Description
GTA command has lost contact with a command station into the Valtar sector. Reports indicate a rebel faction of terran terrorists in the sector. You must protect the command station or destroy it, depending on the situation.

Storyline:
"Where's the Traitors?" I must ask in my best impersonation of an 80s Wendy's commercial. The very detailed briefing describes the attack plan on the command station (a GTI Arcadia), but doesn't clearly explain the story. <p> The following is what I could gather from the above mission description, the command briefing and the mission briefing. The GTA has lost contact with a command station which initially reported being attacked. Scouts sent to investigate found themselves under attack by Terrans, so the GTA is sending in a heavy assault force to "do a full scan on it to be sure it has not been contaminated." If the command station is contaminated, then destroy it. <p> Confused yet? I was, until realizing that the author must have intended that something "corrupted" the Terrans into becoming hostile. Or, perhaps, the terrorists unleashed microbes into the station and the GTA is willing to exterminate the lives of hundreds of innocents to prevent the spread of the plague. Nothing in the mission ever explained the cause of any possible contamination, and no debriefing explains the end result of the mission.

Balance:
Pilots will find themselves behind the stick of a GTF Ulysses, armed with dual Prometheus cannons and a bay full of Hornets. No other weapon or ship selections are permitted. This is unfortunate since the Ulysses greatly outclasses the hostile Apollo fighters and assorted bombers, even with the enemy on the General AI setting. <p> In addition, Alpha will find itself dwarfed as it participates in an full-scale assault on the installation. The thin hull of the Ulysses makes it extremely vulnerable in the ensuing chaos. Expect to outfly the enemy fighters until a team of hostile fighters finally scores a few hits or a capital ship connects with a lucky shot.

Design:
This mission suffers from the Battle of Endor syndrome, simulating an enormous assault on the Command Station. With two Orion destroyers and an Arcadia installation in the midst of a massive number of fighters, my system crashed twice during testing. Unless you have a powerful Pentium II system, expect to end up firing on your desktop icons. If your system doesn't crash, prepare for a simulation of a badly lagged multiplayer session hosted on a 28.8 modem. <p> The cause of the crashes is the enormous number of fighters/bombers in the mission. Over twelve wings could be in play, and some wings have up to five waves that arrive before the destruction of all ships in the prior wave. <p> No directives are enabled, so you must pay careful attention to the event-driven messages for orders. All the events were created to send messages, so you won't notice any "branching" in the mission. No debriefings were implemented. <p> Two Orion cruisers are set a large distance from each other, allowing plenty of time for dogfighting during travel. However, the hostile Orion will place itself in the path of the friendly Orion. This results in the two cruisers getting dangerously close to each other. When one is destroyed, expect most of the fighters dogfighting between the cruisers to be annihilated by the blast. The warning message often arrives too late to do anything.

Gameplay:
Plenty of replay value, basically because you're flying a very maneuverable but vulnerable fighter into a heavy battle. The General AI makes enemy fighters somewhat difficult to destroy, but their Apollos and bombers hang like beached whales in your target recticle. Don't expect to complete the mission, though, unless you hang back as the massive GTA force punctures through all defenses. Since there are many GTA fighters and bombers, this mission could be solved just by waiting until the end, scanning the station and then ordering all ships to attack.

Other Thoughts:
Evidence that the Battle of Endor syndrome continues to thrive in Freespace missions.