Thoughts after finishing the game

[Burzmali]

All right, I just finished my first pass through the game, playing through all 4 campaigns (aside from training) as a fighter pilot. I left the AI on veteran and played 'No holds barred' with respect to the AI. All in all, I have to say that this was a very enjoyable and addicting game and aside from some non-critical problems (which I will address later) a very well written one. Without spoilers, the campaigns felt more realistic than is similar games, unlike say in HW, I was never in position where I had to exploit my superiority as a human to swat mindless swarms of AI controlled targets. On the other hand, I still felt like I was an important part of the war effort. When on a sweep mission, I cheer when I run across bomber flights because taking them out meant 4 fewer threats to my fleet’s capships. Initially, I did a bit of aborting and restarting, but there really isn't a reason to, another plus. If you get blown out of the sky, your pilot survives and there are plenty of other fighters, and hopefully you made the AI pay for your one fighter with 3 or 4 of its own.

Mild Spoilers

The campaigns themselves seemed pretty balanced, though the final two had logic problems near their ends though. In Operation Firestorm, I soundly had the AI on the run on all fronts, yet the operation ends and is called a mediocre success, which seemed off. And in Operation Nightfall, I used the patented 'rabid kitten' strategy (mentioned below) to wipe almost all the enemy capships (including Zolons) off the map, and still I had to go through 5-6 extra missions to get the endgame screen (and no medal [:(]) after the final Intel report. And, to Milo or whoever made the campaigns, you’d before be working on a sequel or expansion pack, leaving an ending up in the air like that is a hanging crime in some states [;)]

End Spoilers

On to my problems then. First, as I mentioned elsewhere, atmospheric combat is still needs tweaking. When I am stationed at planetary starbase, some of the time one of the waypoints is underground turning my fighter into a multimillion dollar lawn dart when I try to SHIFT + INS to the next waypoint. On top of that, some AAA and SAM site may be mislabeled (?) as I've by lazed down by a SAM once or twice (2nd campaign, I think). The second significant problem is capship inattention to fighters. Frigates will go all out to swat a fighter down, but anything bigger will happily remain stationary while I nibble its hull down to 0% move off to 30k and blow it up with an ASM. I have applied for the patent on this method as the 'rabid kitten' technique. It works great on every capship but frigates (and can work on those if you are good with thrusters), including the Zolons. I'm sorry, but when I can fight a snub fighter onto the flight deck of an enemy carrier and nibble it apart from the inside (all the while shooting down any fighters that want to launch) something needs some tweaking. At the vary least, capships should move to cover each other so that I can't evade all their flak by translating down 3k.

Some requests, nothing major, but things that would be nice.

"Get Clear from Target" radio call, too often have I toasted my allies because they were too close to a capship when I popped it. My flight can be called back into formation, but it would help if I could tell Control to have any other flights in the area back away from my target.

Thruster sub-system for fighters. Maybe I've been lucky, but I have always been able to use a fighter's thrusters. It just seems odd that I can complete a patrol with both my Drive and Reactor red, while out of fuel, by using my vessel’s thrusters.

View window. Any chance that a zoomed in image of your target could be added to the MFD dial? I've often found myself flipping in to the overhead (F3) view solely to figure out which direction I am approaching a target from due to all the junk in the center of my HUD blocking my view.

Next up, tackling the game as a capship captain with the AI turned up to Ace [;)]

[Pheagey]

Sude! doint away the fighter thruster thing! Ive made it home to many times like that! Anyways, glad you liked Ss. Sometime in the near futur (crosses figures) Ill have my server up and I want you to write some tactics...