Description
A very valuable newly colonized system is under attack by the Shivans. Destroy their freighters!!

Storyline:
Okay, this is definitely a pet peeve now. Once again we have a story that had a lot of develpmental possibilities in mission, but alas, it is abandoned once you get past the mission briefing. The command briefing is decent (despite a lack of ani's) and the mission briefing is handled well, and suffers only from some gramatical awkwardness. The debriefing (if you survive that long) does little more than congratulate you for completing an objective, or reprimand you for failing an objective. There are no in-game messages, so the storyline pretty much ends once you hit the "commit" button.

Balance:
I consider myself a pretty good player, I can usually hold my own against superior numbers of human opponets. This mission really put my evasive skill to the test, let alone trying to destroy any of the transports. I tried several times to complete this mission, but I was invariably shot down by the hordes of dragons and hornet-toting balisks. Trying to dodge 20 or 30 missiles at once is not my idea of fun. After destroying only the first of three transports, my hull was down to 48%, which is higher than I expected, considering the pounding I took. One time (by sacrificing my wingmen on the first two transports while I tried to avoid fiery doom at the hands of the dragons) I actually destroyed all three transports, but no sooner did I attempt to jump out than several missiles locked onto me from 2 newly arrived cain cruisers with full fighter complements. Suffice it to say that balance in this mission is nil. I can almost guarantee that you won't see the debriefing unless you open this mission in FRED (which is a whole other can of worms).

Design:
Hmm, where to start? The first thing you will notice is that all ships (save one or two that are moved by 50 units or so) are on the same plane. There are NO events. None. Ship arrivals are set with delays and aren't connected to events in-mission. Weapon loadouts are default for all ships, ane there aren't enough extra weapons to go around when you try to loadout your wings. Basically, this mission consists of placing a bunch of ships on the xz plane, making all ships and weapons available, and slapping a command briefing, and mission briefing, and a debriefing on it.

Gameplay:
None to speak of, unless you find it enjoyable trying to dodge innumerable missiles and a skyfull (well, spacefull) of incoming hostile fire.

Other Thoughts:
I don't particularly like giving out bad reviews, but some of my latest choices for reviewing have been abysmal...