Description
As a newly appointed fighter pilot for the Vasudan space station guarding the Deneb system, you are soon placed in the heat of battle when a Vice Admiral of the NTF takes a risky gamble.

Storyline:
I'm not sure if this mission has anything at all to do with SiriusX's previous mission, 'Calm before the Storm', but I don't think so. In this mission you're cast as a Vasudan on an installation in Deneb, taking part in the blockade of the Sirius jump node. The Command briefing and briefing are well done, with good spelling and correct icons. The Command briefing could have done with some animations, and there are loads of them relating to Deneb, so there's no real excuse. It's also unnecessarily long. During the mission you'll find some nice, but short, chatter messages at the start, though there are a couple of grammatical errors, which add a bit of unintended humour.

Balance:
The mission starts off as a turkey shoot, as about four NTF craft come in against three capital ships, and five wings of fighters. However, as things progress, from the first easy victory over an NTF corvette, you gradually lose ships and it becomes somewhat harder. By the time the third wave of ships enters, you really are in danger of having them slip through your fingers if youÂ’ve played badly and lost your bombers. However, some more careful use of beam-frees might have made the first part of the mission a little more challenging. The GTVA receive reinforcements when appropriate, and the mission is never too difficult, really. Playing in a bomber makes the mission somewhat easier as youÂ’re less likely to waste torpedoes and die. The really good thing about the balance of the mission is that whether you play as a bomber or support fighter (which the author has been good enough to allow you to) there's plenty of stuff to do, varied from the other choice. Really.

Design:
The design of this mission is as solid as any other part of it, though nothing stands out really far. All of the directives work well, there's a background, events are chained when appropriate, waypoints work well (though several ships overshoot the jump node by a long way) and the author has used send-message-list s-exps on a couple of occasions to cut down the number of events. In fact, the only design flaws I found were that the NTF beam-frees could have been combined with their arrival messages, and for some reason the GTCv Phalanx didn't fire beams, despite the fact that it has a beam-free event. The other thing that this mission could have done with is a series of 'anti-frustration' beam locks for when the capital ships are destroyed.

Gameplay:
Why the paradox in the 'mission type' box, you may ask. Well, basically, you are defending the jump node and the blockade ships, but you are also assaulting the enemy ships coming in. I know this could be said of many missions, but it's very obvious in this one, plus you can fly a bomber. Whatever you fly, the mission is good fun, and fast and furious too (wow, the clichés are flying thick and fast tonight, people). You'll barely notice that 16 minutes have passed. The mission does drag very slightly at the beginning, as it's so easy, and at the end, as your bombers will probably all be destroyed and you're waiting for more. These are only short, minor intervals, though. Now that's entertainment.

Other Thoughts:
The capital ships are excellently named, fitting in with the universe, though I've used some of the names in my as-yet-unreleased projects, gnnrrg still, nobody 'owns' names.