There's nothing else like it in deathmatch, though. I've never seen an AI that can really handle a ship with that kind of maneuverability, but I've played again

There's nothing else like it in deathmatch, though. I've never seen an AI that can really handle a ship with that kind of maneuverability, but I've played against other humans who could, and it plays out like something out of Babylon 5's wettest dreams - just an absolutely wild and barely predictable furball, especially because any time you're not closely pressing your opponent you risk them severely contracting your maneuver options with a missile launch. Too, as the linked video helps demonstrate, it makes attacking capships a lot more feasible and a lot more fun - most games' capships are extremely hard targets for fighters because of their defensive armament and because a fighter operating as if aerodynamically constrained has a hard time making a strafing pass count. Freespace 2 gives bombers shipkiller missiles to help with this, but it's still a real problem with ships that mount a lot of point defense - as it is, those are so good at swatting fighters that you don't really have any way to answer them. Lifting the aerodynamic maneuvering limitation rebalances the engagement in a way that gives attacking fighters a lot more tactical flexibility, and gives a good deal of added salience and complexity to the escort role besides.