artifact and was subsequently shot; the shooter, an LSF officer, holds Trent at gunpoint. The LSF officer tells Jun'ko that his orders are to kill all artifact smugglers on sight, which Jun'ko cannot believe, as that is against Trent's rights and the LSF officer's duties. The LSF officer then turns on Jun'ko and attempts to fire, but Jun'ko is faster and comes out of the showdown alive, unlike the now-deceased LSF officer. Jun'ko says that Liberty isn't safe for the both her and Trent anymore, as murder is a capital offense and she doubts the government will believe them when they say it was self-defense. They launch to space but are intercepted by what seems to be the entirety of New York's navy contingent. Just as the player and Jun'ko are about to lose hope, Walker, a cruiser captain met earlier, and King, destroy one of the battleships and allow the player to escape. Trent is on the run from Liberty for some time, running from base to base until reaching Bretonia, where Trent meets up with an old friend, Tobias.

In the search to find out just what the artifact is, the player finds Sinclair, the assistant to a Xenoarchaeologist, Quintaine. She cannot analyze the artifact without Quintaine's help. Upon finding him, the player is intercepted by Rheinlanders and forced to abandon Leeds with the artifact, Jun'ko, Sinclair, and Quintaine himself. More base-hopping ensues as the player runs from his or her pursuers and eventually ends up in Kusari. Trent falls in with the Blood Dragons, a pirate group determined to restore their honor and return control of Kusari to its rightful owners; them. The player retrieves the Proteus Tome, an alien scroll required to analyze the artifact from Kusari Governor Tekagi, who has been mind-controlled by the Nomads and has a remote planetoid in the very remote system, Tohoku, which only one Jump Hole leads to from Chugoku. The player finds out that the Chancellor that was attacked to get it has been infected by a creature called a Nomad, who have the ability to possess humans and give them super-strength and abilities. The Nomads had already possessed leaders or key authorities in each system, so there is little hope left at this point. It is revealed that the terrorist organization, the Order, who destroyed the Donau, was actually a group founded to protect the colonies from Nomads. The Nomads plan to infiltrate the colonies and have them go to war with one another until the colonies are weakened enough for the Nomads to take over. Rheinland has been almost completely infected by Nomads: the Order knew that the meeting with Jacobi and Schultsky was only a way to infect the president of Liberty. This is why they destroyed the Donau.

Trent then travels to Rheinland to extract an Order operative named Herr von Claussen. While in Rheinland, Trent aids von Claussen in destroying several Nomad battleships being built by Rheinland. As they flee Rheinland, they are intercepted by a Rheinland battleship. Luckily, an Order battleship, the "Osiris" decloaks and provides Trent and von Claussen with enough cover to land on the ship. After landing, Trent meets with Jun'ko, King, and the leader of the Order, a former Liberty operative named Kaspar Orillion.

Trent joins the Order and battles the Nomads for some time, gaining a Nomad power cell needed to activate the artifact. Sinclair and Quintaine made a discovery: the artifact is actually a star map of the empire of the alien Dom'Kavosh. Their empire stretched to many galaxies and had Hypergates, which are very powerful Jump Gates that can send any ship instantaneously to another galaxy. Gaining a plan, Trent and the Order stage an attack on the Nomad home station in an Unknown System, where they discover a Nomad city. The artifact, in Trent's possession, starts making a shield-like barrier around his ship. He goes near the city, and the Hypergate is activated. The Nomads are unable to take the transfer of power from them to the Hypergate, and are sucked in, devoid of engine power to resist. They are not gone; they have merely been sent to another galaxy. The Order vows to watch the hypergate to make sure they never return.

When the player meets up with Jun'ko again on Manhattan three weeks later, he or she is once again a freelancer without a care in the world - for now. They both end up receiving the Lone Star award upon their arrival.

After this last mission the player are free to explore all the other systems in Sirius space with no limitations on what can be done. The player is free to take on missions, become a trader, a pirate, a smuggler, or a hero, and do as he or she pleases. The game never truly ends.

