Description
It pits you, in a bomber, up agaisnt waves of capital ships, with no fighters around. Based on the gauntlet missions.

Storyline:
Although a story isn't necessary in a gauntlet-style test of your flying skills, it still would be nice. Perhaps call it a training mission and add a few "human" elements to the briefing to give it a little color and make it stand out from the crowd. No such luck in this mission, the two-staged briefing does little more than inform you this is a gauntlet and you'll be fighting capital ships. The enclosed sound files don't improve the ambience, as the voice sample is muffled and indistinct. Rather than a story, this mission has an interesting twist on an old favorite: bomb a bunch of capital ships. If you still get a thrill simply out of attacking capital ships, then this might be enough for you.

Balance:
Since I frequently suggest that the capital ships are too weak and should be improved, I expected this mission would be like shooting fish in a barrel. I was right, but with one minor error -- *I* was the fish, and the capital ships were using rapid-fire shotguns. Without any wingmen, the capital ships are able to concentrate their firepower on you...and the bombs you're carrying. Since most of your bombs will be shot down, you are forced to get close to the capital ships in order to deliver the pain. Too bad you'll be slapped down before you launch those bombs at point-blank range, since you're flying right into a rain of doom. <p> And with the loadout, bombs are all you'll be carrying. The weapons loadout suffers from a typical error where all of the weapons are selected by default, but only five of each are available. Only enough of the Harbinger and the Tsunami bombs are available. If this was a design choice to preserve the "bomber" gauntlet, then why does the ship loadout includes all of the fighters?

Design:
There are no directives to help you through the gauntlet, but the inflight messages do a good job of telling you what to expect in the next stage of the mission. It's almost as good, but not quite enough. The objectives and events work, at least. <p> Capital ship placement is too distant, with some travel distances of over 10,000 to the next target. This forces the use of the time acceleration feature (shift and >) to speed up the slow journey. The only benefit of the extreme distance is that it shows off the excellent waypoint system implemented in this mission. <p> The briefing is technically poor, with only two screens. One has the capital ship icons half off-screen. However, the debriefing is excellent in this mission, giving several different outcomes depending on your performance. The only sore point is that you'll probably be dead and miss out.

Gameplay:
After getting pummeled into submission several times, the novely of a capital ship shootout starts to wear off. After a few more times of being turned into stardust, I started to get frustrated. This mission might be endlessly replayable, but it just isn't fun after awhile.

Other Thoughts:
Perhaps this mission is the most you can do with this concept of a sole fighter versus a series of capital ship. I'm not sure if I would like it more if the mission were more balanced, since that would make the capital ships weaker.