Description
Trapped by the sudden Shivan incursion into Gamma Draconis, the remote science outpost of Jensen Base is trapped and alone. They must use all their forces and smarts if they hope to survive.

This mission was first submitted to the Ground Freespace Sidewinder Giveaway Contest.

Storyline:
Alpha wing is assigned to Jensen science base, a somewhat forgotten space station in Gamma Draconis. The Command briefing and mission briefing are well written with appropriate use of command animations and coloured highlighting. Debriefing covers all the angles too. In-mission dialogue is good – tense, with a little chatter and some nice technical fighting talk, but not too much to make you take your eyes off of the fight itself. I did spot a couple of tiny errors here, such as naming the Vasudan cruiser GTC in one mission. Ooops. Nothing major enough to really criticise, though.

Balance:
Thanks to some judicious rearming of the Shivan capital ships and excellent choice of good AI for the small numbers of bombers that attack, this mission is always a challenge but not frustratingly hard. The fact that the Harakhti's beam cannons repair when they are destroyed balances it out and stops the mission getting stuck in a rut. There is a range of gameplay styles and you'll have to get involved in attack, defence and a good dogfight to win here. Perhaps the only criticism is that you might find staying alive at the end a bit of a pain when Shivan fighters attack your diminished wingmen.

Design:
Technically this mission is great. The author has used all three axes well. All of the directives are correct and work perfectly. The author has kept event numbers as low as possible with combined s-exps and send-message-list and remembered such details as beam-frees and locks where appropriate to up the challenge, as well as repairing the beam cannons if they are destroyed. One of the most impressive things is that if you stay in the mission once it's over you'll see the freighters and corvette evacuate the station, all with appropriate chatter. Cool.

Gameplay:
Gameplay is tense. Gameplay is fun. Gameplay is challenging. Yes, as you can see I had a great time playing this mission, and so will you. There's some assault on the cruisers, dogfighting and bomber intercept to be doing, and being near the Brahma as it explodes in your rear-view (if you know what's good for you) is a great feeling. I love the way the author has woven in other missions to the 'grand scheme' of things – at the end of the mission the Carthage and Dahshor head off to help some pilots at the Knossos, and so on. Does this sound familiar?

Other Thoughts:
This mission was submitted for the GFS contest and is an example of the quality of missions submitted. I quite fancied this one for victory. Better luck next time, FireSplat.