No, you can lose stealth plenty in the first one and Her Finest Hour. You won't insta-fail and your stealth will return in a couple seconds if you don't fire. Stealth is more of a dogfight advantage than a 'stay out of LOS or die' disadvantage in Tenebra.
Even in Everything is Permitted, you can get away with being detected without insta-failing, but it will probably lead to a fail state in a couple seconds if you haven't carefully prepped for it.
I'll grant you the first one, which was actually an ok mission once you learn to hang back and let the Gia nutters do the work for you.
With Her Finest Hour, is it possible to complete the mission without getting any of the reinforcement points which you get for scanning stuff and sniping AWACs ships and beam platforms, for which you need to be stealthy. If not then it is as good as being obligate stealth.
In the assassination mission how far away do you need to be for the fighters to lose lock on you? I have had both auroras and normal fighters still knowing exactly where I am from over 4KM away. I have tried turning tail and flying away. I have tried flying away on full afterburner with all my energy diverted to the engines. I have tried gliding at 90 degrees from my last direction, I have tried powering down and they still find me. I have tried doing all of the above in combination and they still know exactly where I am. I have flown well over 10KM from everything and those bloody things still know where I am. If I power down I just get killed since they still know where I am but now I cant change direction or do anything. Is it supposed to be like this or is my game screwing around?
I have noticed several glitches in my game which I haven't seen in lets plays, such as strange white square snow like effects in Ken and the great darkness bit in UT2. My controls went haywire in eye of the storm too after placing the tanks - I don't think it liked the UI changing mid mission, so perhaps my game is just borked in general?
Is it possible to insert checkpoints? Some of the longer mission with distinct sections would really benefit from them. Taking the assassination mission as an example, a checkpoint occurring once you have identified which ship she is on would do much to ease the pain, since you could then experiment with different tactics without having to sit through all the dialogue, which gets a little tedious after you have heard it a few times.
Or introduce quicksaves so people can save-scum their way through things
But I gather the FreeSpace engine does not cater for them?
I'm all for experimentation and seeing how far you can push an engine before it breaks, but perhaps give people the option of skipping missions that diverge significantly from core FS gameplay. CoD MW2 allowed you to skip the 'No Russians' mission entirely with no penalties. Granted, this was due to its graphic content, (plus that game was terrible in every other way) but the principle is the same.
Just something I needed to get off my chest - brought on by that *CENSORED* mission killing me yet again. Grrrr. I'm calm again now