Eder
Mr. Standoff
You will be able to choose your ship whenever it makes sense to let you do so. For example, in most strike missions, you will be able to choose between leading the wing of bombers (Sabres, Crossbows, or Gladii, depending on the mission) or leading the wing of escort fighters (usually Rapiers).
Another example: in some other strike missions, (where either there are no escort fighters or they are launched from some other carrier which is working together with your carrier in the operation) you might be allowed to choose between using Crossbows or Sabres for the bombing run - provided, of course, that you have enough ships of each type, since the game will keep track of your losses throughout the entire campaign (and since you'll start off without any Crossbows onboard, and you won't earn them in the losing path
)
However, some other types of missions will not allow you to select your ship - scrambles are a good example
As for wingmen and loadout, there's no "built-in" selection method for these in the Vision engine... and personally I don't think it would make much of a difference. Therefore you'll always use the default loadout (of course, versatile ships like the Sabre do have a few different loadouts, but they will be picked by the game depending on the mission type), and you'll always have your best wingmen in the most important positions (either leading any other wings that are launched from your carrier or flying on your wing) with the lesser skilled wingmen filling the remaining spots.
--Eder
Another example: in some other strike missions, (where either there are no escort fighters or they are launched from some other carrier which is working together with your carrier in the operation) you might be allowed to choose between using Crossbows or Sabres for the bombing run - provided, of course, that you have enough ships of each type, since the game will keep track of your losses throughout the entire campaign (and since you'll start off without any Crossbows onboard, and you won't earn them in the losing path
)However, some other types of missions will not allow you to select your ship - scrambles are a good example
As for wingmen and loadout, there's no "built-in" selection method for these in the Vision engine... and personally I don't think it would make much of a difference. Therefore you'll always use the default loadout (of course, versatile ships like the Sabre do have a few different loadouts, but they will be picked by the game depending on the mission type), and you'll always have your best wingmen in the most important positions (either leading any other wings that are launched from your carrier or flying on your wing) with the lesser skilled wingmen filling the remaining spots.
--Eder
(It's not like I have anything better to do, anyway