Obviously I don't mean that we should go all crazy and include Gudams in an FS2 mod just because it's cool. But you seem to be against any kind of a change from the FS. A Mentu should have beam cannons ? No can do, it didn't have any in vanilla FS2. An Orion should be a little more capable in terms of anti-fighter weaponry ? Nope, it should remain defenceless just like in FS2. Let's try to see if we can do some teamwork in a mod ? Don't you dare, it's Alpha 1 who has to save the day.
Nothing personal, mate. In principal, your idea is nice. We should preserve the FS spirit in mods. But some of your comments sound as if you are some kind of a religious zealot, for whom any change to the game concept will ruin the spirit of FS (this reminds me of the Fallout 3 message boards BTW. It was nice to see the outrage of veterans whenever any new info would be published). Maybe it's just the way you write things that make me feel that way, dunno.
Oh, and it's a mod. A modification, not merely a custom campaign. Thus changes are more than welcome.
If you want to straight-up bull**** about what I've said, does that mean I can do so about what you've said?
I don't
mind needing a couple wings to reliably take down a crusier. (Of course, that's pretty much what you need in vanilla anyways, at least if you're under any real time constraints.) I draw the line however at having to deploy a full squadron against a light warship, because that will significantly change the way the game's played. Any battle of significant size ends up becoming a BoE rapidly, and if you want to know what a campaign of BoEs gets the community thinking I suggest you check out what people had to say about 158th. (It stank.)
If you need to deploy a squadron to successfully assault a light warship, then you have to assume he's got escorts to beat off a squadron, and so you need more ships, and at this point we're talking thirty-fighter strikes to kill cruisers and it can rapidly get worse if there's more than one around. When you have thirty friendly fighters on the field, Alpha 1's actions are going to carry very little weight typically. And if there's no point in the player being there, you're already having a serious uphill struggle for a point in anyone playing the mission. If the player consistantly isn't mattering in your missions, your campaign and your mod are more or less a piece of **** by default.
This is not to say that you cannot build a mission where Alpha 1's actions will matter greatly when there are thirty friendly fighters on the field, but how many of those have there been in the community? Four or five? It's not for the faint of heart, and they're generally campaign centerpieces. Building a whole campaign of them is impractical.
So by all means, build your thing with Gundams in FS. I'll chuckle a little but what the hell. It'll probably play okay. Your superduper warships, however, won't.
I, for one, think that mods should actively try to distance themselves from the "Alpha 1 is superman, let's not bother with wingmen or bombers or anything like that." It's the way FS1 and 2 played. Okay, good for them, that isn't necessarily the best way to do things. Personally, when something like that happens, it breaks the suspension of disbelief into teeny tiny pieces. If a fighter can single-handedly destroy cruiser sized warships, why would there be cruisers anymore?
Tactical misapphrension. Submarines can reliably destroy surface ships one on one and have been able to for a long time, why do we still have surface ships? Because they serve a different role.
A fighter is a weapon of space denial. It lacks the staying power to control. You need cruisers and destroyers to take and hold space, just as you need surface ships to take and hold water, or infantry to take and hold ground. Only they can provide long-term uninterrupted presence.
