Ah. But who do you think put the bomber in the scroller at the side? That's right it's the mission designer. Any time you play a mission you should only have access to the ships the mission designer thought were appropriate for the mission. If you have bombers available on the side scroller it's precisely because the mission designer thinks that it is appropriate to allow you to fly a bomber. If you play FS2 again you'll notice that in the vast majority of mission you do not have any bombers listed. This isn't an accident. It's a somewhat subtle piece of mission design. The mission designer is very subtly telling you that it is okay to fly a bomber in this mission even if you are assigned a fighter by default.
If the mission designer does not what you to fly a bomber in a mission that does have bombers he will do one of two things. He'll either put the bombers in beta or gamma wing and lock them (which means you can't alter their weaponary in the ships loadout, or he'll put them in some wing other than Alpha, Beta or Gamma where you can't see them at all. Either way the bomber will not appear in the ship choices at the side of the screen.
By doing this the mission designer has effectively prevented you from flying a bomber. Most FREDders I've seen actually prefer to put the bombers in Delta wing or another wing you can't even see if the player is not meant to have access to a bomber. If you replay FS2 you'll see that this is actually a lot more common than you might have noticed. It's certainly very common in user-created mission. I never lock Beta or Gamma wing if I can help it. If a ship appears in the loadout screen the player should be able to edit it unless there is a very good reason. I doubt I'm the only FREDder who feels that way somehow. It's certanly the way
used to prevent you from flying a bomber in several missions.
Now the problem is that if you allow Delta and other wings to appear in the loadout you will now be able to disregard this mechanism for preventing the player from flying a bomber.
Everything you wrote was not lost on me (I guess the "exploit thing" was what I was not understanding,) I should've been more clear. But what I'm saying is that I dont' mind about bomber wings or changnig myself to a bomber etc, BUT it would be helpful if I KNOW that I am going in hot against a destroyer(OK guys let's we're going too kill it for sure this time) and if the 3 wings I see on the selector screen aren't bombers than it's the ones that I can't see that are (bombers.) And then Epsilon/ Gamma come in as bombers and they start firing rockeyes it just makes it that much more annoying.
Also as you progress through FS2 you have a choice of many different types of fighters/ bombers (which I believe is why you don't get all the choices in the original FS2 campaign right at the start, you have to earn it like bfobar meant.) But near the end you have a choice of many different bomber/fighter combos. Just having the options of many different fighters doesn't mean anything, (if I give you the option of a spoon or fork in the morning to eat your lunch that doesn't make anything because that event will happen in the future and you don't know what to expect so you base your decision on the best intel you have at the time) just like giving the option of a fighter or bomber before the mission doesn't mean anything. Unless you've played it before anything can happen, you might have capships incomming or you might have fries for lunch (meaning that neither the spoon/fork does any good unless you're like this one guy I know that eats his fries with a fork one at a time) For example:
Step 1) Mission breifing..: Unknown space, escort awacks, expect attack. (What does this really tell me about what to expect enemywise? nothing)
Step 2) Look at ship selector and see every ship in the game available in set of 5 or whatever standard is (This tellls me nothing ......just because I have many options this gives nothing away....now limiting options to say oh bombers and that's it will though)
Step 3) Choose weapons and hit start.
But like I said, I wish this thing existed but it probably won't.
And as far as balance goes, when I play a campaign if it's too easy I bump up the difficulty, very rarely do I beat something on "Very Hard"