Description
Destroy all pirate cargo near sector 20

Storyline:
While not unbelievable, the storyline is sparse at best. You are told to destroy all pirate cargo (and pirates) in sector 20. That's about all you get. One of your secondary objectives is to defend the PVC Aten. Two problems with this: 1 - can we say "unimaginative name?" 2 - why is this even an objective? It doesn't fit into what little story there is, and there is no mention of it in the briefing (other than the objectives screen). Briefing and debriefing, while technically correct, consist of little more than one-sentence stages, and have some awkward gramatical issues. There are a few in-game messages, but they do little more than alert you to the completion or failure of your objective.

Balance:
This is really a low point of the mission that could easily have been resolved by going through the ships editor and giving enemy ships some weapons that are useful against shields. As it stands now, nearly all enemy ships are equipped with an avenger, and ML-16, and MX-50's. It seems that most of the default settings in FRED were not changed. There are a few enemy ships that are equipped with flails or phoenix V's, but the ships that have them are occupied trying to destroy the Aten and usually bite the dust before you even realize they are there, since they happen to be a good 6000 meters behind your starting position. Joining them is a Fenris cruiser that you probably won't even notice, since there are no messages to alert you to its presence. I finished the mission with minimal damage (caused by a collision, not hostile fire), even though there were many more hostiles than usual.

Design:
Okay, first the good news. There is good use of all 3 axes, and every ship is named(although most of the names were either unimaginative or just ridiculous). Now the bad news. On top of the balancing issues mentioned above, the biggest problem is that you will probably fail the secondary objective without even knowing why. The layout of the mission makes it confusing, and you probably won't even see the two cruisers way in the background. Another major issue is that one of the primary objectives (destroy all pirates) is made true by destroying only one ship. This is very strange, considering that the objective to destroy all cargo is properly coded and a similar sexp could be used on the "destroy all pirates" objective. Also, there are no warp in sequences, all ships are present at the beginning of the mission. This is a shame because several of the messages are tied to the arrival of ships that are already there. Some messages are tied to totally unrelated events, which adds to the confusion of the player. On the whole, this mission seems rushed and untested.

Gameplay:
Not a total loss, it is playable, and you get to shoot down several enemy ships. There's a sort of sadism in taking down ships that are virtually harmless to you, but it does get old pretty quick. You'll want to mosey on back to the Fenris to take it down for a little added value, but it is far too easy to beat this mission once you figure out where the secondary objective is.

Other Thoughts:
This mission seems like it was trying to do too much with a simple premise.