The endless waves weren't too bad considering the story and that you weren't required to destroy them all. An average battle, I'd say.

This mission had a good plot that was made better by an excellent telling. The play was fairly complex too. It can be quite difficult to get the timing right, and it's tempting to get some easy bonus kills and accidentally let the mission critical crafts escape.

There's no way to say this without sounding pitifully defensive (I wish I could comment without giving my own work a rating), but these are my observations so I'll just say them. First of all, this mission only took me 13.5 game minutes to complete the primary goals. The problem is that we're all used to only beating on X-wings and the like. So when we have to face something that is actually hard and can shoot at us from behind (i.e. CORTs) we don't know how to handle them properly. As for the wait at the beginning. It is less than 2.5 game minutes. Just turn on x4 time and it's a whole 37 seconds of real life. That's not very much time. Besides the wait goes with the plot; the action can't start until the BGCOM is aboard. Humor is all opinion so I can't say anything there. I don't know everything about TIE workshop, but that doesn't mean I didn't do a lot of work too. As for winning the competition: I'm not going to say whether this mission winning 2nd was right or wrong-that wasn't my decision. I'll just do some comparision. Before I say anything else about them, I'll say that the two missions Drake mentioned are very good. I enjoyed them. Drake complained about lack of animated briefing-182's briefing didn't move either. Stop points don't really make much difference. I keep maps basic anyway so the officer will have something to say other than repeating the map. The briefing text boxes cover the whole screen-yes, they do. They need to be that big to fit all the words in them. "What are the mission goals" questions aren't very interesting or original. 2D battle-true. This isn't my best work. Fast mission messages-also true, but that's what the "L" button is for. It pauses the game so you can read the messages you missed. I mentioned the waiting already. "Stupidly balanced?"-well the Colossus missions had T/Ds vs T/Fs. How balanced is that? I honestly think this mission had a more even playing field. Starship orders are wrong?-if they defended themselves and otherwise did what I WANTED them to do, how is that wrong? They didn't have fighter orders. Placement is poor-that's an opinion, I guess. Nothing was painfully far away. Goal sheet clogged-true. I didn't want it that cluttered. I wanted to use something like "100% Wookiee craft must be destroyed" but global goals like that tend to lead to the goals-complete-but-mission-failed bug in TIE so I had to keep the goals separate. Robbed? I can't say since it wasn't my decision. I thought it was a close competition, though this mission isn't my best or perfect. Some differences I noticed between this mission and the ones Drake talks about: The Colossus missions' plots were simply two forces meeting and fighting and were laid out fully in the briefing. This mission had SOME twists and plot developments DURING the battle (whether you thought they were funny or not). This mission had ships coming in and out of the battle with orders other than kill the enemy which COULD be a reason this mission scored 2nd place. If you really think you were robbed, why don't we politely ask the judge for the guidlines he used in making his decision?

Excellent military-style briefings and informational map. This mission was a simple yet large protect-the-ISD mission. It was very good, especially with the wingmen's orders: the disabled the M/FRGs before destroying them which eliminates the threat faster. It also had some downs. The enemy was all in unshielded old TIEs and since the player and his/her wingmates were all in T/Ds and MISs, the gameplay was unbalanced. The T/Is and T/Bs were easily slaughtered, but the three M/FRGs did help even the scale back a little. Still a great mission.

Beefy militaristic briefing and map. Not as difficult as the briefing portrayed. A TIE Fighter with shields and missiles is still an easy kill, but it IS good to have a change from the usual X-wing and A-wing massacres of other missions. And it did have a big battle feel to it. A very good mission.

Just a few X-wings and a frigate! Nothing to it at all. Oh yeah, there are lots of waves of B-wings for bonus points afterwards, but still...

An overly gruesome objective, eh? :P No matter. This mission was awfully easy and simplistic, but it had some cool background. More info about this albino Wookiee and his organization would have been great. Some of the ships had bad timing: they left as soon as they arrived, making secondary goals impossible. Not a bad mission, but nothing to make it really good.

Includeds a funny reference to the USA's presidential election last year. That's kind of old news now, though. Too bad the TAC didn't approve it months ago. Oh well, still gets a laugh. Very complex and well put together. All the ships interacting and having the correct orders--quite beefy! Humorous story with serious battle setup. Great fun avoiding missiles while trying to disable the targets before they escape. An excellent mission. Fly it!

Good motivation for the mission! :P Very hard if you don't take care of the bad guys in the right order. Otherwise it's pretty easy. Overall, an OK mission.

Can be difficult. Semi-interesting plot. Missions 4 and 5 are quite tedious: Destroy two PLTs with no warheads for yourself and friendlies only have torps--takes forever! They also have far too many waves of enemy fighters. There's also a hole in the plot: All the missions have T/Ds and T/As, then suddenly in mission 5, there are only T/Fs and the like. Why? Not all that great.

The usual wipe-out-the-Rebels battle. The missions range from large and complex, like mission 6, to utterly pointless, like mission 2 which had nothing more than you and a DREAD. Disabling the Rebel fighters in one mission was different, but the purpose was never explained. Not much else was notable.

Pirates, secret technology, don't let it get stolen, *yawn* zzzzz. This plot must have happened fifty times already. There's not much to the missions in this battle. They are very basic and aren't challenging at all.

