FreeSpace Trivia

Quirks

• The "Apollo" pictured in the FS1 introduction cutscene is actually a modified version of the in-game Apollo. According to the FS1 reference bible, the Apollo in the intro cutscene is a "Terran bomber". Its gun mounts are slightly different and off-center, among other changes. Perhaps Volition placed the Apollo's gun mounts closer to the centerline for the sake of playability. The Manticore, too, has different fire points (mounted on the twin "booms" instead of centered like they are in the game).
• If you look carefully, you can see a (apparently dead) copilot in the intro's Apollo-bomber.
• In The Place of Chariots, the mission where you encounter the NTF Boadicea, Volition made complicated use of SEXPs to ensure that the Boadicea never appears when the player is looking directly at it. If the player turns toward the area where the Boadicea appears and never turns away, the mission will never progress.
• There are only two canon references to ground warfare in Freespace. If the player wins the first mission in FS2, he is told that 600,000 ground troops are sent to invade Cygnus Prime. Also, there is an FS1 multi mission where the player attacks an HoL marine convoy.
• The Myrmidon fighter is able to carry Helios anti-matter bombs.
• The Aten destroyed before the mission in La Ruota Della Fortuna is designated HLC Maltusa
• The BFGreen is only used once in the game (during High Noon and only on one of the Colossus' turrets).
• You can target your own bomb using the target-object-in-reticle key. Your target display will show video from the bomb's seeker.
• It's FreeSpace, not Freespace (notice the capitalization of the S)
• FreeSpace 1 is called Descent: FreeSpace due to copyright issues with the disk compression utility FreeSpace
• In FS1 Cutscene 'Hallfight,' the captured Shivan vessel is called 'Freighter,' but it's actually an Azrael transport.
• Sentry 04 in 'Place of Chariots' is assigned the cargo "Unable To Scan"
• The TC-TRI cargo containers carried by Capricorn wing in "The Romans Blunder" are friendly.
• The GTI Ganymede is never used in the main FS2 campaign, although it appears in a multiplayer dogfight.
• FS1 command brief and tech room .anis normally had readable text. Almost all FS2 .anis, however, have some kind of nonsense text. The Collossus cutscene has several blocks of text, all of them starting with "Math is cool." The Meson Bomb command brief animation reads like an advertisement (Guaranteed to blow anything up...).
• The GTM Infyrno is a deliberate misspelling of Inferno, for copyright reasons.
• The TTC 1 tech container does not appear at all in either the FS1 or Silent Threat campaigns. A few of them appear in ...But Hate the Traitor, during the FS2 campaign. It also appears in the FS2 cutscene "Colossus".
• Almost every radio message in FS2, other than training messages, is accompanied by a head animation. Several radio messages in FS1, however, don't have a head animation. None of the freighter's messages in FS1 have one, and there are two instances of "Command" not having an animation. In Eve of Destruction, if the Orff is destroyed, Command speaks without a head .ani. Also, in Paving the Way, Admiral Wolf's messages have no head .ani. In the FS2 mission Mystery of the Trinity, when the Trinity reaches critical damage, a pilot speaks without a head .ani. This is due to a bug with the personas.
• The only squadron leader or admiral that the player ever sees is Admiral Wolf. Admiral Wolf (Alpha 1's commander on the Galatea) appears once, in a cutscene.
• The mission name 'Exodus' appears in all three Volition single-player campaigns (The Main FreeSpace Campaign, Silent Threat, and FreeSpace 2).
• The mission names 'The Great Hunt' and 'Clash of the Titans' (with/without II on the end) appear in both FS1 and FS2.
• The ship name Andromeda was used for three Vasudan ships and one Terran ship: the PVFR Andromeda in The Hammer and the Anvil, the PVC Andromeda in The Pursuit, the GTSC Andromeda in On The Run, and the GVC Andromeda in a command briefing in Surrender, Belisarius!.
• The "unmanned" PVS Scarab has a dead Vasudan in its debris.
• In Love the Treason..., the jump node to Regulus is named "Regulas".
• If you fire bombs into certain fighterbays, such as the Arcadia's, your bombs will fly in circles until they run out of fuel and explode.
• FS1 had a DVD, which had afterburner trails and planet bitmaps.

