The story is original and interesting and the action is good when it happens. However there are several major flaws with the missions that include

1) Repeatedly failing missions because of the choice of cruiser. On lower difficulties the AI repeatedly crashes into the cruiser when doing its bombing runs, causing you to fail. This is because of the (you can only lose so many starfighters before you fail) caveat. On one mission I watched a total of 12 missile boats and 2 tie defenders crash into the cruiser and die. Using the MC-80 would have eliminated this problem completely.

2) Multiple missions cannot be completed on hard due to the aforementioned issue and weird choices (forcing the player to disable 12 craft that all have warheads while you have no beam or countermeasures) while you cannot afford to lose a single craft.

3) There is a lot of downtime. Some of the missions you are waiting 15 minutes for ships to dock because not enough transports were assigned to capture the enemy.

4) One of the points of the battle was to not destroy any EH pilots, which is the focus of an entire mission but for some reason goes out the window in the next mission. The same thing goes for a capital ship. You can destroy it multiple times yet it shows up in the last mission.

5) lack of beam system or countermeasures for the battle which becomes more of a problem the higher the difficulty.

A good story line that would make any member of the Challenge beam with pride. However, it's mired by some questionable mission design. I spent way too much time having to body block torpedo and rocket attacks and dealing with soft fail issues in the last mission to give me reason enough to lower my rating. The 'disable all craft' aspect was great! It's just such a shame the limitations of the engine prevent the AI wingmates from being able to continue the theme in later missions.

As current commodore of the Challenge (and former Slayer CMDR on the Subbie), I had no choice but to try this mission out, and I'm glad I did. It had some tricky mission objectives - not just mindless dogfighting - and you had to really pay attention to get through a the missions. The plotline was distressing, and I had to pause a few times to shed a tear - how could we let the Chalquilla run dry?

It is a well-crafted battle that carries the hallmarks of Dempsey. Even if I didn't know it was her creation, I'd still know it was Dempsey who created it, as it has several of her signature 'moves'. One flaw later on, as it becomes ok to destroy EH 'enemy' craft. I noticed that when I was still trying to disable enemy fighters while the friendly AI just blew them to pieces :D Aside from that, very solid. There are a couple of moments when I didnt know what to do, perhaps because the enemies were taken down a lot faster than the events I am supposed to wait for. The last mission may have an issue. Not sure I will need to refly it.

An, at times Challenge-ing, but enjoyable battle. Pro tip for Mission 1 is that you want as much speed as possible to avoid failure. Some other tricky parts throughout, but nothing over the top (admittedly, played it on Easy). A good result at the end as well. As a more recent addition to the TC, some of the in-jokes whizzed past faster than a speeding TIE/D. For the Chalquilla!

Another excellent creation by Dempsey. The missions are perfectly crafted, the plotline is both original and with some twists, and for a Challenge pilot like myself, its close to a precious gem. Chalquilla is supposed to rule the galaxy through domination of brain cells. Fly this crazy and fast battle, where you'd follow the best ship in the Fleet while trying to recover their rightful death elixir. Definitely a golden classic.

This battle was a lot of fun (particularly if you've served on the Challenge and thus get a lot of the Radio Message humor)! It was also fairly challenging (at least for me, on Easy) but all-in-all, this is definitely a battle worth flying if you're looking for a good story line.