Description
Escort the GTD Bastion to the Phonecia Drydock in Deneb to be decomissioned.

Storyline:
The storyline of this mission ties in nicely with the main Freespace 2 campaign – the GTD Bastion being scrapped and her wings transferring to other ships (the author even put the Hammerheads as going to the Aquitaine and so on, which is impressive. The briefing is quite good. All the ships and icons match up though there are a couple of tiny grammatical errors, which don’t really affect the briefing. The debriefing is also good, despite containing a couple of spelling errors. There are a few nice messages in the mission, though there could have been a whole lot more.

Balance:
If you deal with the NTF forces that attack the Bastion in the correct way this is fine in terms of balance. However, as, due to some supposed bug the bombers don’t attack the corvette the Bastion can die if you’re not careful. I’d recommend using Trebuchets in the mission to destroy beam cannons and bombers. The attack on the Installation is nicely balanced – the fighters draw you off while the transport docks, though I’d like to have seen more aggressive enemy fighters here.

Design:
Design is okay in this mission, though itÂ’s nothing spectacular. ItÂ’s nice to see that some goals are validated during the mission, but there are no send-message-list s-exps, which could have been used. The directives work fine and so do beam weapons. One thing that is nice about the design is the background. ItÂ’s good to see someone take time over it for once.

Gameplay:
If you can get the Bastion to make it through the initial engagement and donÂ’t die yourself itÂ’s okay to play, and the second part is also passable. Strangely, the mission feels less fun than the rest of its design would suggest it to be. Which is quite odd. I canÂ’t pin own the problem with gameplay, but there must be one there.

Other Thoughts:
There is definitely a feel of ‘good, not great’ about this mission. Bah, that’s all I could come up with for the other thoughts section. If the gameply problem were pinned down it'd be better.