[Mongoose]

I swear I must be the only person around here who never had any trouble beating A Game of TAG.

[Mars]

I think it was the King's Gambit, but I never really liked the Artemis.  Not that it's flimsy, but it just doesn't feel as solid as the heavier bombers.  It could be that I'm just bad at bombing runs.

EDIT: Just looked up the hitpoints, and its shields are fine at 700, but it's hull is at 275.

EDIT2:  I never noticed until now, but the Zeus has 200 hitpoints and 450 shield points...

I find the higher the difficulty the more speed and maneuverability matters, even with bombers. The Ursa can take a lot of damage, but it also takes forever to get out of AAA range. I like the Arty because, though it's not as solid as it could be, it can get the **** out of there when it needs to. The Rhea in BP2 is even more like that, but perhaps too flimsy. The Zeus is excellent for taking out cargo containers. (It really wasn't that bad in FS1, but AAA beams changed the whole armor dynamic.)

[Polpolion]

The Zeus is flying joke. It's larger, slower, less agile and less resistant than an Herc.

Which is a damn shame because I personally love how it looks. 

[Akalabeth Angel]

I swear I must be the only person around here who never had any trouble beating A Game of TAG.

I don't have trouble beating it I have trouble enjoying it

[Mars]

I swear I must be the only person around here who never had any trouble beating A Game of TAG.

I don't have trouble beating it I have trouble enjoying it

MY KILLS! MINE! *Pewpewpewpewpewpewpewpewpewpewpewpewpewpewpewpew . . . (30 seconds later)

pew. . . pew *kaboom**

[LordPomposity]

I liked the nebula missions (except Game of Tag -- excellent concept ruined by flawed execution). Then again, I think the Hecate looks good, so take any of my opinions with a grain of salt.

I also enjoyed the Vasudan missions, although that might have been a different story without the Tauret.

Oh, and As Lightning Fall is my favorite retail mission. *ducks*

[Klaustrophobia]

i also think the hecate looks good.  i just wish it was worth a damn in combat.  those collossal spinal guns should rip through destroyers, not spit flak at little fighters.

[BritishShivans]

i also think the hecate looks good.  i just wish it was worth a damn in combat.  those collossal spinal guns should rip through destroyers, not spit flak at little fighters.

The Hecate's briefing icon looks nocer than the actual ship. The ship itself looks ridiculous up close and is a pain to escort. Speaking of ridicuous... anyone notice those silly engines on the Deimos and the Aeolus? The ones blocked by stuff?

Clearly, Terran Command's presence still lingers in the engineering department... 

They still look lovely though.

[Mikes]

Anyone play Archimedean Dynasty?

(If you have, you can most likely guess why I'm asking in a thread about nebulas heh.)

[Cyborg17]

I've played it.  Although, I haven't completed a play through yet.  The fog's pretty heavy in that game.  Still, I'd rather have Freespace's nebulas because of the visual patterns in the poofs.

If you haven't played it, it's an underwater combat simulator pretty similar to Freespace, except that there's terrain everywhere.  You can get it for free on Abandonia.  I'm pretty sure it requires DosBox to play.

[Hades]

• If It Was Supposed to be Awesome, the Mission Wasn't Debugged:
       A Game of Tag is mostly a dialogue mission (which is fine,) it does have the mildly entertaining addition of TAG missiles as well, and you get to fly the venerable Ulysses class fighter, a favorite from my childhood (if only they'd let you fly a Valkyrie), the problem I've had since I had a i486 COMPAQ - the dialogue gets out of order as soon as the lone Kappa fighter arrives.
  

A Game of Tag was really a dumb mission in general when you think about it. A test of a highly experimental weapon, in Shivan controlled space. The corvette's weapons are tied into the TAG system and apparently has no failsafe, while the fighters carrying said weapons are outdated and poorly armed with Prom Rs when, at this point, you have access to the Prom S.

My issue with it isn't so much in that it was testing in uncontrolled space, but so much that they didn't put a failsafe into the corvette's weapon systems in case the fighters died, and said fighters being largely outdated craft. It was also mostly a filler mission, aside from the bit with Kappa 3.

[Marcov]

I got to agree with the OP here, the Nebula sucked. I hate flying around in soup, and I totally felt homesick for Space.

Seconded.
Nebula missions don't actually suck for me per se, but spaceship fighting is designed for space, for ****'s sake. It was also kind of a glare for me, with all pink around and seeing your opponent's red brackets but not the ship was awkward, to say the least.

You mean Bakha.

... which is meh by comparison.

Sad day.....

Sad day indeed. I always love the Sekhmet as some kind of fighter-bomber, with a proper amount of guns (4 IIRC) while being able to carry quite a lot of secondaries. Ursas are too big and slow, and the turret usually gets maimed out anyway, Medusas are fine as pure bombers, Artemises are also good fighter-bombers, though not as good as the Sekhmet (can't remember why), but the Boanerges. It SUCKS. It's the most ****ty plane I've ever rode. Two guns, no turrets, and awfully sluggish movement? What the ****! I don't know of any reason why Command even sent THOSE bombers on a special mission against an enemy target of high priority.

Sorry to say this truth, Boanerges-lovers (if you even exist).

Now, being ontopic...

• Nebula missions:
       ...Often in Freespace 2 however, it feels like an excuse for the poor models of the past to remain under wraps - would anyone have known what a Hecate class destroyer looked like if it hadn't been for third party missions¹? There are significant tactical differences between a 'space' and 'nebula' mission, which can be quite entertaining; but often, nebula missions in the campagin are exactly the same as standard missions, without the ability to see ****.

