Description
You must fly escort for a group of Terran cruisers on a mission to destroy two Shivan cruisers and their fighter escort.

Storyline:
One Fenris is attacking two Shivan Cruisers, but reinforcements should arrive in the form of two more Fenris cruisers. Another Shivan destroyer has been spotted in the area. Line the Shivans up and knock them down. <p> That's it -- no more story. This is unfortunate, because it calls your attention to the poorly designed briefing. In addition to being rather boring, the briefing icons are horribly cluttered into an absolute mess. The briefing ends up a massive blob of red for the Shivans and a massive blob of green for the Terrans.

Balance:
Your ship selection allows you to take any ship but the Ursa or Ulysses. I can understand why the Ursa wasn't included, but why not the Ulysses? It's a popular ship for many pilots and doesn't create a game imbalance like a Valkyrie (too much speed) or Hercules (too many guns). In the end, the ship selection doesn't matter, since you have only five of each missile type. It isn't possible to even fill an Apollo with this selection! <p> The weapons will default to Avengers and Disruptors, which doesn't make any sense for a capital ship assault. The other wing will be armed with ML-16s and Prometheus cannons. There aren't enough cannons to go around (again, five of each type), so you'll waste a lot of time outfitting each ship. <p> If you cannibalize your wingmen for the scarce weapons, expect them to drop dead like flies during the battle. The brunt of the mission is on the shoulders of Alpha 1, who can annihilate all of the Shivans with ease because there aren't enough fighters to be a real threat. Even though this mission is supposed to be about a capital ship battle, Alpha 1 armed with dual Prometheus cannons will be racking up the kills because none of the capital ships are heavily armed enough to do any real damage.

Design:
The mission ran suprisingly smoothly for all of the capital ships in the mission. I was quite suprised with this incarnation of the Battle of Endor syndrome, since it focused mainly on creating a capital ship battle. There were only a few Shivan fighters in play at any one time, only two wings to defend three capital ships and no bombers to attack. <p> Ship placement was poor on the two dimensional plane: the GTC Golgoth will collide with the SC Lilith and both will thrash back and forth. As the two capital ships flail back and forth, the Terran reinforcements will arrive from subspace nearby. With too many capital ships in such a small space, it is clear that the capital ships are intended to gang up on each other. Unfortunately, the bombers will be launching their few missiles into the midst of this capital ship huddle to damage friend and foe alike. <p> This mission also provides proof that capital ships, with their default turrents, are <b>no match</b> for a fighter armed with Prometheus cannons. At the end of this mission, three Fenris cruisers had pounded on one Shivan destroyer until its hull was down to 66%. During the time it took the THREE cruisers to reduce the hull another 10%, I was able in my Hercules to unleash 80 Hornets plus six Prometheus cannons to finish off the other 56%! <p> Finally, waves will continue to arrive even after the capital ships are destroyed. This is frustrating, since you would assume that the mission was over by then. But it's not over until the last Shivan meets their maker. A directive would have made it easier to verify this, but that would have required there be some actual <b>events</b> in this mission.

Gameplay:
There weren't enough targets to make up for the design flaws in this mission, so I ended up annoyed at the end. The extremely poor weapon selection made the wingmen useless even when they weren't dead. There just aren't enough fighters to be a credible defense for the Shivan capital ships. Finally, it was frustrating to see just how poorly prepared the default capital ship is to deal with other capital ships. Having to finish the work of <u>three</u> capital ships just didn't seem right at all.

Other Thoughts: