Description
You must protect the disabled GTD Lavantis until a repair ship arrives, then escort her to the jump node. Many ships involved including a Cain class cruiser.

Storyline:
The GTD Lavantis is stranded in the Delta Serpentis system following a Hammer of Light attack. A GTT Elysium transport will dock to complete repairs. Protect this science vessel, so that it may join the defense of Vasdua Prime. Eliminate the large group of Shivans and all the enemy fighters. <p> This is a believable scenario that ties in well with the Great War campaign, providing a good incentive to complete your mission. However, it is doubtful that one science vessel can be of much help defending Vasuda Prime. In addition, naming the Elysium transport the "Orion" is potentially confusing since Terran Destroyers are classified as "GTD Orions."

Balance:
The ship loadout allows the player to use any of the fighters, the more powerful cannons (Disruptor, Avenger, Prometheus, and Banshee) and the most commonly used missiles (Interceptor, Hornet, and Phoenix). With this large weapon selection, it seems strange that MX-50s or Flails aren't allowed. MX-50s are excellent tools to destroy incoming bombs, and Flails are wonderful defense weapons. Either of these selections would make the mission somewhat easier. <p> There are many defenders which will confront wave after wave of attackers. Perhaps there are a few too many defenders, since hostile bombers have only a short amount of time to engage the GTD Lavantis before being annihilated. However, the Shivans do manage to do an enormous amount of damage and still present a real threat. Some additional fighters would have been an interesting threat if they covered the flight of the bombers and ignored the GTD Lavantis. Instead, the mission includes fighters at the end of the flight path as a "final hurdle" for the player to vanquish.

Design:
This mission doesn't use directives, even though events exist that could be linked to the directive text. Instead, this mission chooses to send in-flight messages. However, these messages aren't accompanied by any sounds. This is unfortunate, since many of these messages could have easily been modified to recycle the built-in sounds from the game. <p> Hostile ships are placed in the flight path of the GTD Lavantis and the timing spaces out each wing. However, these objects could be oriented better in the mission. First, the Y-axis is not used to place the ships at different heights - making them harder targets to hit. Secondly, the hostile ships often arrive too close to the GTD Lavantis (sometimes as close as 400 meters) on the X-axis, even though they appear at an appropriate time. This makes it difficult to obtain a target lock for their missiles, so much of the damage is caused by cannon fire. Third, all the ships have a heading/pitch/bank of 0.00. This forces the bombers to rotate towards their target upon arrival, making them an easy target for the Terrans to pick off before shooting any shot. Placing the Shivans at a further distance on the X and Y axis and orienting them towards the GTD Lavantis would give the Shivan bombers a better chance to attain a lock and fire their deadly payloads. It would also provide the Terrans a better chance to take out any incoming bombs. <p> Another placement problem is created by the Shivan Cain cruiser, the Evereth, which often arrives literally almost on top of the poor GTD Lavantis. Capital ships arrive in the mission at phenomenal speeds, and will cover large distances very quickly. In every mission I played, the Everth quickly plowed through, and destroyed, the GTD Lavantis. This occurred even when the Lavantis had a hull strength of over 60 percent. Since the Everth is armed only with Weak Shivan Turrents, this damage is definitely the result of a capital ship collission. I doubt that the Everth was intended to be used as a Kamikaze. As this mission stands, I couldn't finish due to this problem. <p> Finally, the GTD Lavantis will visibly move as it decellerates from arrival. A slightly longer player-arrival delay would solve this visible evidence that the Lavantis isn't really "dead in the water." <p> However, the docking events work (and I liked the flight path of the GTT Elysium). The warpout event would work after the GTD Lavantis completed the waypoints ending in the Jump Node. This mission does have some design strengths, but polishing could slighly increase the difficulty and greatly improve balance and gameplay.

Gameplay:
With the Kamikaze Everth, this mission is virtually unwinnable. Perhaps the only way to avoid a catastophic end would be to disable (but not destroy) one of the Secor fighters. These Manticores are amazingly dangerous by themselves, however, as they are armed with Hornet missiles. Until you figure out the kamikaze capital ship problem, Alpha faces a frantic battle as Shivan bombers arrive at point-blank range to threaten the GTD Lavantis. Even though the Terran fighters will make short work of each wing, only a few bombs must make it through to turn the GTD Lavantis into space dust. This makes the mission very replayable and challenging.

Other Thoughts:
Fix the kamikaze Lavantis and bomber wing placement, while adding the directives and sounds, and this could be a very good mission. I'd really like to try this mission again in an updated version. Please take the hint, as I spent a long time going over this mission to do the review.