Description
Takes off right where the main campaign left off. The Vega node is still vulnerable to the Shivan Armada. The GTD Nereid is already on its way to collaspe the node. You must protect the ship a Shivan blockade.

Storyline:
Now here's a good idea – what about the 'other' mission in FS2, the one where the Nereid sealed the Vega – Capella jump node? That'd make a good mission and so the stage is set for an epic battle. The Command briefing is free from errors and sets the scene pretty well. The briefing, while short, gives you enough information. There are a few grammatical errors and many of the icons don't match their ships. In the mission there are a good number of messages. Some of them aren't spelled correctly or have grammatical errors but these are mostly minor.

Balance:
Ouch. This mission is hard – it's hard to survive, especially during the furrball that ensues mid-mission, and it's very hard to prevent the destruction of the civilian vessels when they jump in between a trio of Moloch corvettes. Besides that, the actual defence of the Nereid, which is about one third of the mission, is pretty well balanced, with plenty of bombers to shoot down and capital ships to be disarmed and dealt with by your larger vessels. However, your wingmen will drop like flies to the massive Shivan assault.

Design:
Well, everything works in the mission, and there's a background. Ooh. All of the directives in the mission also work, as do messages – though they don't use (here I go) send-message-list to cut down on events. The author set up a nice explosion to supposedly seal the node, too. The elite cruisers could have done with improved AI, maybe, to make them special, but they do fine without. The mission isn't anything really technically stunning, but it's better than some.

Gameplay:
The mission begins as a nice set-piece attack, though I found it hard to believe that the 'elite' cruiser group composed one Fenris. Some more stuff does pop in though. Anyway, it began in a good way. However, once reinforcements for the Shivans turned up it became one big beams-and-cannons furrball, which it was almost impossible to survive inside. The mission stabilised after a little while, but the bomber intercept soon gets tedious. The ending, while nothing new, does set it up for future missions.

Other Thoughts:
Um, I should have some more time now – so I might actually get a review done. OooooohÂ