Fly this at your own risc

Alrighty - finally a battle that gives us that best craft of all: the T/B... even if I had to make it myself :) And REMAKE it myself: This battle has not just been updated to include the EHSP and custom .wav package - but also to fix bugs; make the goals more comprehensible; reduce waiting times and all sorts of other things mentioned in these reviews.

When I was doing Project Shield part of the work was removing unneeded and/or outdated patches, but TIE-TC#39 came with one I had never seen before: the V-Wing. As the battle was released in 1996, that made it the earliest reference to this craft ever. However, the patch had been disabled by an earlier TAC project (Probably because it only worked on the TIECD version and had only very limited changes to the craft it replaced) so I removed it from the battle and stored it for future reference. A year later I completed the V-Wing OPT (and cockpits) and rebuilt the patch for both TIECD and TIE95 using the original stats by Micck Emrys (almost, i removed the standard shields and hyperdrive.) so I wanted to re-enable the patch in TIE-TC#39 (by just hanging the craft type really.) It was then that I actually first laid eyes on the battle - and was shocked to see how much had changed in missioncreation since 1996: It had virtually no radiomessages, waypoints or briefings and even still included parts of text from the original TIE Fighter mission it was based upon. At this point I asked permission from the Tactical Office to upgrade the battle completely to current standards while re-adding the patch. About every aspect was changed to get better results in TIE - however great care was taken to retain the same atmosphere as the original version had.

I don't regulary review my own work, and certainly not with such a high rating, but I would like to point out that none of my battles are supposed to be easy 10 minute missions on Hard. If you suck as a pilot, there's no need to blame the battle - just fly it on an easier level. :P

This was the second free mission I made, and remarkably... looking at it again - it was made in a crappier fashion then the first one i made. As such it has been completely rebuilt: All orders, goals, waypoints (there actually weren't any before), briefing etc. are new. I've also replaced craft formerly marked with 'this is a MIS', 'this is a T/D' and 'this is TOS' with the catual craft instead of the GUN, T/A and Y-W used before. I kept the timeframe however.. back then Mantis did have Tos/F :)

This was my first free mission, based directly on a plotline by Hawkie.. meaning that basically i was trying something I didn't have the skills for yet. *g* It has now been completely rebuild with new orders, goals, briefing, waypoints and everything. I also added the actual Luggage instead of a simple freighter - as it was originally meant to be (but the patch wasn't finished in time). Also I added the original plotline story, which should make it make more sense to the casual pilot. :)

Think I'll also just randomly dump unfinished missions in a zip and call it a battle.

Understood should be that this battle was extracted from the original TIE-CAB and as such is practically ancient.. but the old-skool atmosphere and such is very much its charm. Also its bug free. Could do with an overhaul to port the officer briefings of corresponding TIE missions over to these.

Good stuff, especially in making a fully EH storyline in X-W. Pretty challenging for X-W as well.:)

Bit too simple a mission, but enjoyable.

Quality battle, though pretty hard at times... but then again: I like missions to be challenging. :)

The first version was released as my first battle ever, and made to train Krayt Pilots in co-op bombing missions. The Battle was submitted for the first "ASF: Supremacy Competition" of may 2000 and then held up in testing for one and a half years before being released w/o any changes. In 2002 This battle earned the "Pinky Lollypop" for being the Worst XvT Battle of 2001, which was weird (as it rated two times as high as the other choice, and was from 2000) but fairly to be expected for a first made battle, one that was made in for Co-Op in a SP environment and all that. This second release is aimed at pleasing the comments made about this battle over the past 3 years. It features an actual storyline, is no longer a collection of converted Totally Games rebel missions. The Co-Op element stayed, as that's finally started to pick up in the TC, but the battle has been made easier for the Single Player Pilot. All the craft of the original missions are there, doing about the same things - just done up to avoid bugs and to look better. I've also added things that were planned originally already, but were't possible then - like the Luggage Patch. As George Lucas once said: "A movie is never finished, only abandoned"

