Description
The weeks following the close of subspace have not been good ones for the GTA. That all changes, however, with the arrival of a fateful message from a fragment of the Vasudan Empire.

Storyline:
An interesting storyline, but with a few nagging doubts that can be overlooked. The Vasudans have found a method to re-open Subspace, but the Shivans may be pursuing the convoy. The player will escort transports containing information to existing equipment, and the Jump Node will be opened. This is important, since a besieged Terran colony has discovered a device which could pierce the Lucifer's shield in real space. <p> Neat idea for a mission, right? Yes, except that only the Sol-Delta Serpentis Jump Node collapsed...isolating Sol from the rest of the colonies. Thus, the story assumes that Vasudan refugees on Sol, not the GTA in their home base, designed this awesome technology. Not too unbelievable, but a little unlikely. This also makes it impossible for the Shivans to be pursuing the Vasudans...since the GTA would likely have chased down any remaining Shivans since there's nowhere to escape from the Sol system, since the only Jump Node collapsed. It also seems difficult to believe that Sol continues to communicate with the rest of the colonies, since communications is presumably subspace based. <p> Despite my doubts about these aspects of the mission, the storyline holds up without much additional explanation. Perhaps the only question that still bothers me after thinking about this mission is that the Shivans, Terrans and Vasudans all seem to arrive by jumping inside the Jump Node...even when the Node isn't working yet. Were these really all intended to be in-system Jumps?

Balance:
Players can choose from too many ships, even though this mission is clearly an escort-and-protect mission. Bombers are an inappropriate ship choice for the stated objectives of this mission. There are plenty of weapons and missiles to go around, since you can only change the loadout for Alpha wing. <p> The ship placement gives the Terrans and Vasudans a jump on the Shivan attackers, who practially jump in on top of the fleet. Add to this the fact that the Shivans are outnumbered by 2 to 1 in capital ships and matched in fighters and bombers. The fight really isn't fair at all, and you can miss out on even taking a single shot at the Shivan capital ships. Instead of losing almost all of my wingmates like ususal, I only lost only two of ten in this mission. And that's not because I actually bothered to cover their six.

Design:
There are quite a few events in this mission which set up the cargo containers and transports to enable the Jump Node. However, your jump drive is enabled throughout the entire mission. It would have been more appropriate to have a disabled jump drive restored after the re-opening of subspace. <p> There are quite a few in-flight messages in FRED, which just don't seem to be showing up during the mission. Perhaps I'm missing them, since sound isn't supported. But the lack of pilot animations is probably playing a role in this. Also, I suspect that these messages are all appearing at about the same time, overlapping each other. Adjusting the timing delay for these messages would allow them to be "staggered" and give the pilot a better sense of what's unfolding in the mission. <p> This mission doesn't use any directive text or escort ships (showing a ship's hull status). These HUD instruments would also have been useful to keep track of what is happening during the mission. This is sad, because the groundwork is all here from the events. And at the end, it's hard to know what happened because the debriefing will only explain the result as the first "successful" subspace jump. Only a little more work would polish this mission design up nicely.

Gameplay:
My biggest complaint with this mission is that everything happens around you, but it's hard to notice any of it. Without messages or HUD indicators, you can miss out on the arrival of the Shivan capital ships and fighter waves. The bombers are noticable, and easily dealt with. But not too long after that, the mission is practially over since the other wings can easily dispatch their targets.

Other Thoughts:
Runs smoothly even with six capital ships, but that might be just because the Shivans get destroyed so quickly. <p> And I'm still wondering about the strange names for the capital ships. Anyone care to enlighten me?