Description
Raid a Vasudan cargo depot as the NTF and steal valuble information on the Knossos portal.

Storyline:
The storyline for this mission fits quite neatly into the main FreeSpace 2 campaign with a mission that was spoken of but never seen. The Command briefing and briefing set the scene well. All the icons match up and I only noticed a couple of spelling and grammatical errors throughout the entirety of the mission. There are quite a few messages in the mission – which would work out nicely if they showed up. There’s more on that below, as it’s a design problem, not one with the storyline, though it does make it seem a bit sparse. I've included them in the storline score though.

Balance:
Due to the way this mission is laid out you canÂ’t play the mission as a strike and win, of youÂ’ll soon find yourself overwhelmed with three hostile wings trying to take you, the Resilient and the Majestic out. ItÂ’s far better to take things one step at a time, first destroying the Ra and itÂ’s fighters while dealing with the bombers, then capturing the cargo. Unfortunately the Emperator (sic) has a dull capture run, which adds quite a lull. As a normal capture mission itÂ’s do-able though. The author has taken the time to make a reasonable ship and weapon loadout, which is nice.

Design:
While the author has attempted to use some of the more complex s-exps, most notably the send-message-list, theyÂ’ve done so unsuccessfully. The messages all happen so fast that you wonÂ’t see them as the author has entered the message times as seconds, when we all know that itÂ’s milliseconds that youÂ’re after. The NTF Resilient also makes statements about the status of its hull as Alpha 1 gets damaged. Ooops. However, directives all appear to work, even though a few are superfluous. All this is fairly easy to fix though.

Gameplay:
Despite calling itself a strike mission it doesnÂ’t play like one. You do actually have to destroy all the hostile ships in the area save for the cargo and the mission takes about twelve minutes to complete. As a defence and capture mission itÂ’s not too bad. The game of chicken the corvettes play at the start looks excellent, though the GVCv Ra vaporised me on more than one occasion.

Other Thoughts:
Hmm, I wonder why the English spellchecker came up with the American spelling of vaporised? Blame <b>Microsoft</b>, itÂ’s usually their fault. Oh, and for a different take on the Strike mission (that actually is one) try Killer Rabbit. ItÂ’s, er, killerÂ