Sandbox

Home Ship

The ship the player is based on for a large portion of the campaign. The Home Ship is often a character unto itself, although the degree to which this is true varies from campaign to campaign; in some campaigns the Home Ship doesn't have a very large role to play at all, but in others it plays is a central part of the plot. When done well, the player can become attached to his Home Ship. This attachment can be spectacularly exploited by a Doomsday Mission (a related trope), in which the Home Ship is destroyed with the intention of eliciting an emotional response from the player.

Sometimes, a single campaign can have more than one Home Ship (as was the case in the retail campaigns). Note that simply being the ship the player is based on does not make the ship a Home Ship. A Home Ship usually has to be memorable and have some importance to the plot. Likewise, a ship that the player is not technically based on, but still plays a large part in the campaign, could be considered this.

• The GTD Galatea and the GTD Bastion are the retail examples from FreeSpace 1, although they don't play extremely large roles in the campaign itself.
  • Silent Threat had the GTD Krios, but due to the bad writing of this installment, no real attachment could be made with it before its utterly heart-rending destruction.
• The GTD Aquitaine, and to a lesser extent the GVD Psamtik are the retail examples from FreeSpace 2. They play quite large roles in several missions; they usually have to be defended.
• The Trope Codifier is likely the MCv Custodian from Homesick, which plays a huge role in the plot and appears in many missions.
• Silent Threat: Reborn had the GTD Krios, done in a much more effective way than the original.
• Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius had the GTD Orestes; the GTD Temeraire also qualifies on virtue of it being an extremely central character. The Vishnan Sacred Keeper doesn't exactly qualify.
  • Blue Planet: War in Heaven had the UEFg Indus, in a particularly good example. The UED Solaris also technically qualifies, but no emotional attachment whatsoever is really elicited to it (so it doesn't count).
• The Procyon Insurgency had the GVD Sekham.
• Inferno: Release 1 had the GTCa Independence.
  • Inferno: Alliance had the MD Leander (for the first half of the campaign) and the MD Auriga (for the second half).
• Twilight had the GTD Morrgain.
• Although the player was not based on both, Awakenings had the GTD Iowa and GTD Moscow.
• Phantoms had an interesting canon-expansion example of the GTD Amadeus.
• Although the player is never technically based on either of them, Derelict's GTC Lone Wolf and GTFf Cypher also could be said to be examples.

Doomsday Mission

Named after the Doomsday mission from FreeSpace 1. A Doomsday Mission is when the player's Home Ship is destroyed in an attempt to invoke an emotional response from the player. Depending on how well the campaign is written, this can either be an extremely effective way to increase the gravity of the situation, or just be a gratuitous opportunity to blow up something big.

This usually occurs around halfway through the campaign, and the player is reassigned to a new Home Ship. However, there are many other alternative ways that this is done.

Naturally, there are going to be A LOT OF SPOILERS for this trope.

• The Trope Namer is, obviously, Doomsday, from the original campaign.
• Straight, No Chaser from FreeSpace 2.
  • Although not really a Home Ship death, Their Finest Hour could also qualify.
• Subverted in Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius - Curse of Prescience/Proving Grounds, which was actually a dream sequence.
  • Delenda Est from Blue Planet: War in Heaven, however, was played horribly, horribly straight.
• The destruction of the Leander from Inferno: Alliance.
• The MCv Custodian's death from Homesick.
• One particularly effective example was the last mission of The Procyon Insurgency: After surviving almost the whole campaign, the Sekham meets its sad, untimely end.

Return to Sol

Exactly what it says on the tin. The GTVA returns to Sol after it was cut off from Sol. Expect things to end badly. Sometimes, the actual return to Sol is not shown, but the aftermath of it is.

This trope is a common plot point in larger-scope campaigns, for the simple reason that it is heavily implied that, had FreeSpace 3 been made, a return to Sol would have been a large plot point, making this the logical place to go next for big campaigns. Many different versions of this trope exist.

• The Trope Codifier is definitely Inferno: Release 1 - The GTVA returns to Sol only to be forced into a civil war with the expansionist Earth Alliance.
• Blue Planet (obviously).
  • Interestingly, Blue Planet actually contains two different versions of this trope, the standard civil war permutation (albeit slightly subverted), and one involving Shivans and inter-dimensional beings.
• The aptly-named Return to Sol campaign.

Welcome to the Boonies

This is when the player is assigned to an apparently unimportant backwater system which becomes an extremely important area over the course of the campaign. Welcome to the Boonies campaigns are usually Post-Capella campaigns, but they don't need to be to qualify.

These campaigns are often inspired by the immaculate atmosphere of the Trope Namer and Trope Codifier Derelict, which is often seen as a landmark campaign.

• Derelict - the Trope Codifier and Trope Namer (the first mission of Derelict was called Welcome to the Boonies. The player is assigned to the backwater Tau Sigma system, which, over the course of the campaign, becomes the site of rampant piracy, widespread civil unrest, violent corporate espionage and eventually, the staging point of a Third Shivan Incursion.
• The Aeos Affair is a slightly different example, being released before Derelict - Although set in a backwater system, it did not include many of the elements commonly associated with a Welcome to the Boonies campaign and is considered to be a classic in its own right.
• Deep Blood
• Second Front
• Renegade Ressurgence (ostensibly)