Description
A pre-emptive strike is being launched against the Shivan Task Force responsible for attacking the Orion V rendezvous point. The attack takes place in the guise of a Shivan SpecOps wing.

Storyline:
The story line of this mission is impressive. The command briefing and pilot breifings were both well done. Care was taken on spelling and the general outlay of both briefings. About the only nit-pick thing I could say would be using transport icons for depictions of fleets.

Balance:
This is a Red Alert type of mission, you get what the author gives you. This balance rating could have been alot higher if the mission had actually worked as stated by its briefings. The balance of the mission is way off due to a design error, and cannot be judged effectively because of this. So it was rated on what was available. After destorying the Shivan cruiser escorts which was somewhat easy on medium difficulty for an averagely skilled pilot, this degrades rapidly when faced with 2 veteran Shivan cruisers.

Design:
This was a mission of good design. Damage monitors, objectives displays and a variety of good on-screen messages. The originality of using a scanning maneuver to place you right in the thick of things was good. A few seconds after you complete scanning, two other allied wings arrive and you can make short work of the cruisers fighter escort. Unfortunatly the Task Force Orion V as stated in the briefing never shows up. I thought at first this may have been part of the game and you were left 'holding the bag' to destory the cruisers. But a look in FRED did reveal that this Task Force did indeed exist. I tried playing this mission in a variety of ways, and not once did this force show up.

Gameplay:
This would have been a good, fun mission if it had worked right. It still is alright as it is. It is somewhat fun to try to take out the 2 cruisers even when 50% of your forces have been destoryed by the first dogfight.

Other Thoughts:
Fix the Task Force so it arrives after you kill all the fighters, send in a few more waves of Shivans from the cruisers, and you would have one rockin' mission. Beta test! every which way, up, down, sideways and twice on Tuesday! Give missions to your friends before submission. They will almost always play it different than you, and let you see any flaws that you may have missed playing 'your' way.