Personally, I don't see the Hecate as a poor model. Though it's kind of a setback for old-timer FS1 fans due to its betrayal of the now-cliched "boxy" style for an FS ship, overall, it's intimidating enough. I think that they reasonably did it this way to make a more "modern"-esque warship. (when it's not; huge, Ursa-sized turrets firing flak?! 33% of the Orion's beampower?!)

• The Vasudan missions:
       ...Although some of the best and most properly challenging missions take place in the Vasudan Acts (Bearbaiting, The Fog of War) the majority of them showcase the failure of the Vasudan species, especially for anyone who plays Hard or Insane. Vasudan craft are incapable of taking any AAA fire whatsoever, without either spontaneously exploding (Serapis) or sustaining critical subsystem damage (Seth) the only fighter the Vasudans use that doesn't suffer from this is the Tauret, which has the unique problem of being able to run out of primary energy without destroying a single bomber (at 80% accuracy, Prometheus S equipped). I could live with Vasudan fighters, I really could, if the missions were designed around those failures.

I never actually noticed that Zod fighters were that frail to AAA beams. But I can say that I never liked the Tauret for said reason.

• If It Was Supposed to be Awesome, the Mission Wasn't Debugged:
        It's much worse in Their Finest Hour; when I first played it at the ripe age of . . . (eleven?) I actually had no idea what the plot line was supposed to be until the second time I played through. First Command demands ~"Let the warships do their job" which (on Insane) results in their destruction (as they are not properly weapon freed), and then there is the whole Collossus debacle, which one must be paying attention to in order for it to make the slightest sense.
  

I think that mission was really to make the player witness the quick death of the massivest, grandest piece of steel the player has ever seen in the campaign. Like Game of Tag, it's designed not for enjoyment, but as a plot tool mission (Kappa 3's involvement).

Just a side note; like many other FS players, I find "A Game of Tag" not only irritating, but almost completely an irrelevant mission to the story. Prometheus R is one of the suckier FS2 canon primaries that exist, but the Ulysses was more or less fine.
That, and I find the wing of Mara fighters firing endlessly at an invulnerable target one of the funniest moments in the game.

[Kosh]

• If It Was Supposed to be Awesome, the Mission Wasn't Debugged:
       A Game of Tag is mostly a dialogue mission (which is fine,) it does have the mildly entertaining addition of TAG missiles as well, and you get to fly the venerable Ulysses class fighter, a favorite from my childhood (if only they'd let you fly a Valkyrie), the problem I've had since I had a i486 COMPAQ - the dialogue gets out of order as soon as the lone Kappa fighter arrives.
  

A Game of Tag was really a dumb mission in general when you think about it. A test of a highly experimental weapon, in Shivan controlled space. The corvette's weapons are tied into the TAG system and apparently has no failsafe, while the fighters carrying said weapons are outdated and poorly armed with Prom Rs when, at this point, you have access to the Prom S.

My issue with it isn't so much in that it was testing in uncontrolled space, but so much that they didn't put a failsafe into the corvette's weapon systems in case the fighters died, and said fighters being largely outdated craft. It was also mostly a filler mission, aside from the bit with Kappa 3.

It's been a while since I replayed the campaign but as I recall the corvette's flak cannons and pirahnas were free. They also did have a wing of fighters on standby for backup if things went wrong. Besides, they knew they wouldnt need a fail safe, they had Alpha 1.

I swear I must be the only person around here who never had any trouble beating A Game of TAG.

I never had trouble either, the Ultra's can usually shoot down the Maras pretty quick.

i also think the hecate looks good.  i just wish it was worth a damn in combat.  those collossal spinal guns should rip through destroyers, not spit flak at little fighters.

Even so they are too poorly placed to be of much good. But such awesome weapons would distract from it's role as a carrier but it should not have been left alone the way it was because of that. The problem is the Deimos just didnt have the firepower to take down warships that quickly.

[LordPomposity]

i also think the hecate looks good.  i just wish it was worth a damn in combat.  those collossal spinal guns should rip through destroyers, not spit flak at little fighters.

Even so they are too poorly placed to be of much good. But such awesome weapons would distract from it's role as a carrier but it should not have been left alone the way it was because of that. The problem is the Deimos just didnt have the firepower to take down warships that quickly.

Is there anything in FS2 fluff to suggest that the Hecate was intended primarily as a carrier? As far as I know, "Hecate=carrier; Orion=frontline warship" is a fan-created rationalization for why the GTVA would build Hecates at all (despite the techroom rather clearly suggesting that the Hecate is superior all around).

[Qent]

Nope, but it totally fits. But why even have front-line destroyers when you could deploy corvettes instead?

[Mongoose]

Did you forget about heavy fighter/bomber attacks?  Despite flak and AAA, capital ships are still very vulnerable to fightercraft, and given that intersystem drives for fighters are still extremely expensive at the time of FS2, the fightercraft you need to counter the enemy's need to get to the right system somehow.  Enter the destroyer.

[headdie]

Indeed the though the Hecate lacks front line punch it makes up for it with greater tactical flexibility and fits in better with the GTVA's fighter orientated approach to battle.

another way of looking at it is to look at the development of fleet compositions from the first world war to now.

[Unknown Target]

I really hate the way the comms menu works. It's pretty cumbersome.

[sigtau]

I dunno... C-3-1 is the only way I could ever beat an FS2 mission in retail FS.

[Spoon]

I really hate the way the comms menu works. It's pretty cumbersome.

How would you go about improving it?