Multiplayer

To play in this mode, a player must connect to a server (the server program is installed with the game so that one can play on a LAN). A program called Freelancer Mod Manager has a server admin with it, allowing the server to run mods.

There are a few basic differences between multiplayer and single player modes:

  • When saving a game in single-player, the game is stored locally. In multiplayer a character, ship, location and so on are saved on the server when a player disconnects.

  • In multiplayer, new characters normally start on Planet Manhattan in Liberty Space with a basic spaceship. The single-player missions are not available.

  • Certain Jump Gates, Holes and other features in the single player game do not exist in the multiplayer game.

  • If a character is killed in a multiplayer game, the player can restart on the last planet or base he or she landed on. The player normally loses any cargo and unattached equipment that he or she may have been carrying.

Ships and equipment

There are many ships to choose from. There are two basic types: fighters and freighters. Fighters are further subdivided into Light Fighters, Heavy Fighters and Very Heavy Fighters. Fighters have better armor, can have various weapons mounted and are easier to control in a fight. The largest fighters can carry 70 units of cargo. Freighters are much more sluggish to control but can mount turret weapons. Freighters can carry up to 275 units of cargo.

Ships can be equipped with a shield and a thruster. These are optional and can be upgraded, but the player would be foolish to take to space without both of these items. The shield protects the hull from weapons fire but each hit knocks the shield capacity down; if the shield is disabled, weapons will cause damage to the hull until the shields regenerate - this usually takes about twenty seconds. The shield regenerates over time. Shield batteries, which can be bought when landed and often tractored in from destroyed ships, can be used to recharge the shield instantly. Similarly, hull damage can be repaired using "nanobots", which again can be bought.

The thruster gives ships a "turbo-boost" to a top speed of 200m/s for a short period of time. There are four types of thrusters, only differing in the amount of thrust time. Like the shield, the thruster regenerates over a period of a minute or so.

In addition to guns and turrets, the player can also mount missile and torpedo launchers, countermeasure and mine droppers and a cruise disruptor, a specialized high-speed missile designed to temporarily disable an enemy's cruise-mode engine. All weapons and shields are separated by classes 1 through 10. Most Liberty Ships hold up to class 3 weapons while the Edge World fighters hold up to class 10.

There are also various wrecks in space. These range from having commodities such as diamonds to having unique weapons. Depending on if the game is modded, wrecks can be added or taken away. Asgard, for example, has wrecks of battleships.

Character status

Character status is based on "worth" - the sum of the value of a player's ship, weapons, cargo and cash reserves. As a player's worth reaches certain thresholds, the character level goes up. Higher-level characters are able to buy more powerful ships. The highest level attainable in single player is thirty-eight (38), while some multiplayer modifications can extend this to eighty-nine (89). This level usually means more than $950,000,000.00 worth.

Factions and reputation

As one progresses, he or she will meet other characters, each of whom belong to one faction or another. There are dozens of factions; the police and armed forces on one side, the criminal factions such as the Outcasts and the Corsairs on the other, and many commercial entities such as Bretonia Mining and Metals and the Gas Miner's Guild.

How these factions treat a player depends on the player's reputation with them. They may be friendly, neutral or hostile on a sliding scale. Neutral factions may scan a player's ship and order him or her to give up cargo or fight for it. Hostile factions won't bother scanning or warning - they'll attack. Friendly factions will leave the player alone and (if the player's reputation is good enough) may help out in a fight. Players can't land on enemy bases/planets and may not be able to buy certain high-powered weapons unless their reputation with the seller is good enough.

Reputation with any faction changes every time a player interacts with another character. If a player destroys a Corsair fighter, his or her reputation with the Corsairs will suffer. Attack their enemies and it will improve again.

Factions are interlinked and have allies and enemies. Destroying an Outcast ship affects a player's reputation with the Outcasts, of course, but also makes enemies of their allies, the Liberty Rogues. At the same time the player's reputation with the Liberty Police will improve.

Reputation hacking is something that a player can often do in bars on planets and stations. For a fee (a bribe, really), a player can have his or her reputation with one faction or another improved; this usually incurs a slight reduction in reputation with some other factions.

