Description
You and your squad have been assigned to investigate a strange anomaly happening near Neptune Station, only to find a new threat on the doorstep to earth.

Storyline:
Neptune Station, located near the planet Neptune, is confronted by an asteroid field "suddenly appearing" close to it. Alpha One is sent to investigate and, at the same time, to protect a Medical Convoy. Of course, hostile forces are expected to be "tampering with nature" to cause this strange anomaly. <p> It turns out to be no big suprise that the Shivans are behind this Starship Trooperish plot. Yet another bad movie based upon a good book, this mission just doesn't live up to expectations. If the Shivans can use a "Gravity Projector" to move the asteroids, why not just use the "Gravity Projector" to crush the Arcadia? Or even to continue pushing the asteroids into the Station? If a Shivan Lucifer-class SuperDestroyer is powering the Gravity Projector, why not unleash the Shivan SuperLaser to annihilate the station? Any of these options would make more sense than a kamikaze attack on the Station by two Lilith-class cruisers.

Balance:
You have a limited, but decent, selection of fighters: the Ulysses, Apollo, or Valkyrie. A few of every cannon is available, but your missile choice is limited to Hornets, Disruptors, and Interceptors. This makes for a limited, but effective arsenal. It's clear from the loadout that the goal in this mission is NOT to attack the Shivan capital ships. <p> If you tried, it would be futile to attack those Shivan capital ships. There just isn't enough time to do enough damage to the kamikaze Liliths. And the Lucifer-class SuperDestroyer is set to invulnerable, which should deter even the most foolhardy. Unfortunately, the Lucifer is also set to "play dead." Thus, the most deadly thing in the entire mission sits there like an unwanted Barney...unkillable, unresponsive, and annoying as hell. <p> Your only real opponent in this mission are a few wings of Dragons and Shivan bombers. Each wing operates independently of the others, so it is easy to isolate and destroy the fighter and bombers. If you can lure your enemy away from the dense asteroid field, it doesn't take much to make quick work of your enemy.

Design:
I didn't like the design of this mission at all, since there are quite a few poor design choices: <p> First and foremost, the mission begins as the edge of the asteroid field is about 2000 meters distant from the Arcadia installation. The asteroid field will hit your processor hard, since the asteroid field is VERY DENSE (almost a solid box). Add to the toll on your poor computer the Arcadia, Lucifer, and 2 Liliths less than 5000 meters apart in the mission. The result -- VERY poor framerates. The dogfighting in this mission will dog your system. <p> Second, and related to the first, is that dogfighting isn't much fun when between such large capital ships at close distances. Often, the Arcadia will crowd in on your turns and hostiles will get lost in the nooks and crannies of the capital ships. It doesn't help that the enemy AI can sometimes get confused by the doughnut hole in the center of the Arcadia and the other edges of the Station. <p> Third, the escort part of this mission occurs on the OPPOSITE side of the Arcadia. Due to this, you don't have to do a thing to "escort" the medical supply convoy to safety. Likewise, the first two Shivan attack waves are far away from the final assault on the escaping transport containing the crew of the Station. <p> Fourth, the mission doesn't respond to your actions. In every mission, the SD Lucifer will sit motionless, the SC Liliths will make their short kamikaze rush at the Station, and the fighters won't respond to your actions. <p> Fifth, a possible AI conflict exists becasue both the wings and individual fighters are both given initial orders. In addition, the initial AI orders for the Drigium bomber wing all have the same priority, which results in the AI tossing out all but one of the orders. NEVER give more than one AI order the same exact priority number. <p> There are no directives to let you know that the focus of the mission immediately changes from investigating the source of the asteroid to defending the Station. And, later, when it's clear that the Station is a goner, no directive tells you that the goal of the mission has changed to escorting the crew to safety onboard the GTFR Frederickson. Instead, all you get is an extremely long in-flight message that you can't read completely before it fades off your screen. Perhaps the only way to stumble onto this change is to check the objectives by hitting F4 and pausing the mission. And, unfortunately, the changed objective is shown as soon as the mission begins.

Gameplay:
I didn't have any fun, since I was completely confused by this mission the first few times I played it. In fact, I doubt I would have replayed or completed this mission if I hadn't been doing this review. There are only a few fighters that give you any sort of a challenge. There just isn't any time to engage the capital ships, and the Lucifer sits out there like an invulnerable ornament doing nothing for this mission at all, but lowering its framerate. I found this mission rather pointless.

Other Thoughts:
You can disrupt an invulnerable Lucifer. Which doesn't matter much in this mission, since the Lucifer doesn't do much. But it might be useful knowledge in the Great War campaign.