Description
The GTVA have find a way to go back in time and prevent the Shivans in destroying the Ross 128 outpost in 2335

Storyline:
In this mission, the GTVA has supposedly discovered a Knossos/wormhole thingy in Beta Aquilae. This will allow them to travel back in time to the time of the first Shivan incursion into GTVA space and stop them. I'm not sure if said theory could be supported by science, or how stopping one Shivan attack would stop all the Shivan attacks – the Lucifer would still be a tad hard to destroy, but it's not the theories behind the missions I'm here to discuss, it's the mission itself. There's a Command briefing, which is quite long, but the spelling is terrible, something which continues into the briefing and mission messages. Ship icons match up for the most, part, though there are discrepancies. The debriefing is incomplete and makes little sense, which is a shame.

Balance:
The convoy is attacked by a sizeable Shivan force, but there are so many anti-fighter weapons and escort fighters that it'll hardly suffer at all. The capital ships attack the distant installation mostly, and you don't even have to protect it. In fact, if you stick to your orders, it's easy. There's also far too much leaning towards capital ship combat and weaponry – the only real bomber threat comes to the Uhuru, which you can protect if you want, but will be unsuccessful, almost certainly.

Design:
The design of this mission isn't too bad in some areas. There's a decent background included, waypoints are included and work well and best of all, ship placement is fairly intelligent. For example, a Moloch corvette that attacks the convoy appears above it, out of the firing arcs of most of the capital ships and within the firing arcs of its most powerful beam cannons. However, the event layout is inefficient and simplistic (the same corvette has one event for arrival and a simultaneous event for beam-free, which couldÂ’ve been condensed), and there are absolutely no directives.

Gameplay:
Although this mission is quite obviously a defence mission, I'm not really sure what you're defending. The initial Shivan attacks draw you to the left of the capital ship convoy, which is never harassed by anything larger than a Moloch and, being composed of a Hecate and various corvettes and cruisers is quite capable of defending itself. However, the installation and GTD Uhuru take the brunt of massive Shivan attacks and don't really stand a chance, but are not objective material. So, overall a bit of an oddity. You can go find some action if you desire, but if you follow the convoy rigidly there won't be too much to do.

Other Thoughts:
The nature of the gameplay and balance in this mission makes it very hard to score. Still, I'll tryÂ