You do realize that this is a mod forum and a thread about game balance in mods, right? You seemed to have gotten lost; I would recommend going here.
And I cast the choice as faithfulness to the original, to which you responded with much mod-talk. I recommend rereading what you were responding to.
But I don't consider the original way of doing things necessarily the best way of doing things, nor the way the FreeSpace universe (as it may be expanded by a mod author) will always operate. The one constant about weapons and warfare is that they are always evolving and changing. Weapons and tactics fall in and out of favor, the balance of power shifts. As far as I'm concerned, the "spirit of FreeSpace", looked upon from an in-universe perspective (I tend to look at sci-fi universes as a setting first and a game as merely an approximation of a setting), could be a very transitory state of affairs caused by the state of weapon and ship technology in the year 2367. The way FreeSpace is balanced changed dramatically between FS1 and FS2, given another generation it could change radically again; if it were to continue further in the FS2 direction, "scary capships" would be the result.
But again, that's not the way FS handles things or has ever handled things. The game and the genre lack the proper tools to enable a player to truly coordinate an attack on a capital craft as you describe or even to ensure enough fighters will make it to the point of contact to make such an attack! Do your capital craft run around without escorts? Do the escorts not have Fury's AI as well and thus match your own fighters so that you must fight them and take casualities? Just how contrived are you prepared to make things to ensure that your scenario plays out? Some missions broke their processes in FS2, but truly the classic FS player-vs.-capship battle of mods has always been that the player is the one who manages to make it through the fighter screen most quickly or had the most focus on his mission. And you want to penalize them for knowing what their job is!
Their job is (at least theoretically) to fight as part of a unit, because military forces do not act alone. Im fact. the tips that FS presents new users even reinforce this--one of them even recommends sending your wingmen in ahead of you and following them in once the enemy has engaged them. Even if many of them die, every turret or fighter shooting at your wingmen is one
not shooting at you, and will buy you more time to start blasting turrets as quickly as possible. You could even FRED missions so that capship attacks are done in stages, with friendly small craft assets neutralizing heavy weapon turrets and pulling back to allow capital ships or a heavier class of bombers to deliver the killing blow. Sure, Alpha 1's inherent superiority over other entities in the game can be fun, but so is watching a combined arms strike unfold.
That's why I think "Nemesis" was Inferno R1's sole great mission. It was the interplay and cooperation of fighters, bombers, and capital ships that made the attack on the EASD
Nemesis more memorable than anything else in the mod with the possible exception of the
Gigas (which you only got to watch). I also liked the way the
Nemesis herself responded, reacted, and retaliated in a way that seemed like her captain was actually trying to win a battle rather than sitting there throwing beams around.
And keep in mind that Alpha 1's coordination should only be on the wing or squadron level. Capital ship captains, flag officers, and Command (i.e. the mission designer) should be coordinating the assault as a whole.
Also remember that on difficulties below Hard, your wingmen with Fury's AI have
better AI than enemies (if you use the wingman AI for your wingmen)--they will turn harder, fire faster, and behave more intelligently.
And why are you so eager to dismiss my point about penalizing mediocre players? Do you just not want them here, or do you not care since it does not effect you personally?
Most of these errors are not caused by lack of raw player skill, they are caused by improper judgment and poor choices.