[Androgeos Exeunt]

I stopped 13 years ago, and I can't remember a single thing except for Big Bird, Elmo, the Cookie Monster and the vampire, whatever his name is.

[ssmit132]

The Vampire? That's the Count, if I recall correctly. (Goober once had him as his Avatar).

EDIT: Something that's perfectly all right to show Goober, however (and I bet he's already seen it, but meh).

An admin on a forum this troper frequents managed to (at least temporarily) fool Xbox 360 News.com into thinking that the theoretical Freespace 3 would be on the Xbox. The forum has acknowledged this as his simultaneous Crowning Moment Of Awesome and Crowning Moment Of Funny. Read the full story here. The fact that it was a bona fide accident just served to make it that much more awesome.

*ssmit132 wonders who added that*

[Goober5000]

Hahaha, awesome.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FreeSpace

Seriously, I shall declare "lolwut".

[Dilmah G]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FreeSpace

Seriously, I shall declare "lolwut".

...wtf-moment

[Androgeos Exeunt]

It gets worse, Dilmah. Here...

Averted in the space combat game Freespace 2. One mission ends when a destroyer of the rebellious Neo-Terran Front desperately attempts to ram the Alliance's new Colossus juggernaut. You have to try to disable or destroy it before it can impact. If you don't... well, it basically just goes splat against the aptly-named Colossus anyway, so it's no big deal.

    * One mission in the "Just Another Day" parody series of missions had fun with this. A destroyer "blockades" a jump node by sitting right next to it so incoming ships will ram it and blow themselves up before they can steer away from it. After one hilarious example, another ship jumps out in a different vector, avoiding the destroyer completely, leading its commander to ask, "Can they do that?"

Averted in the space sim Freespace 2. Fighters hit in the relevant spots can take damage to a subsystem (communication, targeting, etc.) or lose one without exploding. Capital ships having many such spots, they can have all their subsystems disabled, their engines stopped and all their turrets stripped away by weak lasers fired by a single fighter also armed with patience.

    * Doubly averted in that capital ships, even on their last HP, will not fall to anything short of an asteroid impact or an anti-capital beam or torpedo. This also means that while a torpedo-less lone fighter can entirely disable a capital ship, it can never finish it off.

#  Freespace 2 has this with the Shivans, who blew up a sun, apparently just because they could.

Descent: Freespace allows you to pick a callsign, but avoids this problem completely by making you an AFGNCAAP and having everybody treat you like a Red Shirt. Command addresses you as "pilot", or by your wing designation "Alpha 1". Vasudans just call you "Terran". Your squadron leader in Freespace 2 greets you on your first briefing with "Welcome to Vega, Ensign..." (even if you've been promoted and was starting the campaign over).

The Descent: Freespace series tries so hard to avert this. The first game had art in the manual with a huge alien capital ship, with an encircled dot labeled "this is you" (and it really is that scale). You're not given a name - Command calls you "pilot" or by your wing designation "Alpha 1," just like all the other Red Shirt pilots. During in-game briefings, you're constantly updated to the status of other squadrons on missions which you aren't actively involved in. In some missions, one squad will be assigned to take on a task that you can witness being done, but aren't actively involved in. You don't even need to complete most of the secondary objectives either, so it's not like the storyline pretends that you're Superman or anything - instead you get a message saying 8,000 lives were lost and there wasn't much you could do (you do get the occasional medal if you manage to do the job).

    * However, where the AI comes in, the trope does, too. Limitations in the AI creates a situation where Alpha 1 and his wing becomes a One Squad Army. Your squad can rearm, the enemies can't. You can customise your wing's armaments for the specific mission, while the enemies will jump in with the default weapons (unless they're an "Elite" squadron). You can reassign wings under your control to different tasks, depending on the mission, but the enemies only perform orders as scripted by the mission designer. As a result, while Alpha Wing is able to take out three squadrons, five cruisers, or two destroyers (or ALL of those), the enemy needs to send five waves of bombers just to get the ship you're defending down to 70%. Command can pretend all they want that you're just another Red Shirt, you're fighting a battle all by yourself this side of the star system!
    * Then again, by the end of the game, Command is repeatedly sending you off on missions that seem incredibly silly on paper, like defending a constantly jumping in convoy over several kilometers of space with only three other squads for backup. You may still be just a pilot, but your mission objectives tend to match your capital ship kill record.

