There seems to be some disconnect between Herkie and us. He is saying it could be the FSO version that is the problem. Here is his messages from FB:
"These Serapis are Mark IIs are advance heavy fighters. They should read the tech database. This goes for the Horus V2. If I had new Vasudan fighter models., I wont use Serapis and the other old ones. Post this. I don't know why you have difficilties. I have a tester here who 12 years old. He says it is now too easy even in hard. I HAD actually tone down the AI difficulty factor significantly when I released it. I think its the newer FSO build. The 374 had better AI than the recommended 372. Maybe they change something in FSO 19. Please use 372 and 5.5g launcher and AVP 3612 to really see what I intended.
The new Serapis has the same armor level as the Dark Angel. Well, after three Shivan Wars, at this point in time, things have improve."
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I don't get how this could happen. It seems like he may be playing a different game. He says it's an easy campaign. How could this be? Could using a different launcher and build really change enemy health? He says recent builds changed AI but I've played Reboot and TBG on the same build and I still encountered the noticeable difficulty difference. As for his Serapis and Horus comments...I personally don't have a problem with them being a little stronger than their FS1 versions but they IMO (and I think most of you agree) shouldn't be as tough as they are especially since you're outnumbered in most missions. Being outnumbered was okay in Reboot because it was high tech low # good guys vs. lower tech bad guy swarms. Making enemies your technological peer can really change the difficulty balance as we've seen. If the original Serapis had 220 energy/hull then I think my proposal of halving enemy health (TBG had the Serapis at 1000) would put them at 500.
Honestly I'm kind of stumped at this point. It looks like he doesn't want to lower enemy numbers or health...however, according to this recent message from him we shouldn't have to for some reason. He says we need to play on an older version to make the game easier (I don't know why that would change things but that's what he says apparently). It's almost like we're all playing two different games.