Description
Participate in a desperate battle to protect the GTI Reprieve from a full scale shivan attack.

Storyline:
The standard installation defence storyline is used here, and though there aren't a great many extra directions it can be taken in, and it isn't here, it's done very well indeed. There's a command briefing with more than one stage, command animations and more than one line of text per stage! The briefing icons and ships all match up, except for the fact that Gamma wing doesn't exist, and the author has used coloured writing! There are lots of messages in the mission, and although these aren't really chatter, the mission probably wouldn't lend itself to it. The author hasn't used highlighting arrows, but that's fine by me, as they tend to crash my computer (laughable, isnÂ’t it?). Finally, there are a couple of grammatical errors and the final stage of the briefing has the camera a little poorly placed in FS2. However, in FRED2 it's fine. I have encountered this problem once, and I have no idea how to fix it, so I won't deduct anything.

The briefing is now fixed, with no camera errors or wayward fighter wings. ThereÂ’s also a bit of chatter and a few more messages, which is nice. However, I did still notice a couple of spelling and grammatical errors.

Balance:
This mission is difficult. Very, very difficult, but in a fair kind of way. You won't face too many Shivans at one time, but you'll have to divide your time between intercepting bombers, attacking small capital ships and intercepting fighters, all the while ordering your wingmen so that they don't get mashed. If you don't know how to intercept bombs, learn, as you'll be doing a lot of it, and the same goes for destroying turrets – this will extend the life of the station and the Vasudan corvette you are defending. Your wingmen will all die eventually, no matter how hard you try to save them, leaving it all up to you, as usual, although the author has given them General AI to ensure you get the most use out of them. One criticism, which sort of refers to design as well as balance, is the fact that the Shivan wings arrive in waves with a 0-second delay. Although this makes it seem more like a vicious attack, it makes it a lot more difficult.

The mission is still difficult, which is good – in fact, it’s a touch more difficult, according to the author. The Vasudan corvette is a little too hard to save, and the reprimand for not doing so too harsh. The Shivan attacks are a little more spaced out, giving you time to gather your senses before the next attack.

Design:
Although design of this mission is generally good, I noticed a couple of errors. I'll get these out of the way first, so I can get on with the good stuff. One of the messages occurs out of time (it's a message relating to the destruction of a corvette that sends when it arrives), and he main objective is flawed – you'll be ordered to depart before the final group of Shivans (including a Moloch) are destroyed. These just look like overlooked s-exps, really, but the second one particularly affects the mission. Now, the good. Directives all work, as do beam free events, and there's a pretty background too. The author has used send-message-list s-exps for messaging, and the action takes place on all three axes.

The messages all now occur ‘in time’ and the objectives are better laid out so that you have to destroy all the Shivans as well as wait for the Vasudan destroyer. There wasn’t much wrong here before and there’s nothing wrong now, really.

Gameplay:
The introduction to this mission is very nice indeed, having a little cinematic touch to it, and it looks damn pretty to boot. Anyway, after this short set-up there's no respite at all in terms on action, and you'll be frantically fighting off bombers, cruisers and fighter escorts right until the end of the mission. The difficulty of the mission could be seen by some as unfair and off-putting, but the relatively fair ship numbers that you face at any one time make it more like a challenge than a slaughter. Personally, I really do like this level of challenge, as it was both exciting and tense. One thing you can't accuse this mission of is having any lulls. There aren't any – not even long enough to reload missiles, which some could see as a problem, but I don't.

Well, you can’t improve this – but I managed to complete it more easily this time and got in a reload. I also got 43 kills :-)

Other Thoughts:
As much as I love the balance of this mission, the moment when, on the first test, I was shot down a minute before the end was annoying.

No more design errors, but newer players may experience some problems when playing it.