The Descent: Freespace series gives you the option to skip any mission by dying three times in a row (but not by failing the mission objectives). However, any ships or weapons that may be unlocked by completing that mission becomes Lost Forever. There's also a "Do Not Show This Again" option for the more hardcore players.

The main menu for each Freespace space sim is a mock-up of the inside of the carrier the player character is stationed on. To play a mission, click on the ready room doors. The atmospheric impact well makes up for the fact that changing carriers in the plot means that the player won't even know where the exit button is.

* Androgeos Exeunt nods his head sa(va)gely.

Crucial stuff.

[ssmit132]

Ironically, the 'Ramming Always Works' example they have is probably a case where ramming would work if it was realistic.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

At least TV Tropes seems pretty up to date with all the stuff going about. In their Units Not To Scale article, they mentioned the SH Gargant.

[Lucika]

At least TV Tropes seems pretty up to date with all the stuff going about. In their Units Not To Scale article, they mentioned the SH Gargant.

This TV Tropes is about criticizing FS?

[Androgeos Exeunt]

No. They just like to point out "tricks of the trade of writing fiction".

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage

[Charismatic]

HE was on sesame street?

Correction, It*.

And i didnt find that slimey goober thing very funny.

[Goober5000]

The original Silent Threat has now been supplanted by a (extremely well-done) fan-made revision of the entire thing called Silent Threat: Reborn, which keeps the storyline largely intact while adding enough to it to make it good, and has pretty much unanimously been declared superior to the original product, thus pulling the story out of Dis Continuity.

Awesome.

[GTSVA]

The original Silent Threat has now been supplanted by a (extremely well-done) fan-made revision of the entire thing called Silent Threat: Reborn, which keeps the storyline largely intact while adding enough to it to make it good, and has pretty much unanimously been declared superior to the original product, thus pulling the story out of Dis Continuity.

Awesome.

I read that...somewhere...WHERE??

[Androgeos Exeunt]

#  Dis Continuity (Silent Threat.)

    * The original Silent Threat has now been supplanted by a (extremely well-done) fan-made revision of the entire thing called Silent Threat: Reborn, which keeps the storyline largely intact while adding enough to it to make it good, and has pretty much unanimously been declared superior to the original product, thus pulling the story out of Dis Continuity.

That site contains a lot of interesting stuff. I spent the best part of two hours last night with twenty tabs open to twenty different pages on that site.

[Dark Hunter]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FreeSpace

Seriously, I shall declare "lolwut".

If it's about the "FreeSpace" capitilization, it's written that way for convenience: tvtropes assumes that any word with a capital letter in the middle of it is an article (and if it isn't, it'll create said article). Therefore, typing "FreeSpace" provides an automatic link to that page.

There is a workaround: typing "{{Freespace}}" links to the same article, but that takes slightly more effort. It does, interestingly, correct the capitilization in the title when one views the page through that type of link.

EDIT: If you're wondering, I did not create the Freespace article on that site, although I have edited and added to it a couple of times. Glad you like my mention of ST:R, Goob.

And, you know, if you guys think there are factual errors, tvtropes is a wiki, so any of you can go and correct them if they bug you that much.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

I edited it half a day ago so that the text body should theoretically be free from any capitalisation errors. I don't know how to change the title, however, nor do I know how to make a new article.

[Goober5000]

EDIT: If you're wondering, I did not create the Freespace article on that site, although I have edited and added to it a couple of times. Glad you like my mention of ST:R, Goob.

Yes indeedy.  Now what I want to know is whether TVTropes would tolerate HLPeople making an article about ST:R.

[Dark Hunter]

Articles about fan fiction (or sort of "half-canon" as ST:R is, what with the original Silent Threat being canon and all) are indeed allowed.

There Is No Such Thing As Notability, after all.

[NGTM-1R]

EDIT: If you're wondering, I did not create the Freespace article on that site, although I have edited and added to it a couple of times. Glad you like my mention of ST:R, Goob.

Yes indeedy.  Now what I want to know is whether TVTropes would tolerate HLPeople making an article about ST:R.

Some people complain, but they're idiots. Well. Sometimes.

But yeah, while not quite as balls-out awesome as some of the other fanfiction on the site, if Thousand Shinji could get an entry, STR should.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

And since I don't know what in the Hell is Thousand Shinji, I assume it to be "yes".