Description
As a pilot for the SOC, you and your wingman are about to engage in the most dangerous mission ever. The capture of a Sathanas Class Juggernaught.

Storyline:
ItÂ’s about time that someone made good use of the SOC in FS2 missions, and thankfully this one does. The premise of the mission is quite out of the ordinary, and is carried off very well with command briefings and in-flight messages. That isnÂ’t to say that the missionÂ’s storyline is without its flaws, though. There are numerous spelling and grammatical errors throughout the mission and some of the passages donÂ’t quite make sense (The Super Sathanas having a weapons capacity equal to a Mjolnir being one example). The debriefing also only has a condition for success or failure, and so it behaves rather oddly if you succeed in some objectives yet fail in others.

Balance:
The player plays an integral part in the mission, blowing important ships to itty-bitty pieces on the orders of the SOC. This gives the player something to do while there are no hostile forces in the area. There is quite a bit to shoot at as well, though. The Shivans donÂ’t pose a particular challenge while youÂ’re armed with dual Kaysers, but downgrading your weapons will add some more challenge. However, the mission isnÂ’t too difficult on the whole and most people should be able to crack it.

Design:
Although the design of this mission achieves what is needed, it isn’t particularly clean. There are a huge number of s-exps, which could have been significantly reduced by use of the ‘add operator’ feature in the events which allows you to include several different s-exp changes in one event. Send-message-lists are also unused – in fact, messages aren’t even chained, and use ‘is-event-true’ instead. Some of the s-exps aren’t entirely necessary either. The destruction of the various vessels could also have been done more cleanly through the use of a simple chained s-exp or key pressing to destroy the vessels. Although limited by the lack of Shivan installations or many other Terran comparable vessels, the author has created a reasonably credible Shivan shipyard using Terran ships. These little bits of originality lift the design up above the level it would normally achieve.

Gameplay:
ThereÂ’s quite a lot of sitting around in this mission, followed by bursts of frantic action. The use of radio chatter relieves some of the lulls in the mission, although there are still some. ItÂ’s nice that the chatter also relates back to the main storyline of FS2 in some ways. The missionÂ’s also pretty long at more than 15 minutes so if you like your missions short and snappy steer clear. However, the mission is good fun to play; though it doesnÂ’t really have much in the way of replay value. Fun while it lasts, but I wouldn't keep it after more than a couple of goes.

Other Thoughts:
With some tightening of the design, working out of spelling errors and a few less lulls this mission would be a lot better. It's almost a four star mission as it is, it's just a few points per section keeping it out of that bracket.