Description
Command has picked up some strong energy signals being emitted from the star system Canopus, a system of unknown potential. The GTD Hawk and GTC Yorktown have been selected to find out what is giving off these signals. This is a preview of a campaign I'm making.

Storyline:
The storyline for this mission is decent, and is presented with well done command and mission briefings. There are a couple of spelling errors (no big deal, but it does detract from the immersion a bit), but the biggest problem is that there is only a debriefing if you fail, and it merely tells you that you are expected to do your job and doesn't tell you the consequences of your failure. The story is pretty much dropped after the briefing since there are very few in game messages, and when you win the mission, it goes to red alert status, and you're just kicked back into the main hall. While necesary for the way the mission was designed, it is rather annoying, since the story had potential, and I really wanted it to go somewhere.

Balance:
The first thing you'll notice is that there is no weapon or ship selection. I could understand this if there were some story to back it up, but here there's really no reason for it. Fortunately, you are given some decent weapons (two prometheus and two racks of hornets) on your apollo, and while my personal preference is different, the weapons and ship given are adequate. Overall, mission difficulty tended to be on the easy side, but was still challenging enough to be fun for most of the mission. Hostiles aren't much of a threat to you, but if you don't stay with the Hawk, it WILL get taken down. There are several waves of enemy fighters and bombers, and you will be shooting down a lot of bombs, but your wingmen do a good job of covering the Hawk so you can take out the bombers before they do much damage. Generally very well balaced, even though there are a few issues...

Design:
...Which brings us to the design aspect of the mission. I cringed when I opened this mission up in FRED because the first thing you notice is that everything is on the same Y-plane. This is one of the cardinal sins of mission design, and on top of that, it really bugs me. This is usually a sign of very poor mission design, but I was pleasantly surprised by the rest of the mission. Other than the aforementioned problems with the debriefing and lack of in-game messages, the only other real problem is that there is no delay between enemy waves. While this is unprofessional, it doesn't detract terribly from the mission, and so doesn't take off too many points. There is a bit of creative sexp-ing at the end of the mission, in that when you make it to the jump node, the mission automatically ends. Unfortunately, a red alert status is used for this, which means that there can be no debrief. Also, this will happen whether the Hawk has left or not, so you may find yourself at the main deck wondering what happened if you venture too close to the jump node. This could easily be fixed by chaining this event to the departure of the Hawk. The mission probably would have been better off just letting the player jump out themselves.

Gameplay:
Overall, this mission is fairly enjoyable, and is a well done defense mission. Like I said above, if you don't stay with the Hawk, it will get shot down. If you use your wingmen and bother to shoot down enemy bombs, it's not too difficult. After a while, it gets a little old, but I found that by the time I was getting bored, the mission was over.

Other Thoughts:
Reinforcment of the storyline and a few minor adjustments to design would help this mission out immensely.