This was a very good battle, not GREAT or PERFECT, but quite good. What's all this "one of the worst battles I've ever flown" nonsense?!? For starters, the officer is NOT blaming you for what the mission creator did wrong. It's what you did as a pilot. Think about it, you don't pop out of exsistance when you're not actually flying. As the mission commander, you set up the hyperspace route. The mission creator started you out 15 klicks (not 30) away because the Imperial pilot you are representing made a mistake. Which leads to the next point: it makes sense for them to be angry at you. A failure isn't something you should get promoted for. This is all part of what is called a PLOT or STORYLINE and makes the battle interesting. Instead of the usual "the player-saved-the-day," we've got something more interesting: "the-player-messed-up-and-now-he's-going-to-fix-it." The creator didn't make a mistake in this aspect. He did exactly what he had in mind and wrote logical reactions for the officer. The briefing maps were not only excellent and professional looking, but they WERE acurate. They didn't say something completly opposite of what would happen. I don't know what the person who gave this a "zero" is talking about! But even if the briefings were wrong, you can't expect them to know every thing anyway. We're supposed to be using our imaginations and pretending this is real. Now, mission 3 DID have FAR too many enemy waves. If not for that, this battles would have gotten a "five" from me. Don't get me wrong, though. Mission 3 wasn't terrible, simply too many ships at the end. The beginning was fine. My wingmen (and other Imperials) easily survived all the way through. In fact, I was never overwhelmed in the whole battle. Actually, when you come right down to it, even though mission 3 dragged because of too many waves, it still had only a fraction of the waves some of the REALLY terrible battles have. Frankly, I enjoyed even mission three. Now, about having to shoot down T/As and T/Ds: "Oh no! A level playing field! Run for your lives!" (That would be sarcasm there). Flying a T/A yourself, you can easily massacre anything the Rebels have because some fool at LucasArts decided the Imps should have near invicable TIEs. The only way to get any challenge while flying a T/A or T/D is to fight OTHER T/As or T/Ds and you get that challenge in this battle. Finally, I'm going to move away from that small blot (mission 3) on this battle and tell you that the other three missions are excellent. They are complex and not overly difficult. The plot is even progressed in some of them. I must recommend this battle. (Sorry for the long post, but I had a lot to say).

A little TOO easy for my tastes. The freighter targets never leave, so you have all the time you want to kill the fighters first. This was more like a collection of FREETIEs than a battle. It's like five people got together and said, "Let's see who can make the best stolen MIS mission!" Then they decided to package them up in a single battle. There's no flow or overall plot to connect any of the missions. Not very exciting either.

The lame inflight messages really got on my nerves. The missions could be difficult but were of average quality and design. The plot had a few good twists though.

Flying the good ol' unshielded TIEs in the first two missions was fun. But the plot was kind of boring, and it weakened and went off on a tangent away from the vacation story it started with. It was a bit difficult in a few places, but not too bad. The mission design was OK, but not great. Average.

This battle was pretty good. The use of the "clutches" (aka Tri-Fighters) was a great idea. The story and the missions had excellent set up and a good level of realism. The briefing questions started out formal then developed some humor in the later missions, but they were alway informative and interesting.

Sorry, but this mission is NOT great. First off, the plot is so weak, it's almost nonexistent. It didn't motivate me enough to much care if our platform survived. Contrary to what someone else said, you can tell that NOT a lot of work was put into it. It's not very complex or thorough. It's the kind of stuff people make when they're newbies at mission creation. The missions were standard at best and annoying at worst (especially mission 1 which was just sit in your T/F and kill waves of alphabets just like that training mission that came with TIE Fighter). And on a minor note, a couple of the in-flight messages were timed wrong. This battle was not original, not interesting, and not fun. It is highly overrated.

Lots of waiting with nothing to do in the first missions. I know that's "more realistic," but in a video game without a way to speed up time, it is annoying. In mission 3 and 4, there are too many capships for my weak computer to handle, so some of them went invisible. I'm not using that against the battle, just mentioning it. The plot is pretty basic and a little bit unclear. I've also flown the previous "Rion" battles, but I still don't know what the Rion Fleet is all about or why it's where it is.

If it wasn't for the last couple of missions this battle would've gotten a 4, but the capship positions and the stealth and such in the final fights boosted it up to a 5. If played normally (not worrying about high scores) the last two battles feel very realistic. It actually seems like a large battle. The timing and set up of multiple waves is so good that the player doesn't wait around for the next wave to arrive. This gives the missions a more fluid flow. The briefing maps were cool, though they moved a bit to quickly. The plot was progressively more interesting as the battle moved on. The Q&A's were average. The FRG getting pulled out of hyperspace was a good effect too.

The missions are very simple, yet take a long time to complete due to the large number of enemies. The plot is boring, unconnected, and extremely vague. I read all the briefings and maps and STILL wasn't clear on what was going on or why.

A bit excessive with the enemy fighters in mission 1. 64 starchasers? Yeah, that's a lot. But not necessarily a bad thing, just leave some time if you want to fly this battle. The missions start out on the dull side, but they get much better as the battle progresses. The storyline was good, but overall, the gameplay and briefings were only average. I'd give it a 3.5 if I could.

Average plot and mission design. Quite difficult to save the ATR in missions 3 and 4, near impossible actually, there are so many Rebels! Mission 5 was very large and long-winded, a "you vs the world" type of mission. Also, if people would read the briefing maps and questions in missions, it would be obvious that you should disable ISD Engager in mission 5.

I get bored of the same old "What are my objectives?" briefing questions, so I made this battle with a helpful and hopefully funny briefing. I also wanted to make a battle with not just a thorough plot, but characters too. I hope you find it entertaining. It only took me an hour or so to fly (same as most other 5 mission battles in the TC). ---BTW, whoever gave rated this battle a 'zero' but didn't write a review isn't helping. If you don't tell me what sucked about it, then I can't fix it next time...

Lightly amusing briefing. The mission play was a little slow, especially since there was no danger to the player's craft.