Description
The 8th Fleet returns from fighting the Shivans to face a new threat: the Cult of the Black Lotus, a renegade Vasudan sect who blame the Terrans for the destruction of their homeworld. <ul> Notes: <li>This one'll require at least a PII 300 / Voodoo2, but not exactly for the usual reasons... <li>This mission is meant to have a bit of variety, so you'll want to play it more than once. </ul>

Storyline:
The premise for the actual mission here is quite original, but the command briefing and briefing aren’t particularly well done. The Command briefing in particular could have elaborated a great deal more about the Black Lotus. As it is, it could all be compressed to one stage. The briefing is correct in terms of icons and ships, but could be a lot longer, and some of the icons could be better placed. In the mission, there are actually a few ‘chatter’ messages, but you won’t hear them. I’ll explain why later.<p><i>Now you can hear the chatter messages, and they add a bit of comic relief to the mission itself. However, the briefing and command briefing remain in the same state that they were before, and could do to do a bit more informative perhaps.</i>

Balance:
Ever tried to play an impossible mission? From the very first wave of enemy fighters (all 36 of them) you’re almost certain to die. The addition of bombers and transports only adds to the difficulty. Interestingly, it’s the fighters that do all of the damage – the bombers are merely a nuisance. Don’t get into a dogfight with the fighters, as they’re armed with Maxim cannons and will rip you to shreds. They only way to win seems to be to stand back and use Trebuchet rockets.<p><i>What a difference a bit of change of armaments makes – now the mission is playable and enjoyable at medium difficulty or below. You can now dogfight to your heart’s content and the fighters still damage the capital ships quite a bit – just now quite as much as before. The transports pose a large enough threat to be worth going after but not so dangerous as to make it impossible to save the fleet.</i>

Design:
From a design standpoint the use of variables and random time periods is very impressive. I canÂ’t admit to knowing how to get variables to work but have found little reason to, yet. Waypoints and send-message-list s-exps make their way in here too. However, the design almost makes me wonder whether this mission was designed just to show off variable use. An important note to ALL mission designers: if you use the <any wingman> choice in the send-message or list s-exps when designing a mission, you MUST give all the friendly ships from the wings you wish to speak a persona, otherwise it just wonÂ’t work. This is whatÂ’s happened here. The mission will also break into the debugger upon beginning the mission due to the variables. Not the best start, IÂ’m sure youÂ’ll agree.<p><i>Now that thereÂ’s no breaking into the debugger and the messages all show up correctly there are no glaring errors in the design. It still feels a bit forced, but thatÂ’s just my opinion.</i>

Gameplay:
If you survive more than two or three minutes I’ll be very surprised. If you can complete the mission, you’re either a very good player or you cheated. It’s no fun to die again and again trying to complete this mission, and even less fun to disable and disarm a whole Terran corvette or destroyer. It does look spectacular to see the Black Lotus fighters open fire, though. Well, as long as it’s not at you.<p><i>There’s been a slight loss of ‘wow’ value when the Black Lotus attack, but this has led to the mission being a much more enjoyable dogfight fir it. Go for the transports as soon as they arrive, because you don’t want to be left disabling and disarming a capital ship alone.</i>

Other Thoughts:
Every time I play this, I wonder why Peter Drake (author of the FRED 2 help) went to such trouble for this mission. It’s been in development for ages, so why is it not a fantastic mission? Oh, and Happy new Millennium, all...<p><i>This mission has now been ‘saved’. It’s not quite the cream of the crop, but it’s an enjoyable and different mission nonetheless.</i>