Militarized Freelancer Ships

[Korolia]

Before starting this topic, allow me to ask you; what is Freelancer style?
It's something I've wondered years ago when I first started to work on a FL server development team (That would be, really, really back then, when we didn't had to use all these fancy tricks to get a server working...)

Well, my answer to this fundamental question;
Freelancer is all about stereotypes. What we have here is a flight simulator with our actual nations, but put in the future. To make everything recognizable, the developers of Freelancer introduced us with ships that reminded us of obvious cultural references of each nations they represent, at their most prominent period of time.

Many would, I believe, confuse Freelancer style with the -way- ships have been modeled; and that is more commonly understood as simple, block designs. I am not quite certain as to the explanation of this blocky design - maybe to save polygons, or to make some parts more prominent. This said, in reality, such designs probably would work just fine in space - after all, aerodynamics have very little to do when you are in space... but, flying a block isn't quite what I'd consider the fanciest thing around.

Freelancer ships were both pleasing and disgusting to my eyes. There has been, too many cultural references stuffed in forcefully into beautiful designs and we are given basically what I'd call, a "flying cultural shoebox". When you see a Bretonian battleship, the most common answer is, a lobster coupled with a ship of the line. When you see a Kusari fighter, you think, dragon, which is all very fine and fancy, but that's not quite -realist-, isn't it. They all look like stuffs you'd drive for a ship convention meeting, each bringing in the fanciest thing to represent their nation. They aren't -militarized-. They aren't fit for combat.

And this is what my work is about. Turning Freelancer fighters into -fighters-, not fancy cars, all the while trying to keep as many of the cultural - and time reference Freelancer tried to build around.

Liberty Defender

Defender frame, cockpit set as a fighter plane one, much less vulnerable. Wings are built within frame - the projected Liberty Patriot, acting as a short range interceptor for the navy would have modular wings.

Rheinland Valkyrie

Heavily modified, weapon modules in the nose of the craft, propulsion on each wings and engine at the rear.

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