The story was pretty good, but this is is a great example of why 100% destruction of many fighters should NOT be a primary objective. Unless you're lucky, you're spending all your time making sure that others on your side don't damage a fighter then let it escape. Such goals, particularly when the destruction of the fighter isn't absoultely essential to the mission, should be considered a bonus goal at most.
It was pretty good with the exception of mission 2 (which is essentially a showdown between you in a T/F and a guy in a T/D. The speeds are so unevenly matched that it takes a while to wear down his shields. When I got it to this point, the T/D kept going into hyperspace. Perhaps there should have been an Interdictor there to keep the T/D from running away when it's hull was damaged.
The only entertainment value of this battle comes from the plot. Everything else (including missile boats with intent to kill you) come in 4 groups of 6 fighters. Iffs and vulnerability change from mission to mission so you have to pay really close attention to what you can and can't get points for and what can smoke you. Also, elements (such as the civilian presence) seem to appear and disappear for no apparent reason leaving the missions somewhat disconnected from each other and the plot as told by the briefing officer and the secret order officer. I had over 340 kills in this battle and when most of 'em are a-wings, T/Ds and MIS's, you know you're in for a LONG battle.
This mission is pretty well balanced, but there are a few problems. First, the mission takes a while to play though because of the distance between the containers. Second, the secondary goals are uncompletable due to the bug described below. Third, the enemy ships will attack the ships they're supposed to be protecting so it turns into a race to destroy the enemies before they destroy themselves.
A pretty good battle... Like everyone's been saying, mission 5 is long, but it's not too difficult. Just a hint, disarm the the capitol ships first. This will only take their shields down several percent, but just trailing them and shooting is far quicker than the ol' hit n' evade. Also, if you're sure of what you're doing, you can put the speed up to 4x while trailing and shooting. Just make sure you give the capitol ships plenty of room to turn when they reach a waypoint.
It's a good battle with the couple glitches (the wingman attack and the CORT suicide). Exellent timing, though, the first 3 times I tried the mission 4 the E/S hypered out just out of scanning range (a bit of frustration there). I also think that some kind of warhead is in order so that at least you can beat some of those rockets on the last mission to the punch on the capital ships.
