[Marcov]

Undoubtedly that mission proved to be difficult to me, especially that I'm sort of a ruthless pilot. How about just sitting your ass near the Renenet for safety.

[Thaeris]

Hmmm... medium.

If I played FS more often, I might try to ramp up the difficulty at some point, but once I set a difficulty, I keep to that level.

As far as Slaying Ravana goes, I make use of the Medusa, which has a nice balance of maneuverability, armor, speed, and firepower for a bomber. Lets you deal with those Basilisks while plinking off turrets of the capship.

[Leuthesius]

I think I would do better if I could have some newtonian physics control. Or something more like Descent controls. ... Actually, I would rape the game on insane if I could control a ship like that.

[Kolgena]

Insane for retail campaign, though I dial it back to hard for some missions, like Slaying Ravana, Bear Baiting, and that ridiculous mission where you fly around with TAGs in a Ulysses. For anyone that cares, the one thing that really helped me move my game up from medium/hard was gratuitous use of tempests. I tried out QuantumDelta's favorite weapon, and noticed that things went boom a lot faster. It's a shame your wingmen don't actually know how to use them effectively though...

Medium for custom campaigns, because I'm not familiar with how the missions play out, and because most campaigns are balanced best for Medium.

[Marcov]

The main problem with me using Tempests is that I sometimes end up hammering myself lethally with Tempest pounding, and I go down with the enemy ship I ruthlessly want to kill (particularly  Dragons, arguably the most annoying and evil fighters you ever face in Retail FS).

Slaying Ravana's pretty damn hard, too. How the crap are you supposed to destroy the Ravana if there's some Manticore incessantly pounding lasers at you? Nah, kill all the fighters and let the friendly warships/bomber pilots take down the destroyer.

[Kolgena]

Uh, you're way way too close to a fighter if the tempests are hurting yourself with splash.

The cheap way to beat slaying ravanna is to get yourself beside the Sobek and camp inside its flak/beam envelope. Nothing gets close, and the Sobek will eventually beam the Ravana to death. The non-stupid way of beating the mission is to manage wingmen cleverly. Still, when manticores get on your ass, you're pretty much dead.

[Marcov]

Uh, you're way way too close to a fighter if the tempests are hurting yourself with splash.

Getting close is usually what I'd do to kill those Dragons, sometimes even if I end up reducing my hull integrity to 6% pounding the adjacent demon spider with ALL I HAVE, including Tempests, that is.

Fire everything!!!

[SypheDMar]

I remember beating Slaying Ravana on Insane really quick when DarthGeek (I think) complained on IRC about it. The most trouble I had so far is retail The Place of Chariots. Hercules hurt much more than Lokis ever will.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Game is fun as hell on Insane. I actually kinda liked Slaying Ravana, if only because it really made you respect how dangerous capships can be. For some reason the mission I had the most trouble with was A Flaming Sword. 

I usually do first plays on Medium, though.

Yeah, and Slaying Ravana also proves that lots of blobs ARE dangerous to bombers

A Flaming Sword, is that the one where you blow up the subspace portal ? That mission is weird, I either beat it on the first try with minimal damage, or I get shot down somehow 7-8 times before succeeding.

[Droid803]

Hardest mission for me is A Game of TAG.
Hands down.

Never beat it once, not even on very easy (I can do most other missions on hard/insane >.>)
**** YOU FRIENDLY BEAM FIRE.

[BlueFlames]

**** YOU FRIENDLY BEAM FIRE.

Avoid the beam, and you won't get hit!

* BlueFlames ducks.

[Kolgena]

Game of TAG really challenges you to track the Warspite's position in your head. Also, it's reasonably doable as long as you're godly with dumbfires. All you have to do (well, I say that, but it's not easy) is solo 2-3 wings of fighters with OHKO slow tempests and a subach, without putting yourself in the line of fire. The mission is actually quite satisfying if you get a decent kill-streak going and are able to tag enemies as soon as your missiles reload.

Then again, on insane, Alpha 2 dies a few seconds after losing her godmode (if you told her to protect the warspite instead of letting her charge blindly--if you didn't, she dies the instant her final line is delivered usually), and I get owned a few moments after that when I run out of countermeasures.

[Scotty]

My biggest gripe with that mission is how the missile tube the TAG launches out of is always the one you don't have trained exactly on the target, and that the two are offset enough in different directions that using two of them is just a waste of at least one missile.

[Kolgena]

I got pretty good at keeping track of which tube it'll be coming out of. It alternates every time.

[Thaeris]

I never found a A Game of Tag to be difficult; this might make me strange. I think the main thing is that I was never too worried about scoring kills for myself - just paint those bloody bombers with TAGs, kill a few with your main guns if you can, and let the mission run its course. After all, those beams... they're super effective!

[NGTM-1R]

I've done the FS1/FS2 campaigns on Insane, but don't find it terribly fun. Mostly medium, but I don't trust any of you campaign designers to properly balance your missions (or indeed to have a view of difficulty similar to the general public), so I start from Very Easy and work up.

[Mobius]

Seconded, but I don't think fan-made campaigns are to blame for their lack of balance at the higher difficulty levels. I mean, campaign designers already have a lot of things to care about, so it's not a real problem if they don't ensure balance on Hard or even Insane. That's the thing that IMO makes the main FS1 and FS2 campaigns special, though.

[General Battuta]

There are a few campaigns that were balanced on Medium as well as Insane. I know War in Heaven was tested pretty heavily on three of the five difficulties (verra easy, medium and insane). I also recall some of the older campaigns were a good time on Insane - I think PI was tested on it?

[Marcov]

Procyon Insurgency...the one where you need to take down two giant warships to beat the campaign.

I'd cheat that before, but now, with added experience, perhaps I can take 'em out...or not. Either way it's pretty hard taking out 2,100,000 hitpoints of enemy hull plating. The closest I've come to that is taking down entire Sathanas Juggernauts in Second Great War Part II, as well as knocking off every single turret in a wing of Juggernauts.

Still, it was pretty fun knocking down entire scores of cruisers, corvettes, and destroyers in a single mission, with 4 wings of pilots flying top-class fighters such as the Erinyes and Ares, bullying any Shivan fighter that comes close to me, while I repeatedly pound on enemy warships with Cyclops'es on my Sekhmet (arguably the best canon bomber I've flied).

[NGTM-1R]

Seconded, but I don't think fan-made campaigns are to blame for their lack of balance at the higher difficulty levels. I mean, campaign designers already have a lot of things to care about, so it's not a real problem if they don't ensure balance on Hard or even Insane. That's the thing that IMO makes the main FS1 and FS2 campaigns special, though.

Not really what I meant. We, the remaining FS2 playerbase, have been at this for a long, long time. And we love the game, so chances are we're really, really good at it. Our view of difficulty and balancing is undoubtedly skewed by our skill or talent.

I've noted something similar in other fan projects or open-source games more than once, but here I don't think I'm equipped to detect it since I'm part of the problem.