Upwards of 40+ tries attempting to save the Dea Bricta on Normal.
Aristeia has been ruined as an experience. In previous releases, it was my favorite mission; in the Director's Cut it's become horrible.
The Tev fighters, already superior in number, each have enough firepower to kill the player in seconds or less; often they're able to deal 50%+ before the pursuer warning beep goes off. They have enough health to shrug off not just the player, but the frigates' fire for an extended amount of time, while unloading a steady stream of missiles at the player. It's the first time in any Freespace mission ever that I've died because I ran out of countermeasures; I've died repeatedly.
There's no window to rearm or rearmor until the mission is already more or less complete. Attempting to rearm and rearmor anyway is a free kill for the Tevs.
What the hell happened to the UEF's superior fighter fleet that has kept the war going for so long, that massacred all non-Warship assets the Tevs sent at Neptune? It sure ain't here. I was willing to tolerate the "engage=death" philosophy in Tenebrae because you were a stealth fighter and not supposed to engage, but it doesn't work in the other chapters.
The new Diomedes model has even less vulnerabilities than its predecessor. Engaging directly is suicide, yet Paveways are now useless and seem to be shot down, if not by point defense, then by the tail end of the very anti-warship beam you're trying to disarm.
There's no fun in it anymore, only endless loops of "give orders while dodging! press hotkeys while dodging! lure into warship flak while dodging!" If I wanted to play an RTS I'd have joined the command crew, not the fighter jocks, but apparently I'm stuck being command crew in a squishy fighter anyway.
I get the feeling that the BP team has gotten so used to playing their own missions that they've lost sight of how other players might behave and have put everything but their own actions into a failstate.