Description
Command sends you out on another 'distroy-the-transport' runs. Makes you wish for a little more excitement, no? Ask and you will receive......

Storyline:
Two Shivian freighters are going to move between the Delta-Hydra and Delta-Armanis Jump Nodes. Command wants you to scan them and destroy them. Along the way, you'll have to protect a Leviathan from two Lilith cruisers and then escort it to a jump node. Simple enough storyline, although the systems given are not mentioned anywhere in the Freespace universe, and the reason for escorting the Leviathan, damaged engines, is rather laughable. The briefing is short but adequate; it includes a number of newbie mistakes, such as jump nodes with navbouy models, that are indicative of a designer's first mission.

Balance:
This mission can range from moderately difficult to an exercise in frustration. It will certainly take several attempts to select the perfect ship loadout to deal with the sometimes overwhelming fighter cover and a pair of Lilith cruisers, but it is possible. Expect heavy casualties, however. <p> The ship and missile selection is somewhat counterintuitive. There are plenty of light fighters and heavy bombers available, but there are not enough light missiles to deal with the fighter threat. You will be forced to fight Dragons and Manticores with Synaptics and Phoenix V's, instead of the more ideal Interceptors and Hornets. However, you will have an easier time dealing with the freighters and cruisers once you get past the Shivian swarm.

Design:
This is where "Jump 'Em" really falls short. The mission is totally devoid of directives, uses a limited number of messages, and has oddly-named friendly wings, which makes tracking your allies' statuses difficult. Ship placement makes limited use of the y-axis, and an absolutely useless and distracting set of pass-through asteroids are used instead of an actual asteroid field. Ships and jump nodes are given their default names, meaning you get to watch ships move from Jump Node 0 to Jump Node 1 and protect a cruiser called "Leviathan 34." The enemy Liliths that warp in are in a wing, and because of that end up getting stuck on each other. This isn't so bad, however, since the Leviathan is not equipped with any ship-to-ship weapons, save the default laser turrets. If you manage to protect it from the Liliths, you get to follow it to the middle of the battle field, and then watch it turn around to get to its destination, all at a blazing 10 meters a second – or slower, if it was heavily damaged – because of improper waypoint order prioritization. <p> On the plus side, the briefing and message waves are very well done, although the in-game messages do not make use of message vids. The mission also makes use of hidden objectives that validate as the battle unfolds, and the debriefing responds appropriately to the player's performance and offers useful recommendations. And technically speaking, the mission works; it's not going to crash or hang or fail to update an objective properly.

Gameplay:
Despite the thin storyline, layout headaches, and careless design, this mission still manages to be quite a bit of fun. The inattentive player can easily be distracted by the fighters and forget about the freighters, and the dogfight can get pretty intense with a slower, less manuverable ship. The waves' arrival times are very closely spaced, however, meaning that an intense period of dogfighting is followed by great lulls in the battle. The freighters themselves are fast and tough, which means that destroying them before they jump out will be quite difficult if you are also dealing with fighters. The Liliths provide a significant threat to the Leviathan, and the player will have to deal with all his other tasks quickly if he is to protect them. All in all, not bad. Gameplay clearly suffers from bad design, however, as the lack of directives and wing status indicators contribute greatly to battlefield confusion and frustration.

Other Thoughts:
Don't rush off into battle; hang back and deal with the fighters piecemeal, firing off a shot or two in the freighters' direction every once in a while. Don't be afraid of destroying them before you can scan them, as they can take quite a beating. <p> This mission would have benefited greatly from even just one more hour of work. Let this be a lesson to you mission designers: don't rush!