Description
The TDMB 'America' is under attack by Shivan forces. They want to capture the 'America'. Are you strong enough to save America ???

Storyline:
While the storyline had potential, it was not developed whatsoever. You are greeted by a very poor briefing that lacked any ship icons or camera movement whatsoever, as well as a total lack of in-game messages. The author did not tell you why the shivans would want to capture the America, or give you any real background story to help the mission out. You are merely told that you have to destroy the shivan transport invader, and that there "may" be a shivan destroyer in the area (An element which is totally destroyed by the fact that destroying the Eva 2 is one of your primary objectives). The debrief, while technically correct (i.e. the events in the game would properly affect the debrieing), had very bad grammar, and the different sections did not "flow" very well, and mostly consisted of either "good job, you accomplished this goal" or "poor job, you didn't accomplish this goal."

Balance:
There was absolute minimal effort put into the ship loadout. Alpha one was the only ship that did not have default weapons (and a good thing, too, this would have been impossible with the weapons equipped on the other ships), all other ships had ML-16's and avengers with a hefty bank of MX-50's and furies, all of which (except the avenger) are totally useless against shields. You can select any ship you want (provided you don't want to add more than 5 of them), but it won't help, since there are no weapons available, you're stuck with pre-great war weapons. At least the author had the decency to give you a banshee and a rack of hornets to go with your avenger. The mission is not difficult to survive, but it is impossible to reach the shivan freighter before it can dock with the America. I tried to reach it in a Valkyrie on full afterburn with engine power at max, and still I could not make it in time. Ugg.

Design:
While the author did at least use all three axes in placing ships, and the mission goals are properly laid out, there's not a whole lot of good in the design of this mission. On top of the above complaints, there are NO events whatsoever, which means no messages, and no real creativity at all. The enemy fighters are not in waves, once you kill the first wave, there are no more to worry about. There is a wing of friendly medusa bombers that you are not told about (but they do attack the Eva 2, which is a good thing, i suppose). There is promise here, but this mission suffers most from the fact that it is not finished. If the author took the time to go through the editors, fill out the story, and test it before he released it, it would probably have been a pretty good mission.

Gameplay:
Refer to the above sections for a good idea of what you're up against. This mission is just not fun. Despite the loadout problems, it is way too easy to kill everything, which is all you're going to be doing, since you have no chance of saving the America.

Other Thoughts:
Hmm...not much else to say