The Hispania (Spain and Mediterranean)

[wanderer95]

As i am spanish, i must say that the Outcasts and Corsairs story are quite screwed up.

Seconded, as a Cuban.

Thirded, as a Mexican.

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[Croft]

Freelancer's lore is pretty damn lazy in almost all respects with no clues on who escaped on what sleeper ship other than a general guess. You could easily include the Americas aboard the Liberty, Commonwealth nations on the Bretonia, Nordics on the Rheinland and anyone from the Asia region on the Kusari. You could even guess the Gallia could include Polynesians and Belgians.

The Maltese do speak their own version of Arabic but many are still fluent in both Italian and English so you've got a wide playing field there.

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Jimmy The Rat | Croft's Feedback | The Rat Pack

[Chocomonch]

As i am spanish, i must say that the Outcasts and Corsairs story are quite screwed up.

Seconded, as a Cuban.

Thirded, as a Mexican.

Four, as spanish

[WesternPeregrine]

As i am spanish, i must say that the Outcasts and Corsairs story are quite screwed up.

Seconded, as a Cuban.

Thirded, as a Mexican.

Four, as spanish

Fifth, as a Portuguese.

(more substantial reply to the topic to come sometime later).

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[Petitioner]

Freelancer's background lore is eurocentric because it was a game created to appeal to a Western, primarily American, audience. Discovery has broadened it in some ways (people roleplaying Scandinavians and Eastern Europeans from Rheinland, more ethnic diversity in Liberty, roleplaying folks with ancestry in all the Commonwealth states from Bretonia, Africans, Occitains, Bretons, Basques, or my own Quebecois in Gallia, Greek/Arabic/Albanian Corsairs, Italian/Spanish/Portuguese/Maltese/Basque/Croatian/Albanian Outcasts, trying to shoehorn literally everything else into the Coalition), but it just can't be fixed entirely without rewriting what Freelancer is, and that's not what Discovery is about.

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[Tabris]

The Coalition from what I know of the current lore consisted of Russia, China, Mid-East and North Africa primarily. There may or may not have been some smaller nations from other places in between but I suspect they would have been crushed in the early days of the War for Sol.

[Syrus]

It's like the game was written with Hitler's better known work in one hand and the advice of the KKK in the other.

The same have been done to the Pot-o'-gold-top-of-the-mornin'-to-yer-terrorist-Space-Irish you see in the FL universe.

Don't you go and think Germany as Rheinland got off any better. Especially considering the "intended story line that was never put into the game because of budget problems: Liberty beats down Rheinland to end the Nomad war".

I always considered the Outcasts to not really be "Hispanics" (as in, from the ship, not from the region) anymore. Why? Due to the constant exposure to Cardamine their reproductivity is reduced and they are known to be slavers, taking slaves both for their cardamine farms as well as to bolster their population. Through that they became less "Hispanics" (from the ship...) over time, including "people and genetics" from all houses.

Corsairs on the other hand ... yes, it's always been a little weird to have space-mexicans there. I'd also consider Mexico a possibility for the Coalition, though I don't know whether or not they were in it in lore. (I'd consider Brazil as a possible Coalition country as well...)
Somehow the ... let's not call them Mexicans ... the space-central-Americans do feel like they make sense though. Maybe just because they are also from a hispanic (-> language) country. Overall, do you rather want to go with the stereotype and make LR be the main Mexican "faction" on the server? They are clearly the unlawfuls here. With Corsairs it can be debatable ...

Because, are they all criminals?
In Disco I feel like the population numbers of some factions are way exagerated. Outcasts and Corsairs do count to these. The population of the "Hispania" has suffered a lot in regards to population. Many will likely have died before they ever reached either of the two planets (lifesupport failures, pod failures, etc pp.), but many many more will have died because of where they landed. Crete is a rock, little grows there, the people there will have been struggling from start on, with only very limited population growth possible. They were limited by that for a long time.
They felt betrayed, thinking that another house had sabotaged the Hispania to ensure that they didn't take away a good landing spot from them. And they lacked food and ressources. I would call the state they are in rather a kind of "war" than straight everyone-for-themselves piracy. Could it have been solves better? Probably. Tell that to a starving people with century old hate and anger though, one with nothing to trade with, one which's first contact was not the most friendly encounter.
Outcasts on the other hand only started to suffer from reduced population in the course of their colonization of Malta. Though I would guess that the main part of people had left the Hispania for Crete in fear of leaving Sirius without finding another planet to settle - remember, space is vast, I'm not sure of the "conisdered real" make up of "the Sirius sector", but I would guess it is considered a cloud of stars - so at some point they'd have left that cloud and drifted through a whole lot of "not much at all" or "nothing", void. The state of the Hispania was not good to begin with, drifting into void would likely have been a death sentence. Just an assumption though.
Anyway, the Outcast's population had chance to grow, the planet was lush, though unknowingly "toxic". Over time that population growth would have started to slow down, as the Cardamine's genetic changes started to take effect and fertility dropped due to it. Probably not enough to be clearly noticeable and spark concern, since, if I remember lore right, the need for Cardamine to survive was only discovered when they first tried leaving Malta. Thoooough...that might have been attempted rather early, they already knew how to build spaceships, the "only development needed" was building spaceships (that's quite a feat, going from "nothing to spaceship", probably more than a single generation can manage). So...again, we are not talking about a big-house-sized population.
Being restricted to one planet which has little arable land to offer (Crete) or having their fertility (significantly?) reduced are quite major factors. Still a bit sad that they are reduced to criminals only. Freelancer is build a lot on stereotypes.

