Description
Occurs before the Shivans arrive, and the Vasudan war is heating up. You are ordered to test an advanced Athena bomber prototype, but get a little more action than you expected.

Storyline:
Set during the 14-year war, the premise in TF is a wonderful one: you get to test the new Athena bomber and two amazing new weapons, Synaptic bombs and Avenger Cannon. This is also maintained in the briefing and mission, with Command ordering you to keep that bomber out of enemy hands at all costs and having the research ship's fighter screen be told to leave it and save you.

Balance:
While the player is not allowed to select the ship or weapons, I can't object to that; the player is supposed to be testing these things and wouln't be given a choice in the matter. The enemy is a bit easy to destroy if the player gives the right orders to his/her wingmen, but always provides a fine set of opponents. While there are no good missiles in the provided setup, that's no problem - both the player and his wingmen are equipped with Avengers, which can make short work of the unshielded hulls of the Vasudans here. While the four friendly Apollos may die rather quickly, they're not needed by the time they've all bitten the dust; the research ship's guns are more than enough support to finish off a few Seths.

Design:
For the most part, the design in TF is fantastic. The timing of the events is superb, and the enemy comes in waves of good size. However, I have one major complaint: The player only needs to kill the test targets in order to jump out victoriously. While the player <i>is</i> required to stick around for a while (like five minutes) till the Kill the Drones objective is complete, why not add another primary to kill the enemy or somesuch? There's no reason for there to be such a long delay in THAT objective. Still, even after all the changes in this updated version - like swapping out the vast support for mere Apollos, making the mission <i>much</i> more challenging - there are some problems. Namely, the enemy all spawn about 3 klicks from the sci station that serves as the obvious point to stick around, with the huge guns of that ship supporting the player's forces. This means there's a long, annoying wait for the enemy. These two, minor bugs- both of which, ironically enough, were spawned by the updates. There are some other problems - killing the enemy should <i>NOT</i> be a bonus objective at all, and there should be a Defend Shadyside Station order - but they are relatively minor.

Gameplay:
This is a <i>blast</i> the great technology (ie, Avengers) available to the player's forces pitted against the superior numbers of the Vasudans. The number of ships the player must face at a given time, however, is no more than the number of craft on the player's side, making for a tricky - but not by any means impossible - dogfight. The bugs, while annoying, don't really affect gameplay that much, and overall, this is just fun.

Other Thoughts:
Almost perfect! The updated version is a good deal better. Maybe v. 3.0 will earn a full five stars...