Really enjoyed the story throughout the entire battle. Great use of the pilot briefings to tell the story. The missions were nice and varied along with giving me the opportunity to fly two different ships.

The Officer Briefing and Map Briefings were fairly pointless since this was a go on patrol mission and see what happens. The enemy bombers tend to target you and your wingman so it never seemed like the ISD was ever in danger and the mission was quite easy to complete on hard.

The officer briefing had a nice little bit of fluff to help get you familiar with the mission. The map briefing was adequate as well. The mission itself was pretty simple, kill all the things. Also, don't forget to disable the dread so you can kill it later. I managed to kill almost every ship, though nothing really was shooting back at me.

Odd mission. Its 73 TIEs vs an ISD. The readme, Officer Briefing, and Cloaked figure briefing are all jokes. Then its basically 1 vs an ISD along with 72 lemmings. Apparently you can either do this mission the slow and steady way, or blow open the nose of the ISD and crawl inside. I opted for the latter. Not sure I would have had the patience to do it the long way, slowly removing all the turrets, while disabling the ship with the two mag pulses.

There was a nice set of background information about the ISDII Intrepid (II) which was the ship under attack. The officer briefing covered the history of the ISDII Intrepid (II) before giving a small blurb about how the ship is under attack now and must be defended. The map briefing was on point showing the multiple waves of enemy ships. The mission itself had a nice variety of ships to destroy, A-Wings, X-Wings, and B-Wings. And instead of flights of enemies, you had one of each alphabet ship and when one got killed another one would hyper in to replace it. Flying in unshielded craft though was a little nerve wracking on hard as it didn't take much for one of the enemy ships that hyperspaced in to come and shoot you down while you were trying to mop up another ship. In the end I found it quite entertaining for a destroy everything mission.

The readme for this mission has a nice background story to go with it. The actual officer briefing was adequate since this mission was a escort mission turned into an unexpected defense mission. The map briefing was sparse as well due to the mission design. The actual mission was a slow ramp up before the enemy arrives and full on chaos ensues. Dog fighting X-Wings with a few groups of defenders was fairly easy, even while playing on Hard.

The Secret Order briefing was extremely cryptic and not helpful. I assume this is just inside jokes. The map briefing was basically non-existent but it kinda fits with the plot. Once the mission starts, checking goals shows you the plot twist they were going for. And then once the twist happens, you are never attacked. I almost destroyed everything in the mission before someone bothered to shoot at me. Was a cake walk.

This seemed to be the 3rd mission in a series but was a free mission. So without the context of the previous two missions the mission briefing would have no context, but at least it gave you a good rundown of the current mission. The mission itself was a tiny bit hectic as you need to pay attention to when the platform loses shields so you can disable it, as the escaping shuttles don't trigger until the platform is disabled. And even still it takes them a little bit to escape which could be enough time for your MIS to destroy the platform. Really causing you to need to baby the platform and lose out on kills of the other enemy starfighters.

Looks like this is a companion mission to the previous free mission. The map and officer briefings had some small callbacks to the previous mission as it set up something for the current mission. As for the mission itself, it had a few different aspects to it, which was nice, however there were quite long dwell times between a couple of steps. Thankfully I had warning and was able to accelerate time for a bit, which made the mission tolerable.

Officer briefing had a nice little back story for the upcoming mission. Though the mission was quite short and seemed to be a bit of luck. One run as soon as the second wave of X-Wings came in they destroyed the E/S that was full hull and half shields within a couple of seconds. The next run was a cakewalk, so probably some weird RNG there.

A little bit of nice mission fluff in the readme file, but it didn't transition very well to the Officer Briefing. The map briefing was very basic, but so was the mission. Kill a few ships and disable the station before you or your TRN die. Was very easy to just get the E/S to shields down and then quickly disable them to deal with them later. Then onto the X-Wings and then a quick mop up of the station. Very easy.

Well, looks like we are awaiting battles 9-13 as battle 8 definitely isn't a satisfying ending!
The ring around the rosy mag pulse final mission was a bit rough. Once I realized I should be laying into the ships after I disable all 3, then things went a bit better.

So battle 7 seemed short. One of these missions, the first in the TIE Defender was out in the middle of nowhere which meant there was no lighting. Was very hard to visually target enemies and had to rely upon my HUD. Though, as the missions shift into Imperial vs Imperial, I have to rely on my HUD more and more since it's hard to tell who is a friend and who is an enemy!

They definitely wanted to pull all the plot threads together for this last battle. Vader, Palpatine, and Thrawn, all on Coruscant! The defender was a beast, easily wrecking the TIE Avengers. I did enjoy having to face off against the Decimators. I do like how the ships I have flown in the X-Wing miniatures games have shown up in TFTC-R. Some of the pirates in previous battles were also ships from the miniatures game and that brings a smile to my face.

Well battle 6 was just filler for trying to slowly move the plot. Introducing both the TIE Defender and beam weapons. Also I assume our own Kappa Squadron has a lot of pride in being the first TIE Defender squadron in the game.

I do have to say, the big battle was very frustrating this mission. I got to the end but it claimed I was only at 90% destruction. Turns out someone hypered out but didn't trigger a mission lost, causing me to play on for a while without knowing it was useless. Had this happen a few times.

Also all the Z-95's having you as their initial target w/missiles was annoying. Combined with if you start attacking the Y-s or B-s then all the X-wings come and clobber you.

So 5 battles done. Finally got to fly the TIE Advanced, I mean Avenger. Though bitter sweet as you immediately work on making your ship rarer by destroying its siblings. From a cockpit design perspective, it's interesting that they went with 4 quadrants of rings for representing your laser and shield power.

