FreeSpace: Difference between revisions

* [[Awesome but Impractical]]: The GTVA ''Colossus'' ends up being this despite the best of intentions. It follows a standard Terran design despite being co-developed by Vasudans; it can't project very much of its firepower in one direction but can engage multiple smaller ships in all directions at the same time, and is durable enough to win even if heavily outnumbered. This is exactly what the GTVA needs against the NTF, and is exactly what they could've used during the Great War. Unfortunately, the designers never imagined it would ever have to fight something of comparable size and durability, where its inability to deliver most of its firepower into a single target turns into a massive handicap.

* [[Badass]]: Lieutenant-Commander Snipes, your superior for the optional SOC missions. He's an awesome pilot, he got the commander of an NTF ship executed without him doing anything wrong, and apparently survived for quite a while in a transport in a nebula, and even in such a life-threatening situation, he can ''still'' remain calm:

** Alpha 1 too, although "Badass" may not even be enough; after all, he wins entire battles against himself.

* [[Bald Black Leader Guy]]: The voice of 3rd Fleet Command in the second game.

* [[Horde of Alien Locusts]]: Shivan ships seemingly shaped to make them look like fearsome creatures. However, they are still "normal" ships otherwise in term of functions.

* [[Humans Are Bastards]]: The stereotypical view of Terrans by Vasudans (or, in a stereotypical Human's view, Vasudans Are Bastards). This trope is played perfectly in one of ''Descent: FreeSpace'''s deleted cutscenes (only made known in the [[All There in the Manual|Reference Bible]]):

* followed by a [[Bar Brawl]]*" }}

* [[Humans by Any Other Name]]: Played straight with the classic Terrans, but amazingly subverted with the Vasudans, as [[Bilingual Bonus|"Vasuda" is from an ancient Sanskrit word meaning "Earth"]]!

* [[Painting the Fourth Wall]]: The main menu.

* [[Pay Evil Unto Evil]]: Snipes rigs an entire wing of NTF fighters to detonate, massacres a whole bunch more (alongside Alpha 1), then blames it on the "laziness" of the captain of the Sevrin, who is then executed.

* [[Photoprotoneutron Torpedo]]: The gigantic [[Wave Motion Guns]] are typically called "beams", both in-game and out, but their technical name is "Photon Beam Cannon". There's also the Meson Bomb, a superpowerful explosive that completely vaporizes anything within three kilometers.

* [[Planar Shockwave]]: Used and averted. The graphic effects use several planar shockwaves, but the actual blast zones are spherical and can knock you around whether one of the "waves" grazes you or not.

* [[Weak but Skilled]]: Nearly every time, the Terrans and Vasudans get to outsmart the Shivans' superior technology with better tactics. In fact, they're the only ones who bother about tactics at all; they're fighting a foe who sometimes can't [[Unskilled but Strong|even bother to repel some wings of bombers trying to take out the main guns of one of their Juggernauts]], and [[Too Dumb to Live|attack a huge GTVA warship with one Sathanas ''with the latter's guns disabled'']] (though of course, {{spoiler|there are nearly a hundred to back it up in case it gets destroyed}}).

* [[What a Senseless Waste of Human Life]]: The Captain of the ''Colossus'' when he frantically tried to hail the NTF Admiral on board the Repulse to surrender. Of course he didn't, and even tried to ram, which did nothing but some minor dents in the Colossus.

** At the beginning of the game, we face a similar situation between a Vasudan capital ship, the GVD Psamtik, and a badly damaged NTF corvette, the NTCv Belisarius. The captain of the rebel ship refuses the Psamtik's orders to surrender, which forces the Psamtik to destroy the corvette.

* [[Woolseyism]]: In-universe example; the Vasudans consider the Egyptian theme of the Terrans' naming convention for their ships flattering, given the longevity and importance of Ancient Egypt in Earth's history, so [[Ascended Fanon|they adopt it as official translation]] for their proper nouns and individuals take Egyptian names for Terrans to refer to them by in conversation.