Description
Defend the Atlas shipyards from a Shivan attack.

Storyline:
The storyline to this mission is very much a generic installation defence story. The Command briefing is a bit longer than most of the one-liners (and I don’t mean jokes) we get, but still not of an immense length. A few Command animations would’ve been nice too. The briefing, on the other hand, is curiously short. Although the icons match up with the ships they’re supposed to represent there isn’t the greatest amount of text and most of the icons are lifted off of the grid. I also picked up a few spelling errors in the mission. For the length of the mission there are quite a few messages and they’re not all just of the ‘object x has been destroyed’ type. The debriefing is okay too, though it does say that the SD Phoenix jumps out when it doesn’t.

Balance:
This isn’t the most difficult mission I’ve played. The Shivan cruisers pose a small danger to the station, and will probably take it down about 20% in integrity. However, they’re dealt with so quickly by the bombers not to be a problem and there’s no point in disarming them as they’ll be destroyed before you can get round to it. The fighter escort is utterly feeble as well – even in a bomber, running full-pelt at the Shivans I was sometimes not tailed by a fighter and never felt under threat. When the Phoenix arrives there’s a clear run at the destroyer, which is boring, but the best balance feature is also here: the Ravana is set up to fire its beams in such a way that it becomes pressing to destroy the cannons quickly and choose targets wisely. The balance on that bit is good, and the feeling of urgency is great. Curiously it doesn’t seem to be a design feature really. I suppose some of the best things are coincidences.

Design:
Design of the mission is actually fairly good. The author has minimised the use of events wherever possible, using send-message-lists and so on. Beam cannons all work fine at the right times as well. There are also chained events to make sure that the directives, which all work, appear at the correct times. Initial orders are all present and correct, and there are events included to change the orders of wings according to the situation. There arenÂ’t any waypoints used but the Shivans appear to work fine without them, for once. They must be getting cleverer.

Gameplay:
This mission is short, to say the very least. The Shivans arrive in the mission soon after it begins, and from then the two cruisers and their meagre escort are wiped out in a matter of a couple of minutes. There really isnÂ’t a great deal of point to trying to disarm the cruisers, as stated above, and the excitement of bombing while fighters are chasing you down lasts about two minutes. When the Phoenix arrives youÂ’ll have a clear run at it, as it launches precisely no fighters. Not the most exciting bombing run, but reasonable target practice. The mission also lasts only about five minutes, most of which is taken up by the destruction of the Phoenix.

Other Thoughts:
This is a lot like ‘Into the FrayÂ’, but not as good. ThatÂ’s why itÂ’s a recommended mission and this isnÂ’t. Not a total washout though, just a bit short. And maybe a bit boring tooÂ