Description
The Earth-Vasuda aliance is breaking up, resumption of conflict seems imminent due to terrorist threat. HOL rears its ugly head...

Storyline:
In this post-Great War scenario, the Vasudans "weakened economically and militarily by the destruction of Vasuda Prime, no longer appeared, nor could be treated, as equals to the Terrans." The GTA's superior attitude, combined with Vasduan military cutbacks, have swelled the ranks of the Hammer of Light. This campaign is about the GTA's increasing attempts to put the Vasudans and the Hammer of Light in their place.

The story is extremely interesting, covering many different types of missions. In the first mission, Alpha 1 must escort a "tough" embassador to Vasuda Prime despite pitifully underarmed Vasudan honor guard. Then, Alpha will assist the anti-subversive campaign while protecting Terran facilities, including a Terran EM weapon system. In retaliation for prior Hammer attacks during these oprations, Alpha will lead an attack on a Hammer cargo depot - to kick butt and, hopefully, take prisoners. A Hammer counterstrike must then be thwarted by destroying a convoy of lethal weapons. And, finally, the GTA launches a massive assault on a Vasudan Installation to "teach our 'eternal allies' a lesson to remind them of their commitments and obligations."

The storyline certainly is a great mix of missions, but I found the final mission to be of questionable moral and political merit. This mission "Here Endeth the Lesson" sounded like something out of Silent Threat and somewhat soured the campaign for me. However, these campaign briefings and debriefings are wonderfully done -- aside from a few annoying errors in the ship types for the briefing icons.

Balance:
The challenge in this mission is well-designed. Your ship selections are tailored to a spread that is adequate for each mission. In a few missions, you have little more than Apollos and Valkyries armed with MX-50s, Furies, Interceptors, ML-16s, Disruptors or Avengers. In other missions, you have a nearly full selection of goodies. It was evident that some thought had gone into each team loadout.

The missions varied from somewhat somewhat easy to difficult. Even in the final mission, the enemies weren't impossible to defeat (an explosion in the second mission will interfere with sensors and make mission two very difficult at a critical moment). Expect a good, solid stream of hostiles that will run out before you will. Enemy and friendly AI are often set to above-normal settings, which makes your opponent's actions nicely varied. I had to restart each mission once or twice due to suprises or mistakes on my part, but none of the missions are impossible or overly difficult.

Design:
These missions are well-done throughout the campaign, although there were a few ship type errors for the icons in the mission briefings. There are plenty of events, messages and directives to keep you informed of the mission's progress. The sounds are nice, as Michael has a great accent. Hotkeys are used in most of the missions, and ships are consistently well-placed.

One highlight in this campaign is the skillful use of the "ship-invisible" sexp command during the second mission to implement the effects of an EMP explosion during the second mission. Since the effect isn't implemented for the AI, the mission becomes extremely difficult at this point unless Alpha has already given orders to their wings. There were other nice suprises in the other missions, but this one I had to mention.

Most of the other design questions I had during the campaign could be explained as creative differences, other than three issues. First, the relatively minor problem of the Flytrap and the Rokhard just sitting after docking at the end of the third mission.

The second question was a major issue and really hurt the rating of this mission. The final mission locked up consistently on me after the Vasduan Installation was destroyed. I haven't been able to trace down the exact cause of the crash, but I suspect that there were too many ships in the game at one time (I flew a bomber, concentrated on the Arcadia and ignored all of the fighters). This disappointed me greatly, as I am still unable to completely finish the campaign. I would have shifted the forces so that more than four Vasudan "police" arrived to stop the havoc I was causing only 3000 meters away -- literally their front doorstep.

Finally, this campaign gives out a medal for the successful completion of each and every mission. Walking out of the campaign with five medals is definitely overkill and devalues the importance of the medals.

Gameplay:
Overall, this campaign is enjoyable. The campaign continues smoothly between missions and your actions are important to sucessfully complete each mission. There are a few suprises, some good effects, and a solid challenge as the missions become steadily more difficult (other than a spike of difficulty during the second mission). Being rewarded with a medal after each mission tarnished the value of completing the campaign, and I was unable to finish the last leg of the final mission. In the end, I still enjoyed what I saw because it was a good mixture of missions.

Other Thoughts:
Medals shouldn't just be given out in every mission. It was amusing to have a new pilot with lots of medals, but no promotion, at the end of the campaign. Only the second and last missions deserve medals, in my opinion.

I also doubt that the Terrans would be so well-placed after the Great War. With the collapse of the Jump Node, the GTA presumably lost its homeworld as well. I'd expect the GTA to be somewhat humbled by the experience and doubt it would be insane enough to launch the last mission...but after Silent Threat, who knows what evil the Terrans are capable of?