Description
Escort a Convoy of fast yet weak transports through a Shivan blockade.

Storyline:
Okay, so here we have your standard escort-civilians-but-Shivans-have-blocked-the-node story, borrowed from dozens of other missions. There are spelling and grammatical errors all over the place here, although the ship icons match up nicely. There are a few messages during the mission, but no chatter as such – they all relate to the status of ships (and curiously only one of them relates to the convoy). The debriefing is way too brief as well.

Balance:
Balance in this mission is an odd thing to try and describe. You will have to keep on your toes and intercept fighters and bombers if the convoy is to survive, but it’s rarely more than one wing at a time. They’re so far out you can probably intercept them, but they’re also overarmed to deal with Elysiums – Cyclops torpedoes are overkill. At the same time as you escort the convoy a huge battle of beam cannons is attacking place to your East, which might look pretty but has no bearing whatsoever on the escort, and vice versa. In addition, the GTVA always wins the battle. I’d have liked to see the consequences of the GTVA capships being destroyed on the convoy.

Design:
Design is fairly average here. There are no higher-level s-exps, though there are some nice waypoint paths and all the ships use their beams effectively. However, most of the action takes place of the XZ Plane, with little use of the Y-axis. It really does look like the convoy was made out of a bunch of the same ships because the author didn’t know how to cap the speeds or a group so they stuck together. The most annoying things are the goals. You must save all the convoy ships, and although I didn’t find that hard, others may. A ‘percent-ships-destroyed’ s-exp would have been better suited.

Gameplay:
I wouldn’t say the gameplay was terrible here – there’s usually enough action for Alpha wing to get stuck into, though the lulls seem all the longer watching the battle you can’t participate in. There is also a certain amount of desperation in trying to intercept Nahemas going for the convoy – if they get through the convoy has had it. I wouldn’t be lured back to play this mission again, which is the clearest definition of my standpoint I can give.

Other Thoughts:
Convoy missions have been done to death, but there must be some good or original ones out there mustn’t there?