Many bugs, balance issues and bizarre balance/design choices make this one hard to rate higher. Often the craft limit is exceeded, meaning you won't get the number of reinforcing fighters that you should. This makes missions that are already hard even more so.

The reason it has so many negative comments attached to it is due to the difficulty level on hard. While doable, it is extremely challenging, even for me. There is a lot you have to do and you don't have a lot of time to do it in, but if you enjoy challenging missions that push your dogfighting skills to the limit I recommend this one. There are also a large number of bugs, and your AI doesn't work properly (Tie Bombers will never destroy the STRKC, and it alone can kill all the freighters)

Not a very well put together battle. If you don't destroy both the Zero G troopers and the freighter within 3 minutes you fail the mission. You are given 12 fighters for the entire mission, as you face 3 squadrons of gunboats + a squadron of ties, all with 200% shields. You have no warheads, no beam system, no countermeasures and four of your craft don't obey your advanced wingman panel commands. You then have to try to bounce between waves of enemy fighters to ensure that you are not the focus of four craft at once, while your ATR's go and disable an already disabled dreadnaught, and then go kill the VSD (if they don't crash into it.) Due to the gunboats not picking up targets since they are so far away, many of them are on follow flight leader orders, meaning if you attack any of them there is a chance you get insta-gibbed by a random gunboat.

So many bugs. So so many. The mission itself also doesn't make sense: your frigate leaves early in the mission and your friendly fighters do not have orders to go home, but the mission is a hit and fade, meaning the fade part of the mission never happens. The defenses for such a facility are also far too low for what is being attacked; you face 1 squadron of fighters all with low AI. You are also not assigned enough strike fighters, for some reason you only get 3 missile boats and 5 Tie Advanced when there are so few enemy fighters.

Probably the worst battle in the entire compendium. Slow, redundant, painful, tedious with long wait times, all enemy AI set to Novice except capital ships which is set to Top Ace, zero craft variety and not enough allied craft/no reinforcements.

Not sure why this battle has such high reviews. It is very imbalanced on higher difficulties, and mission 4 takes almost an hour to complete. Often you are heavily outnumbered, you are never given a full load of warheads except mission 4 where you have to laser down 2 ISD's and a VSD because your strike craft prioritize fighters over capital ships, and mission 1, 3 and 5 are all inspection missions. There are also a large number of bugs with the missions as well. The Intelligence Division should have been more oriented towards subterfuge, espionage and sabotage than mere inspection.

So many bugs, bad balance decisions, more than an hour of wait time and other various issues ruin this one.

Somehow this is worse than the original which is something onto itself. It still contains the same bugs as the original, and new ones that the first one did not. Featuring such curious decisions such as having your bombers start at 0% shields while launching under the guns of 2 nebulon B frigates, being targeted by an entire squadron of ties at the very beginning of the mission and only minor changes between xvt and bop (swapping the factories for shipyards and adding b-wings in one mission), it is one to forget.

Another poorly put together battle. It has good ideas, but you never get more than one craft wave for some strange reason, never get good warheads and are expected to do far beyond what your craft is capable of on higher difficulties.

A lot of the issues with this battle involve lack of waves for your forces and imbalanced numbers of fighters. Often you will see two or three
friendly squadrons arrive/launch after everything is dead, and they don't help with whatever is left, instead retreating or going to hyperspace. You also don't get the right craft for the mission itself. Mission 1 would be better off as an X-Wing mission, mission 2 an A-Wing mission, mission 4 A B-Wing mission.

Many bugs, balance issues and questionable craft loadouts plague this one. In the last mission you are no longer given the T/A to fly in the superiority role, only a T/I. If you choose this role you have to kill 60 fighters with 2 waves of craft, all with no shields, and then will have to destroy 4 capital ships and a station on lasers. If you pick the Gunboat, you have to dogfight 6 squadrons of fighters while conserving your ammo for the ships and stations. More craft waves/better craft were needed. The AI also behaves strangely, often firing missiles without a full lock. There are also zero in-flight messages throughout the entire battle.

Have to agree with Brucmack, no idea why this is rated so highly. It features such bugs as entire fleets colliding with each other and wiping themselves out, starfighters destroying their own wingmates with warhead launches, craft re-capturing what has already been captured and every imperial ship/craft on the players' radio. It also pushes the boundaries of what the engine is capable of a little too far.

