Description
The Shivans have been able to push Terran forces to Delta Serpentis, where they regroup. Now, Tesla Station must prevent the Shivans from collapsing the Terran line, resulting in the access of Sol and the destruction of the several civilian transports.

Storyline:
A plausible storyline, your mission is to hold the line and defend Tesla station at Delta Serpentis to keep the Shivans from gaining easy access to Sol. It turns out what you really have to do is defend some transports long enough for them to escape to Sol. I'm not sure quite where this would fit into the main Freespace storyline, if at all, but it is a plausible enough premise for a mission. There are several in-game messages, but they serve little purpose than to inform you of a transport's departure. The debriefing did not seem to work properly, since I got one stage upon successfully completing the mission. When I checked in FRED, I found that there were 9 stages, most of which succeeded in closing out the story. Unfortunately, these stages didn't appear in the mission, so I was very confused by the debriefing that I got. At least the attempt was made.

Balance:
The first couple times I flew this mission, I hurried with my wingmen to repel the massive Shivan attack and met a quick death (i.e. in less than a minute). You won't believe the number of ships in this mission. It's a wonder my computer didn't crash as soon as I started. I quickly discovered, however, that for the most part, the Shivans will not attack the transports, and you can basically complete the mission successfully if you stay out of the way of the Shivans for long enough. When I tried this theory, all 8 transports (which aren't on your escort list, by the way) escaped with 100% hull, and I warped out with 95% hull, the damage caused by a wingman colliding with my ship. Once you get over the sheer number of ships in this mission and figure out that they're not really a threat, it's ludicrously easy.

Design:
Oh man, where to start? Probably with the most obvious problem: this mission has the worst case of the dreaded Battle of Endor syndrome I have ever seen. I have a 366MHz computer with 64 ram and a 12 meg voodoo2, and I've played multiplayer games with pings over 1000 that were smoother than this mission. To start with, you've got an Arcadia clogging up half of your screen. Then there's the 4 friendly cruisers that are right next to it. Then you have SIX Cain class cruisers (arranged in a wing, I might add) that will all come in and collide with the friendly cruisers (I have never seen so many collision detection errors in my life). Then you find out that this wing of Shivan cruisers is in three waves. That's a total of EIGHTEEN friggin' Cains that appear in this mission. Not to mention the innumerable numbers of enemy and friendly fighters and bombers that are all over the place. Assuming that all waves arrive (which they probably will), by the end of the mission you will have seen a total of ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SEVEN ships. This is ridiculous! I certainly wouldn't recommend running this one in software rendering. I'm not sure I would recommend running this on anything less than a voodoo2. <p> While this is by far the worst aspect of this mission, there are other problems as well. First of all, the ships.tbl file that comes with this mission instantly produces an error. I had to delete it, rendering whatever new ships there were useless. Then you find out that it's a scramble mission, so you're stuck in a Ulysses with dual prometheus and a rack of hornets, which is hardly adequate (is anything adequate against that many ships?). There is the aforementioned problem with the balance. Upon checking in FRED, I discovered that all ships save one wing are set to attack either the Tesla or her cruiser defenses. There is one wing of balisks that are set to attack Omicron 3, but the goal priority is only 50, so apparently they were too occupied to bother to attack their target since it escaped at full strength. Why are all these ships set to destroy the Tesla when defending it isn't even a secondary objective? Why isn't defending the Tesla an objective? After a while, I just got sick of it and tried to warp out, only to find that you aren't allowed to warp out until all 18 Cains are destroyed. Huh? I don't even get the dignity of leaving in disgust? This mission only got a .5 design because ships are named, they have orders, and it didn't crash. Yeesh.

Gameplay:
If you hang back from the fight, this mission is a cakewalk, but if you decide to jump into the fray, be prepared to have your evasive skills tested to the limit. This mission would be good practice for multiplayer if your machine can run it, due to the fact that it is more choppy than most multiplayer games you will play. Overall, it's either incredibly frustrating or ludicrously easy, depending on whether you decide to fight or not. Either way, it's not very fun.

Other Thoughts:
The mission had a decent story, it's too bad everything else dragged it down...