Description
The refitted Orion destroyer Victory suffered major damage in it's last engagement, and the Shivans are determined to finish what they started. Defend the warship at the spacedock, with a little help. Includes command briefing.

Storyline:
The storyline is a fairly standard take on defence missions but ties in nicely with the main FS2 campaign in the defence of Capella. The storyline is elaborated upon excellently through the Command briefing, which lacks only some command animations. The briefing is also good, with appropriate icons for the ships and with all the relevant information crammed in. The whole mission is well written. I didnÂ’t spot a spelling error once. The only thing I think this mission lacks in terms of storyline are some more messages. The ones there are functional, but IÂ’m an absolute sucker for chatter.

Balance:
This mission is nicely balanced between the Terrans and Shivans, but also between fighter and bomber combat and small capital ship battles. The neat touches like the minefield level the playing field quite a bit, though you can choose not to use them if you feel like a challenge. YouÂ’ll have to actually take care of your wingmen if youÂ’re to get rid of all of the Shivans, which heightens player involvement. That said thereÂ’s usually a lot of it in defence missions anyway, with bomber intercept and whatnot. All of that is present and correct.

Design:
The design of this mission is solid, but also includes a couple of extras that add to design and gameplay scores. The most obvious case of this is the small minefield that the author created to deal with one of the cruisers somewhat. The explosion delay is a bit long on it but it does add an element of strategy that it doesnÂ’t explode immediately. The Victory also doesnÂ’t use its beam cannons, which seems logical given that itÂ’s in dock for repair. It also leaves the work up to you, which is good for gameplay. ThereÂ’s also loads of use of the Y-axis, which (literally) adds another dimension to the action. Ha ha. The event layout couldÂ’ve been streamlined with chains, but there arenÂ’t enough messages to use send-message-list and this, as ever, wonÂ’t affect your enjoyment of the mission. The only largish nit-pick is the fact that the author used the fire-beam s-exp to fire all the beams in the mission. Fine, until you realise there are 14 events for beam firing.

Gameplay:
This mission plays a lot like a campaign mission from the FS2 campaign. You probably wonÂ’t be able to destroy everything unless you put some thought into it and you rely on your wingmen to perform some of the tasks, which I really like. It doesnÂ’t feel like youÂ’re the do-anything hero of the mission. On the other hand, it wouldÂ’ve been easier to destroy that Moloch if the Radiant chased it instead of sitting around (it has no orders to chase the Serchade). If you can disable the cruiser fairly soon after it arrives the Radiant might help out.

Other Thoughts:
No wonder the mission is so polished. The author has made 5 revisions. Now <i>thatÂ’s</i> commitment. And on the subject of injury, my brother was clever (read: fool) enough to break his arm this week, so IÂ’ve been reduced to the job of menial slave-lackey, delivering his papers and whatnot. Now thatÂ’s an insult. CÂ’est la vieÂ