Description
Help guard the GTF Ulysses 1 to his jump point while Shivans jump in next to him throughout the mission.

Storyline:
This mission takes a different approach from many other "massive space battles." Instead of escorting a capital ship or a transport that is endangered by the Shivans, in Chase Alpha 1 is called upon to defend a GTF Ulysses as it has valuable information on the Shivans. This simple, yet elegant, mission idea has great potential. Unfortunately, much of that potential is untapped. Instead of taking the opportunity to place a human face on GTA pilots and the need to rescue your fellow Top Guns, the mission simply calls the ship you must defend and escort "GTF Ulysses 1." Similarly, all of the other friendly ships have lackluster names. Why not give the pilot the name "Starbuck" or some other name sure to create some reaction? Why not have some friendly banter back and forth between the pilots during the rescue? This mission fits this style of storytelling perfectly, but the opportunity is missed. <p> Also missing is the background of the mission the GTF Ulysses was involved in where they gathered the information on the Shivans. And there really isn't much tension about the Shivans "tracking" the progress of the retreat. And the entire purpose of the retreat is so that the Ulysses gets "close enough to the Orion to jump" -- but wouldn't a story of a retreat to dock or retreat within 1000 meters of the Orion be a much more realistic story? Even the briefing is lackluster, telling you to "be advised" that Shivans are in the area as a few icons appear on top of each other. Instead of being drawn into the mission, it seems sterile and poorly done.

Balance:
The balance could be somewhat acceptable, as the Ulysses has only 15% hull and Shivan Scorpion fighters will warp in one at a time close to it. There aren't many hostile fighters, but they are maneuverable, swift, and deadly if you allow them to get the proper angle on the Ulysses. There aren't many ships on either side, so the balancing issue is simplified somewhat. <p> However, the loadout shows a gross oversight on the part of the designer. You can choose from any ship, which is a poor design choice when Alpha will only face one Shivans at a time. A GTF Hercules or a bomber would be completely inconsistent with the mission and also horribly unbalance the mission. The default Valkyries are perfect for the mission, so don't touch them or the balance will be destroyed! And that leads us to the other problem...you can't touch the weapons loadout. This usually wouldn't be a problem if you had only a few ships to choose from or were in a scramble mission (which this mission could do nicely). But if you WANTED, for example, to jump into a Hercules then you'd only be armed with one ML-16 cannon and one Prometheus cannon, plus 10 MX-10 missiles. The Prometheuses are probably too powerful and an Avenger would do just fine, but at least give the ability to load the ships the player can choose from. At the minimum, allow the player to load up on Furies or MX-10s if they wish (unless you're doing a scramble or red alert mission, or the mission would be unbalanced as a result -- likely due to the Furies).

Design:
This mission suffers from two critical design flaws: an absurd waypoint system and breaking the mission by issuing any player order. The story states that the Ulysses can't jump until it gets closer to the Orion, which is 36,000 meters away. Luckily, you don't have to wait for the Ulysses to go that far but you will wait as the Ulysses attempts to complete a waypoint pattern 16,000 meters long in FRED. However, the actual distance in the waypoint path is much longer, as the Ulysses will cut back and forth in a complex and unnecessary waypoint pattern that takes about 4 minutes for each leg. The worst part is that the Ulysses will stick to its waypoint pattern even after the incoming Shivan fighters are destroyed. After ten minutes of weaving, it is hard to see that ANY progress is being made in the mission and I expect only the terminally bored or curious will stick around until the end. <p> Unfortunately, Alpha 1 can easily give orders to the Ulysses which will "break" the mission, such as attacking any target or moving into formation. Because Player Orders are set to priorities over 90, the player orders would be processed before the "waypoints-once" orders at priority 89 are completed. Simply turning off the Player Orders could prevent this mission-defeating issue. <p> This is clearly an early FRED design, as ships are named the default names as you add objects into FRED (GTF Ulysses 1, SF Scorpion 3, etc.). The briefing is also very poorly done, as the icons overlap and just don't make any sense at all. However, there are some correctly done design factors present: the objectives appear to be correctly designed, the events should send their messages, and objectives are used. However, Escort and Defense type missions should have the "Escort Ship" flag (in Ship Editor / Misc) activated so that the ship's Hull status appears on the HUD. On a final note, when the Shivans DO arrive their ship placement is nicely done so as to appear "close" to the GTF Ulysses due to a good use of the Arrival/Near Ship settings in the Ship Editor. Too bad the Ulysses aggravatingly doesn't actually GO anywhere for most of the mission...

Gameplay:
Although it will run extremely smoothly on any system due to its simplistic design, this mission just isn't fun at all. Watching the Ulysses fly back and forth is very nice, as you get a great view of the ship from all angles. But after a while, the display of the Ulysses maneuvers will get very boring and old. The few Shivans do spice things up a bit, but recieve only the lukewarm reception you'd expect from a solo album by one of the Spice Girls. Rather than be a spectator in this rather bad show, I'd recommend watching an episode of Jerry Springer. It'll probably take the same amount of time, it leaves the same icky taste in your mouth, and at least with Jerry you're guaranteed SOME action.

Other Thoughts:
Just keeping the waypoint path simple and adding a few "Evade Ship" default AI orders could have alleviated a major problem in this mission.