I can only say I was highly disappointed with this, and its creator really. This "greatest" battle features starships that seem to have fighterorders, or just don't move or do anything at all, rebel fighters attacking rebel starships and their buddies the Andrevians, Andrevians returning the favour, ATRs smashing into their targets, fleet smashing into the player at hypering in, enemy fighters just ignoring you and other such stuff you wouldn't expect from a battle rated this high. Then the gameplay: The briefings look wonderful (beautifull even, smashing!) if very fuzzy on what's actually going on, but don't give you any clue of what you're really supposed to do or what the storyline really is, or at least I couldn't bring up the enthousiasm to actually follow it - luckily there's the inflight Goals page. But that don't really matter as the Player is of no importance at all in this battle: you can beat the last mission by not firing once and just switching it to 4x time, which saves you endless warhead dodging and strafing (outside this battle: when will creators finally give enough ordnance to do a mission?) of when you do get involved. Who is of concequence in this battle then? Drake of course! I got pretty much annoyed with the egotripping involved. His name and email all over the briefings, which already elaborate on his greatness and "Credits" in the last debrief to top it off. Ok, we saw your name on the readme already - you can be proud of your creation but you can also push it... in this case I feel its an unwelcome intrusion in the SW atmosphere. To be honest though, and truthfully Beef's review made me realize that, it is an above average battle, which hence deserves a 4 (not a 1)... but its by far not the best ever made and if so - not the best that ever will be made... Oh and that "vertical mission"? Its a pretty useless concept in space where there is no such thing as vertical or horizontal. You'll only notice it in the 3D mode of the map, the rest will seem just as normal. I stopped doing this stuff because of it. Real 3D is the way to go:)

Isn't it strange that the small female cats that fly TIE can't take what every XvTer or XWAer can take? Are you men or mice... the latter apparently because in the few hours since I rated Drake's battle lowly suddenly his croonies start rating this with 0s... HOW SAD CAN YOU GET? Guys... this battle is just on here for history's sake - if you don't wann a fly it, don't.... but take your heads out of your BGCOM's arse.

small and simple, just like CrazyR2 :P

Nice MP mission... with a strange thing... the crazy droid that thinks you should stay away gives it a 3, where as a mission he found enjoyable he gave a 1? (He apparently never understood the rating system.);P Anyway, these ASF misions were made for MP combat, I suggest you use them that way.

I've seen reviews like CrazyR2's many many times before, but generally ppl rate a bugless "enjoyable" mission or battle 3 or higher...

This is ASF History... as in factual wargame stuff - not some storyline that never happened, but based on strategic backgrounds - you know: the realism people wanted. Yes this means its not all easy or fit for sissies but if you're man or woman enough to be in the corps none of these missions will be very hard for you. [Note I wouldn't give it a 5 if the tac office hadn't started this trent of rating before a battle is released, but it's still above average imho]

NOTE: This is a 6 mission 4vs4 Combat Battle split into a 12 mission 4 player Co-Op Battle because of TAC submission regulations. Because of this as a SP pilot you'll see each engagement twice and this might get a tad tedious. For MP combat however you have the chance to fly any ASF unit vs any other ASF unit on an equal balance. As such it can be used instead of your regular, far more boring, melee in combat comps - which is what it was made for.

Besides the problems already meantioned I hated the fact that the only starship order used was "wait" which made for very unrealistic, yet easy action AND that I, a T/B Pilot from Echo, had to destroy T/Bs from Echo while all the so called "EH Craft" in the battle were all unknown to me.

Muhahahahah! for a good one: read first the storylines and then the TAC comments in update.txt and notice they didn't read the storylines;) For the rest its an excellent battle of course O:-D

Besides that I never got to see the insides of mission 4 (utter crash) I thought this to be a badly constructed battle for several reasons, one being that the first mission is _very_ simmular to the famed "Ewok Pizza" mission that comes with XvT anyway (Imperial 2 Player Warhead interception)... which is why I could beat it in exactly the same way (disable+ignore 1 transport). The 1 is there for the storyline, which is more solid then most (even tho it reminds of one of the first battles in tie.)

a real "home made" battle in many ways, unbalanced, reversed (from hard to easy. creating an anti-climax), buggy, platforms and CRLs that don't fire at you when they reasonably should, a collection of various free missions concerning Crusader Squadron without much of a connecting storyline and apparently unfinished (last mission notes that the VSD will join us for the following missions... of which there are none:)

Even tho not perfect (didn't see a single EH ship:P), a very nice battle to fly... Might even be better as a full 4 player co-op battle, as that's what you're playing mostly... Another thing that's not really perfect is the amount of bombers (guns) in the last mission, its pretty boring to have to destroy a platform and some caps with lasers only. Might also be solved by giving the available bombers double warheadloads. Still a nice battle overall:)

Not one of the best battles we got here, storyline is kinda slow and doesn't really get the player involved. Flying wise its mostly one big dogfight, which tends to get on my nerves after a mission or 2 (as a bomber guy:P)