Some factions, such as the Blood Dragons, play an integral part in the game's storyline. Blood Dragons, who are descendants from royal guards that protected a deposed shogunate, operate in a hollowed-out asteroid called Kyoto base. Towards the latter stages of the game, they assist Edison Trent in dealing with the Nomad threat.

Strange physics

The trade-offs involved in making a space simulation game that is actually playable has resulted in a set of physical rules that are completely at odds with the "real" world.

Planets and star systems are represented as being much closer to one another than the vast distances that separate them in the real world.

Almost every space object, be it planet, star, fort, or Jump Gate, lies on the same plane (notable exceptions are the binary star at the center of the Tau-37 system, and a jump hole in the New York system that is used an a single-player mission). Some new mods have attempted to move the plane of some objects.

The scale of the game is also completely distorted. For example, the atmospheres of planets are only about 200 meters thick, and planets are generally less than one kilometer in diameter. Space stations share the same problem, sometimes being so small that they should only be able to house one person. However, if one makes the assumption that the M and K distance measures do not actually mean metres and kilometres respectivly, but rather (for example) M=Kilometers and K=1000 Kilometres, this would help resolve the scale issue.

For the most part this need not detract from enjoyment of the game. After all, if the physics were too much like the real world, it would take years to fly from one planet to another, not minutes, unless spaceship speeds were increased so drastically that space combat would become less interesting. Certainly aircraft-style dogfighting is extremely difficult and frustrating using Newtonian physical models, which is why they have been largely absent in space combat simulators since their introduction in Elite II. There are however similar games, like EVE Online or the Independence War series, that feature realistic interplanetary distances.

Trade Lanes

Trade Lanes are a network of satellites that allow for fast travel within the confines of a star system, allowing the player to cross the game space within seconds, instead of having to traverse the area using the comparatively slow "cruise speed."

Trade Lanes are susceptible to being disrupted by concentrated weapons fire aimed at the satellites, although the Trade Lane rings themselves seem to be immune to damage. When attacking a Trade Lane, The Game uses the weapons shield damage rating. When the Trade Lane is interrupted, any ships in transit that enter that section of the lane instantly decelerate to normal speeds. In addition, they are generally required to fend off the attacking pirates who caused the disruption until the Lane establishes itself again, at which point they can escape.

Trade Lane rings are equipped with light turret weaponry designed to assist any friendly vessels that are ambushed in this fashion.

Awards

  • E3 1999 Game Critics Awards: Best of Show, Best PC Game, Best Simulation Game, Outstanding Achievement in Graphics

Related games

Many people have noted similarities between Freelancer and a much older game, Elite, which was available for the BBC microcomputer in the early 1980s, as well as its two sequels, Fronter: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters (particularly the bulletin boards at each base where the player can find jobs to carry out). There are also similarities with Freespace and Freespace 2 (in fact, one source shows a screenshot an alternative design of the Freelancer flight displays in which the layout is very similar to that of Freespace), and Beyond the Frontier and its sequels. The forthcoming Darkstar One has many striking similarities to Freelancer as well.

Most notably, Freelancer was designed as the spiritual successor to Wing Commander: Privateer. It also has close ties with another Digital Anvil game, Starlancer.

Modifications

Freelancer supports a thriving modding community, mainly due to the fact that almost all of the architecture of the in-game universe (solar systems, economy, factions, etc.) is contained within editable .INI files. Many mods have been released, from simple mods adding ships or changing speeds to total conversions like FreeWorlds (a Star Wars total conversion) to The Next Generation (a complete retooling of the Freelancer universe, not associated with Star Trek). One of the most popular modding sites for Freelancer is The Lancer's Reactor, which contains most mods ever created for Freelancer, as well as a wealth of tutorials and utilites for creating mods.

Some examples of Freelancer mods are:

Similar games

External links

2003 computer and video games | Science fiction computer and video games | Simulation computer and video games | Windows games

Freelancer | Microsoft Freelancer | Freelancer | Freelancer

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Freelancer (computer game)".

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