Freelancer (video Game) - Gameplay

Gameplay

Players take up the roles of pilots who fly single-seat spacecraft, trading with merchants on space stations and planets, and engaging in combat against other vessels. Starting with a small spacecraft in a star system, the player's character explores the region, opening up new systems for further adventures. Each system provides opportunities to increase the pilot's wealth; aside from taking on jobs to ferry goods and hunting for bounties, the player character can engage in trade. The player character's primary goal in the game is to accumulate money, so as to buy more advanced weaponry and equipment to upgrade his ship.

The game is played primarily through "pointing and clicking" with the mouse and a few keyboard commands. This system is also used to control the spacecraft, a breakaway from the traditional use of joysticks for space flight simulators. Observing their spacecraft from the rear, players fly their ships by moving the mouse in the direction they want the vessels to go. Freelancer's spacecraft follow simplistic flight dynamics; however, a dash of realism is implemented by allowing the vessels to cut power to their engines and turn to face any direction while drifting along their original path—conservation of momentum. Clicking the mouse button shoots the ship's weapons at the location of the cursor. The interface has no radar display; the location of objects not shown on the screen are indicated by pointers at the screen's edges. Targeting, communications, and navigation data are displayed in information boxes that can be minimized.

After the pilot docks with a space station or lands on a planet, the screen and its interface change to a rendition of the area he is visiting. The player moves the pilot to different locations and interacts with certain objects, such as reading a bulletin board and talking to other characters, by clicking on their graphical representations. Freelancer's economy consists of buying and selling spacecraft, their armaments and components, and commodities. Certain goods are considered contraband in some systems, and they have to be smuggled past police patrols to their buyers. Computer-controlled characters (non-player characters or NPCs) in certain locations on the planets or stations offer quests and jobs.

Freelancer features a multiplayer mode, allowing up to 128 players to play together in a game. Multiplayer games are hosted on game servers; personal computers that meet the requirements for the game can act as a server. Gameplay is similar to the single-player mode, but is absent of story-driven quests. Because the server keeps individual records of the players' progress, they can resume their game when they next log on to it. A persistent virtual galaxy is thus maintained for them.