Another battle that suffers from a multitude of bugs, balance issues and poor use of the craft assigned. The Tie Vanguard is not suited for dogfighting, destroying capital ships and fighting off a multitude of Tugs that ram into you constantly, yet these are roles that the craft must perform if you are to beat the missions on hard. It also has a very poor laser capacitor and can be destroyed in two hits. Lack of shields or a beam system hurt this craft heavily.

Featuring more than a page and a half of bugs, the same mission over and over, a lack of wingmen and waves, no variety in craft and not enough warheads among other issues, this battle is one to forget.

A pretty decent battle brought down by bugs, especially mission 4. I did enjoy it on the whole, but it could have been a 5 with a little more polish.

This mission has many issues on higher difficulty. First of all you have to keep every corvette alive for some reason or the ATR doesn't launch. Second is the lack of countermeasures or beam system vs multiple waves of craft that have advanced warheads. Third is a lack of reload craft or more than one wave when facing 15:1 cumulative odds, and that isn't counting the corvettes or ATR. Last issue is choice of craft. It may seem like a good T/A mission but with all of the aforementioned factors it is not. It is more of a T/D, T/Pr or Missile Boat mission.

A buggy mess that features multiple ships/stations missing orders/ multiple starships crashing into the factory, confusing mission goals and starfighters having the player's flight group as a mothership. Enemy fighters shouldn't exclusively target the players FG.

This is not a good battle. It forces you to fly the Tie Bomber in a multitude of roles that it is not suited for, including inspection, dogfighting, capital ship protection, assaulting bases that have advanced warhead launchers, and dealing with hordes of tugs. It is also very buggy, featuring such issues as gunboats destroying your craft due to being improperly configured, reinforcements never arriving and flight groups missing craft. You also never get a beam system, shields or any good warheads. Better warheads and even shields would have made this a much better battle given what you are flying up against.

One of the buggiest, poorly designed messes in the compendium, featuring such bugs as spontaneously combusting ships, missions that are harder on medium than on hard, starfighters missing orders and ships attacking their own faction.

Boring missions that are all essentially just turkey shoots of one variety or another. The Sentinel got old fast, as it has a very bad laser capacitor. Missions were also quite buggy. Mission 3 is also quite poorly balanced as you are facing 12 squadrons of fighters with just 1 of your own, and many of the enemy fighters have advanced missiles.

A very solid and creative suite of missions. Mission 3 is my favourite. My only issue is with mission 4 and the ship that is used. The VCX-100 has an entirely green cockpit HUD, meaning it is difficult to see when you are being shot at. It only has a single turret, meaning you must constantly re-position it if a fighter dips below your LoS. I also had issue with the turret snapping away from the target that I was shooting at, as well as it no longer functioning at all after a certain point multiple times.

Another poorly balanced buggy mission that pits the player and 3 wingmen with half a load of standard warheads against 2 Mon Cal cruisers with a full wing of fighters. Your stations don't fire back, your fighters are assigned to roles they should not be carrying out (Y-Wings with torpedoes dogfighting instead of attacking the cruisers, x-wings with missiles attacking the cruisers), and fighters that have different orders based on which part of the flight they are in.

Impossible to complete on hard, ATR's never disable the CORT. Also quite buggy.

Perfectly balanced for easy and medium, hard not so much. You get one wave of four craft with standard missiles and no beam system while you are outnumbered 10:1 and must protect a platform, a corvette, an ISD and a modular conveyor. The issue is that you must protect multiple of them at the same time, sometimes 3 of them are under attack simultaneously. You need more craft on hard to deal with them all, or 200% shields/better warheads/beam system. They also arrive at the same time, meaning there is no way to stagger the waves arriving. A random kamikaze corvette with 200% shields also appears to destroy your platform that you have 30 seconds to kill or you fail.

This is an excellent battle on hard, an incredible showcase of everything that the Tie Defender can do. From destroying multiple capital ships to taking out starfighters in between protecting the EH ones, to rapidly inspecting cargoes and peeling for your own bombers, all while making full use of the TD's full suite of uses. One of the top missions in the compendium for me.