Welcome to the club of Standoff players!
Standoff is way harder than any of the official Wing Commander games, which is part of its charm. You actually have to get good at it to progress through the game, so it's not like any kid can grab a joystick and save the universe. Combining the speed-based Prophecy engine with WC2-era weapons (which are really lethal relative to the shields and armor of the day) and a decent AI makes survival a challenge. To make matters worse, some of the official Wing Commander games reinforce bad habits that will get you killed real quick in Standoff. Like ignoring enemies on your tail to get another kill, or holding down the AB button...
I found Standoff really hard when I first started, until I figured out a few things:
* Make staying alive your #1 priority, like Paladin advises in Claw Marks. If someone's on your tail, get them off, even if you're about to make a kill.
* Learn to conserve you AB fuel. Tap or pulsate your burners, don't lean on them. Don't use AB to chase down evasive enemies...use them only for evasive action, closing quickly (and briefly) to get a solid kill, or to quickly get over to a mission-critical target/objective.
* Targeting your guns in the Standoff engine is tricky, especially with mass drivers, which fly really slow. Don't waste energy sniping from a distance...close till you're sure of your shot and unload your entire gun capacitors in quick succession. Don't overly rely on the ITTS: not only do some ships not have it, but it won't help you hit a maneuvering enemy at longer ranges. In time, you'll learn the maneuvers the AI likes to pull and how to lead your shots taking that into account...until then, don't waste shots unless you're in close.
* Don't go head to head with an enemy and trade damage unless you're in a Crossbow. Really. There's a lot more of them then there are of you.
* If the game is too hard, don't be ashamed of turning the difficulty down a little. Alternatively, try turning the difficulty *UP*. It's believed that at higher difficulties, both the opponent AND the friendly AI get better, so your wingmen become better at staying alive and more helpful at completing mission objectives. There were some missions I could never beat on Ace (the default), but could beat on one difficulty level higher, because my wingmen helped me out more.
And finally, take heart...barring the first mission, the Prologue missions are not the easiest missions in the game. In fact, the Prologue finale is probably (in my opinion) one of the five hardest missions in the game (and another of the five hardest is also one of the Prologue branches). Life will get easier (for a while) once you get into Episode 2.
Oh, and by the way...unless you're a Standoff expert, whatever you do, DON'T skip Nav 1 and Nav 2 in the first mission and head straight to the jump point.
