Description
With the Aquisistion of the Excelsior Project every two-bit criminal wants to try and get a hand on it.... and your going to see to it that it does not happen.

Storyline:
The storyline is very believable and it would have been to the author's advantage to include a small text file or a longer command briefing stating more of the story line. This would have made the mission more enjoyable and understandable. HOW did the ACW become independent of the GTA? When did they? Who are they? How did the Excelsior Project come about and what was it? Some inconsistencies of events were seen in the somewhat confusing briefing and debriefing. An outstandingly believable original new story line, yet unfinished. The command briefing was well done and the ANI choices were excellent.

Balance:
None at all. Ship loadout allows the player to have Apollo, Valkyrie and Ulysses and weapons up to prometheus level. The attackers were all Apollo and Valkyrie flying pirates who are absolutely no match for a fleet of Ulysses fighters with prometheus and hornet missiles. An Aten class Vasudan cruiser arrives later in the game, which seems totally out of the place with an Orion class vessel with rebel Apollo's and Valkyrie's attacking it. On medium difficulty with a Ulysses outfitted with prometheus and hornets, it was no problem to lay waste to all attacking vessels, and I am not that good a pilot.

Design:
Some glaring errors were found and minor spelling errors in events. The Orion class ship Excelsior never showed a damage monitor, as did its cruiser escort. 4 boarding ship waves that show up as IFF enemy come into play but are confusing as no directives are stated. At one point Command states new ownership? But nothing was changed. Even when one of these ships docks with the Excelsior nothing seems to happen. I flew over and blew one off the hull after it had been docked for about 2 minutes. A look in FRED states that it is supposed to fail the main objective when a boarding ship docks. The overall basic design is very well done, ship placement was good, but all the above errors destroyed the mission.

Gameplay:
For the novice Freespace player this could be a fun mission with average re-playability, its just basic defense. A more experienced player that is deadly with a Ulysses would be bored with it quickly.

Other Thoughts:
This could be made into an excellent mutil-player mission. It could be enhanced greatly by adding a small 2k message beep wav file to alert you of the important messages when you are in the middle of a firefight. Just a small amount of good beta testing could have helped this mission immensely.