Description
Alpha wing must help a combined Terran/Vasuden battle group to destroy a what appears to be a lightly guarded rebel installation, although, things could get interesting.

Storyline:
A reasonable storyline here, though nothing earth shattering. The command briefing is okay, though why the NTF would place an installation below a destroyer is terms of things to keep near GTVA space is a mystery. The briefing and debriefing both contain spelling errors, but all of the ships and icons match up nicely. Unfortunately, due to s-exp errors the debriefing will return as incomplete unless you save every friendly capital ship and destroy the outpost, despite it saying that there was nothing you could do to save the corvettes in the event that you lose them. More messages would have been nice too.

Balance:
The forces that attack the NTF base are overpowering. With a destroyer, two corvettes and two fighter wings taking on just the installation, a few sentries, and a couple of inferior fighter wings it’s a massacre. However, when the Bithrombar springs to life the tables are turned quite rapidly. It’s sometimes very difficult to prevent the destruction of the Vasudan destroyer, owing mainly to the Orion’s beam cannons and the proximity of the bombers to the Boromir. On the other hand, weapons loadout is excellent – for once someone removed those multiplayer variants and made a good period loadout.

Design:
Design is fairly good in the mission, apart from the aforementioned debriefing problems. The messages use send-message-list despite the fact that there are so few of them. Beam weapons all work, although thereÂ’s no need for an event to beam-free the installation as it has no beam weapons. Directives all work and waypoints are also used. ThereÂ’s even a background, which isnÂ’t too shabby.

Gameplay:
The main problem with missions involving lots of capital ships is the feel that the player hasn’t got anything to do that will really affect the battle, and it’s that problem here. There is one wing of bombers to intercept, but they do little damage compared to the NTF Orion. The feeling that you can’t do anything is particularly obvious at the start of the mission – at least you can destroy the beam weapons on that Orion.

Other Thoughts:
The Ganymede has to have absolutely the best damage model. As it gets hit, bits come off it, even though itÂ’s not destroyed. Cool...try it if you want, this mission has a couple of the things...