[Mars]

No, but I think the Colossus's sacrifice was clearly meant to be portrayed as effective (in the dialog, and in the next mission briefing.)

I'm not sure what the argument is here. Unless the Shivans literally send a continuous, solid wall of pure Sathanas through a given jump node, destroying their ships and / or delaying them will certainly lighten the load on convoys, whereas simply parking ships in a convoy and defending them is a much worse idea (because of the overwhelming firepower of Shivan ships). One has a good chance of delaying a large number of Shivan forces for at least a few minutes, the other could be easily resolved by a single Lilith.

[Scotty]

To support my argument, I point to the Sobek at the beginning of one of those last missions (I forget it's name at the moment, mission and corvette) that, even though it has very low hull and is being pounded by a Moloch, opts to stay with the convoy and distract incoming bombers until it is destroyed instead of jumping out in any direction to shake pursuit.  The only real way the GTVA can hope to survive against the Shivans is to bottle them in with collapsing jump nodes and save as many people as they can along the way.

[Mars]

That's exactly my point - but the first thing the Sobek does is destroy the Shivan warship.

The emphasis on shock jumps and massive forward firepower is a favored tactic in situations like the one in AOA - a hostile warship is threatening a friendly force, so the Temaraire and battle group perform a shock jump and immediately destroy it. It's not the ONLY tactic, but it's a good one. The new ships also have a much better fighter screen than any previous ships, so I think they're probably intended to be used for escort as well.

I'm not arguing that the GTVA intends to stand up and fight the Shivans, but I think they're certainly trying to have a military that can hold them off for a brief period of time until they can evacuate a system.

[Scotty]

You and I are arguing the same point from different angles, and we both disagree with Logistics.

[Mars]

Ah, lol, sorry.

[SF-Junky]

A couple of notes:

- In my opinion, overall the Darkest Hour mission was not too hard, only the fight against that corvette in the end is as you can get killed very easily while trying to disarm its main beams and as it kills all your wingmen most of the time. So I guess I'll vote for "too hard" but I only mean the ending. Just that you know.

- In One Perfect Moment I felt neither actually good nor bored.

- The assassination was a good move, but I was also shocked by it.

- Delenda Est was a bit too hard for my taste. There are too many hostile craft for my taste, I never liked those missions where the player's squadron shots down five times as many hostiles. I think you should leave out those Erinyes and Artemis D.H. wings that jump in at the beginning so that the player can focus on the Carthage's air wing.

[Snail]

What made Delenda Est hard for me was not the sheer number of hostiles, but the fact that they usually came in from opposite vectors.

[Mort]

I loved Delenda Est. The difficulty was fine for me

[Snail]

Well I can't fly for ****, but I still loved Delenda Est and Forced Entry and the like (my favorite mission from BP is Aristeia though).

[SF-Junky]

Delenda Est ist defenitely the best mission I've ever played in FreeSpace. I absolutely love such epic battles. But to be honest, I never understood why people are so excited about Forced Entry. It was a very good mission, yes, one of the best in AoA, but for me it never was one of those you remember until the end of your days.

[Snail]

Forced Entry was just plain cool. The music might have played a big part. Same with Universal Truth.

[Ravenholme]

Delenda Est ist defenitely the best mission I've ever played in FreeSpace. I absolutely love such epic battles. But to be honest, I never understood why people are so excited about Forced Entry. It was a very good mission, yes, one of the best in AoA, but for me it never was one of those you remember until the end of your days.

Good Atmosphere, excellent tension (The Temeraire jumping in pursued by that Ravana, anyone?), excellent music choice, overall just a plain cool mission.

What Snail said, basically.

[Dragon]

Also, it's insanely difficult. 
In fact, it's one of the most difficult missions in AoA and the first of them (Keepers of Hell and Universal Truth come much later).

[MatthTheGeek]

Maybe in the original AoA it was. In the Director Cut the mission is just plain easy.

[Snail]

Actually Keepers of Hell wasn't that great a mission IMHO, in fact in the original version I found it frustrating.

[Rodo]

The music might have played a big part.

It did for me, also I remember the rush I felt going for the Ravana on the last sprint... I loved the first version better than the second.

[Vidmaster]

I loved both Delenda Est and Darkest Hour.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

What made Delenda Est hard for me was not the sheer number of hostiles, but the fact that they usually came in from opposite vectors.

Yeah. They just always seem to jump in at the more inconvenient positions or attempt to fray your nerves by jumping in with another wing at the same time. I'm always rattled whenever I have to deal with more than one warship threat.

For me, I also have the frame rate to deal with, although it's no longer a really big issue after I got used to playing FS2_Open at 10-25 FPS throughout.

[Mars]

Delenda Est is made a lot easier by using the warships and wingmen effectively. I know for a fact its winnable on Medium without firing a shot yourself.

[Destiny]

I just had to get a good ship with Slammers. Because there's no zooming with the Archer (or any long-range weapon for that matter), I can't snipe properly so I got some Grimlers. Had to run it a few times though, the corvette charge was pretty deadly.