Description
You must ensure the Aquitane and GTCv actium reach the Epsilon Pegasi jump node. The shivans have other ideas.

Storyline:
The storyline of this mission, while nothing special ties in nicely with the main Freespace 2 campaign and uses several familiar ship names. The briefing is fairly well written with few errors. However, the icons are terribly squashed up and, as a result you canÂ’t see a thing. There arenÂ’t enough messages in the mission, which makes it feel disjointed. The debriefing also has a few spelling errors, but is otherwise okay.

Balance:
You shouldnÂ’t have a great deal of trouble saving both of your capital ships in this mission. The Shivan bombers usually arrive too far away to launch their bombs and have little fighter escort. The enemy capital ships arrive with their vulnerable flanks exposed to the might of the HecateÂ’s forward beam batteries. The loadout for the mission is also too varied and powerful, though at least someone removed the multiplayer variants. The most disappointing thing about the balance of the mission is that with the ships available this mission could have been made very challenging.

Design:
The design of this mission is nothing special. Waypoints are used and beam cannons all work, but there are no directives and no background either. There isn’t anything very complicated that has been made in the s-exps, either. Some of the events could actually have been handled with the departure cues of the ships, and how the author knew which s-exp he was writing is a mystery, as they’re all ‘Event name’. On a positive note, the positioning of the Lilith cruiser is very strategic.

Gameplay:
Gameplay isn’t too bad really, considering the other problems, although you will be leaving a lot of the fighting to the capital ships unless you choose a bomber (which you can load with Helios bombs). The mission does feel a bit empty and a bit pointless, though. There could have been several ‘motivational’ messages from Terran Command.

Other Thoughts:
The capital ships are pretty poorly placed. If the Tantalus came at the Aquitaine head on, and the corvettes dived down from above they would do a lot more damage.