Description
A very dangerous and lethal prototype is leaving to Antares so that the GTI can use the bomb. Your mission is to stop the GTSC Nova from delivering this bomb.

Storyline:
The evil GTI is developing a new type of warhead with the ability to slice the hull integrity of an Orion destroyer in half in one hit. Needless to say, we want to stop the development of the project from going any further. Not a bad plot, but the briefing isn't very polished. The grid is skewed most of the time and the jump nodes aren't labeled, so the GTSC Nova icon seems to glide from one empty spot to another.

Balance:
You can choose any fighter for yourself and your wing, along with any weapon and warhead. Your wing is fitted with Valkyries as a default, but you might want to change that since you'll go up against another wing of Hercules fighters which can cause a headache if your piloting a light fighter.

Design:
The design is fairly solid, except a few little complaints I have. The big one is when the GTSC Nova itself jumps in and it's invulnerable. Command tells you to find a way to destroy it, but you aren't given any more clues as to what to do. You have to blow up one of the nearby cargo containers, and you have to do it fast since the jump nodes are a little more than 3 km from each other. More instruction should be given during this part of the mission, since it could throw a lot of people off. <p> Another strange feature is the inclusion of a third jump node for some strange reason. This node is used by one of the enemy Orions, but the other one doesn't get it's own node? The nodes are also scrunched together, the farthest distance being a bit over 3 km. This leaves the player with little time to take down the enemy ships. <p> Those two enemy Orions are also placed parallel with the GTSC Nova. Since Orions come flying out of subspace at nearly 300 meters a second, they take quite a while to decelerate. This puts the Orions a couple kilometers away from the vessels they're supposed to escort. The bonus objective also involves destroying the two enemy Orions, but a wing of fighters isn't going to have a hope of doing that since they'll leave if the Nova project ships escape or get destroyed.

Gameplay:
Unless you like making attack runs on larger vessels, you might find this mission somewhat boring - But who doesn't like to make attack runs on larger ships? The Orions don't pose a threat to you, and the enemy fighters aren't too incredible, either. Again, the thing with the cargo might get confusing, so mow through all the containers when the Nova arrives. Also make sure your wingmen survive, because taking down a Leviathan cruiser in the window of a few minutes alone won't be easy.

Other Thoughts:
Those two Orions are a waste of time and CPU cycles.