Description
The GTC Ranger and Alpha wing must destroy the Shivan Destroyer Salem and her escort. If only all is what it seems. The forth mission in my Post Freespace 2 Campaign I never got around to finishing. Version 1. Fully Completed Mission.

Storyline:
There's a very, very brief storyline here, but to be honest, the briefing has nothing to do with the actual mission at all. The briefing is perfectly adequate and all icons match up, but given that there are three, that's not horribly difficult. There are only a few messages in the mission, and the debriefing is just three stages long. There are a few minor spelling errors in the mission, but nothing that makes it impossible to read.

Balance:
With only ten ships, it's not a great trial to balance a mission. This one is fairly well balanced, as you might expect – the Ranger is under reasonable threat if you fail to destroy the beam cannons on the corvette, as are you if Rogue wing is not destroyed. In fact, you can lure them back to the Ranger to have them destroyed, and destroy the beam cannons on the Dauntless for the Ranger. So, it's kind of interdependent, which is nice.

Design:
What there is of the mission isn't too badly designed – that is, the directives work, the messages appear, there aren't any glaring errors and the author upped Alpha's AI to prevent them from dying right away (now they die just a little later). There’s a background too – something which many people forget. However, the mission takes place entirely on the XZ axis, and there's nothing to make it stand out at all.

Gameplay:
Hmmm, no beast-slaying here...just a very short, not especially fun mission to destroy a corvette. There's no explanation of just to whom the corvette belongs, and I donÂ’t suppose it really matters. The training mission where you had to shoot down the Seraphim's bombs was more enjoyable, but, I suppose, at least there's some player involvement.

Other Thoughts:
Although what's there is okay, the mission is ultimately so limited is scope that it can't really achieve a high score.