Description
A taste of the now developing Derelict campaign (started by Welcome to the Boonies). This takes place several missions after 'Rites of Passage.' In an effort to secure the Tau Sigma system, GTVA forces are hitting pirate weapon supply lines. They've just come across a large ammo depot that is about to be moved to a more secure location. Without the necessary firepower to take it directly, command has planned a daring strike. Can you be fast, efficient, careful and have sharp pointed teeth?

Storyline:
The storyline doesn’t carry on from where A Time for Penance left off, but it seems to be in line with the missions already released and it doesn’t require knowledge of the intervening missions (which I’m lucky enough to know all about) to make sense of. All of the briefing, debriefing and message text is spelling error-free and icons and their respective ships all line up fine. During the mission there are fewer of the famous ‘Agatheron chatter’ messages than usual, but I guess that fits in with the whole strike aspect well.

Balance:
There is a certain way to finish this mission. If the mission seems too hard, try this. Do it in this way and you will probably win. Don’t and you’ll almost certainly die. The objective here is to draw the fighters away and not engage the sentries – believe me; you’ll not live to regret that mistake. The Hercs provide a nice little dogfight, but it’s not too tough. Once you take down the radar on the Vigilant (without destroying it, as there’s the nice touch that you’ll be court-martialled if it goes down) you have to use your speed and you Cyclops torpedoes. This causes a lovely amount of splash damage and is very pretty, as Alpha 2 points out. The linearity takes a bit from the replay value, but it makes the mission a nice tactical puzzle. One which I’ve now spoiled for you all. Oh well.

Design:
As you ought to expect from Agatheron, the design of this mission is efficient <i>and</i> nears flawless. There is an event thatÂ’s not useful with the default loadout, but if you change Alpha to bombers itÂ’ll come in handy. Apart from that, send-message-lists and such are used effectively and all the directives work. ThereÂ’s nothing super special about design in Killer Rabbit as there was in A Time for Penance, but itÂ’s all very slick.

Gameplay:
Finally a Strike mission! And itÂ’s a good one too: it really does play like a strike mission ought to and itÂ’s a damn good short, sharp burst of fun. It <i>is</i> short though, which makes it stand out as a single mission, though as a campaign mission this wonÂ’t matter so much. Still, this mission is well worth the download time. <p> <i>Addendum: You may have noticed that this review is quite harsh, and it's for a reason. Quite simply, Agatheron's missions are all so good I'm having to be extremely critical of them just to find minor errors! Don't get me wrong, this is still an excellent mission and well worth a download. </i>

Other Thoughts:
ItÂ’s nice for everyone too see that this promising campaign is coming along so well. Great things are to be expected, IÂ’m sure. This mission would actually make a good speed test, as Agatheron pointed out to me.