Battle 5 felt like it had a pretty good conclusion with the capturing of Admiral Harkov. These missions seemed pretty good. I did like that there were some opportunities to prolong the mission if you were just looking ot keep on shooting down ships, such as the band of pirates.

So the plot for Battle 4 was interesting. Transferred to the Outer Rim, getting hyperdrive tech from one group while helping them backstab their tech partners. Sure, it worked ok. Even the craft selection mostly made sense until the final mission. Unsure why I was put into a gunboat for it, other than them wanting me to fly all the craft during a battle. Maybe to ensure I stay proficient in all the different craft!

Battle 3 played on easy.

Mission 1. Failed the first time, the failure help text told me to kill everything first before inspecting. Sure that worked but there was a ton of down time waiting for the heavy lifters to finish their missions. So that was quite boring.

Mission 2. Super easy mission. Pop out, unload all missiles, go to hangar, reload and repeat. I thought it was another long mission where I had to wait but I missed that when the docking operation was complete that the mission objective changed for me to destroy the containers. Also was weird at one point while I was waiting for no reason imperial ships killed imperial ships.

Mission 3. Briefing, I liked how they said we are low on Bombers, go enjoy this TIE Fighter. Another super easy mission. Though I do appreciate how chaotic many of these TFTC missions are with fighters everywhere. Seems like I'm definitely just one of the many TIE pilots in the battle and not just soloing my way through it all.

Mission 4. Omg waiting and waiting again. And then what the hell right when everything got finished the platform blew up. Someone must have pilot errored into it.

Mission 5. This final mission had some nice plot to go along with it, drawing us out so the rebels could try to hit the base behind us. A little bit of a linger mission but didn't seem bad at all time wise which was nice. The battle kept me occupied.

Battle 2, again flown on easy, was fairly easy to complete. It was another battle, ensuring I bounce between all the different TIEs (but no Interceptor this time). The turreted Y-Wings and Ion Y-Wings did zap my TIE a few times, making me an easy kill. But it wasn't too frustrating to work my way through them. So that was good.

I did like seeing the republic era V-Wing and old Y-Wings as well, felt right for them to still be out there, in the hands of various planets trying to amass their own army.

Battle 1 was basically a second crash course using the four main ships, TIE, TIE Interceptor, TIE Bomber, and Assault Gunboat. The missions were all easily completable on a first try using Easy mode (assuming I didn't ram into an enemy ship or get too close to an exploding capital ship). I'm unsure if I missed it, but it seems like there was no intro to the Secret Order stuff. It was just boom, I saw SO items on the objective list and then in the post mission briefing there would be a blurb about the Secret Orders. I feel like I missed some setup there. Their usage of the Nav Buoys have felt pretty good so far. Nice to be aiming straight for them upon launch and have a short distance to fly .Also the couple of times the mission didn't end until you flew back home did feel right narratively compared to some EH missions I've flown in the past.

Overall the Battle flowed together pretty well except for the jumping between craft.

The Officer briefing and map briefing were both straight to the point. Coming in hot to defend an ISD while taking out some frigates. The mission requires you to direct your wingman to help whittle down the frigate while you are on anti-fighter duty. Gets a little hard because the Y-Wings and B-Wings are coming from two different directions, so you need to pick one and go for it, trying to take out incoming torpedoes as you close in on them. Felt like this mission was a nice little challenge on hard as I tried to get a good score.

Readme had a nice primer on what was to come. The officer briefing was pretty sparse, however the map briefing had a good amount of content to show you that your command ship is going to be attacked while you are far out on the original mission. Was nice that they gave you a beam weapon to help you speed across the map to help defend your command ship. Lots of enemy and friendly ships in this mission, it felt quite full and was a fun mission to play.

The Readme along with the Officer Briefing had a very basic overview of the mission. Inspect, capture, defend/kill. The Cloaked figure briefing didn't really add anything. For the mission, if you are trying to go for a high score, there are definitely some tricks since there is not a lot of time between some of the triggers. On the plus side, it is a quick race and if you miss something you haven't wasted a lot of time and can just try it again.

Nice little mission description given in the readme along with some of that information repeated during the officer briefing. The Map briefing was sufficient to give an overview of the inspect, disable, destroy mission. The main battle was ok, however the bonus objectives were a grind. It also seemed like one of the two calamari cruisers never shot at you, which made taking them out much easier. I did make the mistake of not disabling that ship since it wasn't shooting back, only to find out (while at 4X speed) that it hyperspaced away at the 20 minute mark taking away my bonus points!

A bit of mission fluff in the readme that was then also provided during the officer briefing, so I appreciate that. The Map briefing was extremely rudimentary, but then again, so was this mission. The mission is a race between you and your TIE/D Allies in slaughtering R41s and Z95s. I'm not even sure if they shot at me. Just slaughtered. Can't even be made harder by sending most of the TIE/D Allies home, as you can only command a couple of TIE/D in your flight group home.

Most of the mission fluff is hidden in the readme.txt, so read it before embarking on this crazy mission, in a TIE. The officer briefing only contained a little bit of info from the readme, and without having read that readme first the officer briefing would have been lackluster, and instead it gets a pass. The map briefing was passable, nothing exciting there. Now the mission, Kill all the X-Wings before they land a shot on your TIE! Wasn't too bad except for when reinforcements came a couple of times a friendly AI came and ran into me, vaporizing the TIE. Once I started to stay away from the AI "friends" things went much better for me.