Hi folks,
New FSOpen player here. I'm playing ST:R after playing FSPort, and holy cow it's a lot tougher and more complicated! In FSPort I played through on medium and rarely had to restart a particular mission more than 2 or 3 times. I'm not sure there's a mission in ST:R I've beaten without restarting 10+ times other than the first mission! One issue I seem to have is the missions are so much more complicated in FSPort, in terms of the number of ships involved and the tasks required that I often get a bit confused and/or overwhelmed. (I only recently realized I was having a lot of trouble scanning ships because I didn't know how to turn off targeting subsystems, which made scanning more difficult)
I'm currently stuck on "The Last Hurrah". The issue I'm having is that as fighters begin to arrive, my wingmen just get torn apart by them after a few minutes and pretty soon I'm virtually the only one left. I'm just completely baffled in how to go about this mission. I've been using a Herc with 3 Prometheus cannons so I could pack as much punch as possible in taking down the Cains and whatnot while still being able to dogfight a bit. What do you guys recommend taking down first? Second? Should I focus on intercepting and providing cover for the bombers? Should I be ordering my wingmen to disarm the Cains and Liliths? How should I load out Alpha and Beta wings? I am totally lost; there's so much going on in this mission I just struggle to prioritize what to do and whom to order to do what. Annoyingly, about half of them spend the first half of the mission just pounding the Archon with their primaries, which doesn't really do much.
In general I really struggle on any mission that asks me to fight in a Herc or Zeus, as I just find I get pounded over and over by 2 or 3 manticores which I simply can't effectively dogfight due to their speed advantage. As soon as I damage their hulls, they boost away and I essentially have to lure them back to me by targeting someone else. Should I be using something else for Last Hurrah? I normally use Valks or Apollos, but with so many Cains and turrets around, I'm worried they aren't hardy enough to survive this mission.
As you can see I'm really struggling and could use some advice. ST:R is a HUGE step up from FSPort (for me anyways) as far as tactics and difficulty.
Thanks in advance for any advice.