No idea why a sleeper ship called "Hispania" would end up spawning Malta, Crete and the Corsairs, but from a audience kind of view, it makes sense to have the big houses as they are. How many French players have you seen around for example? (Btw - for those still believing in Gallia: Rheinland already had French (and Dutch?) named pilots around, there was already the possibility there to add French focussed things into the game without adding a new house.)

Overall, I don't think vanilla said much about where the people from the Hispania were actually from. I would guess from the countries around the Mediterranean as well as maybe other Hispanic countries. One could assume that the population of these countries had been decimated by the war - maybe - and therefore there were fewer...It's all assumptions though.

While there's "a lot of written down stuff" in Freelancer, the story is pretty much like the universe. There's some bright spots and a lot of space inbetween. Especially start and end are very open. This both gives good oppurtunity to put in your own thoughts as well as to question whether things make any sense whatsoever.

[ASimpleMan]

Well Outcasts and Corsairs both have Hispanic names in Vanilla; the NPCs do. So both are Hispanic in Vanilla. I've seen the name Pedro Ortiz on both Outcast ships and Corsair ships in Vanilla. There is no racism here. Roberts included white criminals too, the Rouges (First names like Art, John, Jack, Bob, are common in Liberty Rogue ships [in Vanilla]).

And part of the reason why other countries like the aforementioned Brazil weren't big in the lore was, well, because they aren't really big in world politics now or were back in 2003 when this game was made. Besides the Olympics going on now Brazil isn't in the news much. But the main countries that you hear of in the news or talked about are Russia, US, Great Britain, etc. If you were an alien coming from space somewhere (not nomad) you would see earth and most likely learn the names of Russia, US, Britain, Germany, etc. quickly due to them being big players in the world and in the news more often than say, Latvia or Slovenia.

The Coalition consisted of Russia, China, (probs North Korea), Middle East and North Africa. They most likely included the old Eastern bloc countries in the Coalition. (Serbia, Croatia, anything that was Yugoslavia, etc.) That is my theory on this whole thread. Kudos to the start of the thread, love the geography.

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[SnakeLancerHaven]

Not to mention, I've read from the Vanilla Sleeper Ship Nations, Hispania has only (Spain) in it, but Disco added "Mediterranean" wouldn't that mean that there was a purpose of adding all those remaining Countries that weren't present in this game? The Countries that Coast the Mediterranean Sea such as Albania, Algeria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Montenegro, Slovenia, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey (btw these are countries that did not join the Coalition, not to mention that Croatia, Albania and Turkey are all part of the NATO Military, so it's safe to assume they were part of the Alliance).

I suppose, nations such as Serbia would've joined the Coalition, because they're carrying the old spirit of Yugoslavia.

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[Reid]

I would wager a guess that most smaller nations would be swallowed up by the larger ones by the time the Alliance/Coalition war breaks out. The US taking Canada (that hurts to say), Germany taking their Germanic/Nordic neighbors, Spain taking Portugal, Russia growing back to USSR size, etc. In the event of a dystopian future, I get the feeling that weaker nations would integrate into stronger ones for "protection". So as Petitioner said, I'd say that cultural regions are included with whatever sleeper ship they were closest to. That would put most central-American nations, as much flak as I'll get for this since I know they're actually not the same as Spain, in with the Hispania. And on top of that, in (Disco's?) lore, the Italia was a sleeper ship that was blown up with the original Gallia and the members of that ship were squeezed on to the Hispania.


also off topic since people keep mentioning him, Roberts had little to do with how Freelancer came out. He was only with it for 1 year out of the 4 years it was in development and it's far far different than what he was going for