Design Changes

This category includes both early development decisions that were later changed, and interesting changes between FS1 and FS2.

• According to a table file in FS2, Silent Threat had another weapon known as the "GTM-84 Corkscrew Missle", and was "deemed too wacky for final release."
• Despite what the training missions say, support ships never run out of secondary weapons.
• FS1 originally had a Fenris/Leviathan cruiser named the Juggernath.
• The Prometheus was orignally introduced at much earlier time (sometime around The Big Bang).
• The mission First Strike originally had an asteroid field.
• FS1 originally used planet bitmaps as backgrounds like in FS2.
• If you export the Artemis/Ares/Nephtys/Ptah/Sekhmet POF to COB, you can see that the main object is called "herca", suggesting that they were either based on or were early concepts for the Hercules Mk II.
• The Bakha bomber was originally a fighter.
• Shivan ships were originally green in color.
• The SD Demon increased in hull strength 60% between FS1 and FS2, from 100,000 to 160,000 hitpoints. This may be meant to compensate for its weaker broadside relative to the Orion (otherwise the Shivans would have no decent destroyer except Sathanas).
• The Volition website [1] states that FS1 had a 50 point penalty for rearming (62.5 points on Insane). This feature was removed in FS2.

Renamings

• Hostile Vasudan wings were originally called "Steel", "Brass", "Iron", etc.
• Shivan wings were originally called "Cobra", "Viper", "Hornet", etc.
• The Cyclops bomb was originally named Belial.
• The Harpoon missile was originally named Crossbow.
• The Subach HL-7 laser was originally named Subach HL-33.
• The Subach HL-7 laser and Mekhu HL-7 laser were originally named Sidearm.
• The Akheton SDG laser was originally named Scalpel. It was also originally named Akheton DR-2.
• The Avenger laser was originally named Phalanx.
• The ML-16 laser was originally named Light Laser.
• The Harbinger was originally called the Mag-Pulse.
• The Interceptor was originally called the Shrike.
• The Prometheus was originally called the Flux.
• The Phoenix V was originally called the Angelfire.
• The Synaptic was originally called the Cluster.
• The MX-50 was originally called the Rockeye.
• The Rockeye was originally called the Wasp.
• The Lamprey was originally called the Shrieker.
• The Hornet was originally called the Swarm.
• The Maxim was originally called the Newton.
• The Morning Star was originally called the Mace.
• The Hornet was originally called the Bombardier
• NTF wings were originally called "Corsair", etc.
• Admiral Khafre's name was originally Admiral Hepsut
• The GTD Aquitaine was originally named the GTD Intrepid.
• The GTD Galatea was originally named the ITA Repulse.
• The SJ Sathanas was originally named Apocalypse.
• The GTFr Chronos was originally named Boar.
• The GVF Tauret was originally named Crab.
• The SF Dragon was originally named Mosquito.
• The Avenger Prototype was originally named Mass Driver Prototype.
• Shivan wings were also originally named "Scab Alpha", "Scab Beta", etc.

Canon inconsistencies: Retail FS2 box

Several canon inconsistencies are present on the retail FS2 box (although these inconsistencies are not generally accepted as canon themselves):

• The Lucifer is visible just at the right of the first Deimos's top turret.
• Beam weapons can be used also by fighters, according to the blurb on the back ("Learn to use beam weapons...").
• The Deimos is a destroyer (the nameplate on the corvette says "..D Deimos").
• The Deimos is also an AWACS ship (on the backside of the box there is written "GTA Deimos).
• The Deimos has complex multipart turrets that are not present in the game, or even possible under the game engine.
• The Deimos's turrets are not firing Terran Turrets. Instead they are firing Kayser like lasers.

Canon inconsistencies: Colossus cutscene

The Colossus cutscene contains quite a few inconsistencies with the main game.

• The Ganymede in the cutscene is several times bigger than normal.
• The Lucifer is smaller than normal.
• The Chronos freighters have two turrets (as opposed to the usual one), and the turrets look different.
• The Chronos freighters were either much smaller or the TTC 1 cargo much bigger.
• Mirfak is named Mirfax.
• The Galatea appears in the Colossus fleet.