It's probably a bit overtly complicated, but it's nice to fly Rebel ships for a change of pace and it certainly keeps you on your toes

I was tempted to rate it even lower. Ignoring the interesting intro (which adds some length to the mission for story reasons), it's ultimately about protecting your ISD and destroying all the fighters and the Strike Cruiser. But, if you don't at least disable the CRL, the mission may soft lock with the CRL hypering away before all the fighters you have to destroy have been deployed. You don't have enough rockets to take care of a CRL and a Strike Cruiser, so you're going to spend some time lasering down caps that don't really fight back.

Additionally, I saw some odd behavior at the end of one attempt where my friendly T/Ds went ahead and destroyed our ISD for seemingly no reason, after all other enemies (saved the disabled ships) was destroyed. There's definitely some odd orders going on here, which contributes to odd behavior from seemingly all the FGs.

I... don't know what to make of the reviews on this mission? It's fine. Nothing worse, nothing better. You don't need to worry about destroying the CRS; another FG will arrive and do that for you. Just follow the mission instructions and you'll be treated to a pretty ordinary capture and protect mission.

So, this is not a great mission, but it also suffers from a rare problem it shouldn't be blamed for: a bad correction. Specifically, this one:

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-Enemy ship invincibility removed
By CM Lord Linkan 03/09/2001
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I don't know why that was done, but it's broken the mission. You shouldn't be able to destroy the M/CRV or the ATR, but someone "fixed" it so that you can. Which means that now you're able to fight off the attack successful, but that will soft lock and fail the mission.

The correction should be reversed, which will still give you a mission with an unwinnable scenario that ultimately can be completed without doing much of anything (at least below Hard), but at least it won't be dramatically broken.

It's a bit much in places and perhaps a bit inelegant with some design choices, but as far as protect missions go, not awful

I think the concept is rather interesting and I had fun playing it - but there's 0 danger and ultimately it's going to just be you lasering a bunch of targets that don't fight back without any danger. Still a nifty idea though.

So, it's not an *exact* copy of BoP-FREE #13, but... it is basically the same mission. The only difference is the goals here are more appropriate for the mission objective, and there's more of a focus on protecting the Interdictor than the Repair Yard.

I don't know what happened here. BoP-FREE #13 feels like the alpha version; this feels like the final draft. Maybe there was a mix up with the submission. I'd like to think it wasn't just submitted twice.

Should it exist? Probably not, but FWIW this is the version that *should* be BoP-FREE #13, so make of that what you will.

You protector an Interdictor and a Repair Yard. Not much more to it then that, and the goals are such that you don't really need to repel the attack so much as fight off the first wave

NOTE: This free is seemingly in the compendium twice (also there as BoP-FREE #24), but #24 is the superior version, FWIW

Lot of ideas on this one, and I think the premise of a botched mission is interesting, just not sure it all coalesces together.

I think it's a pretty decent "destroy a Rebel base" operation that requires you to be on your toes, or the Rebels will take out your INT

Destroy a couple pirate bases and then stick around to destroy more pirates if you wish.

Inspect some ships, and then that's it. Stick around for dogfighting and additional mysteries if you want. For me, that's not enough, and I don't believe frees should be used as prequels to other stories unless they do enough to stand alone on their own.

I have mixed feelings when you are required to do something "wrong" (let an enemy capture a ship). Otherwise it mostly becomes a protect mission and then a long dogfight afterwards if you desire.

I'll take a moment and say that I think I disagree with the concept behind these - a story told across frees over different platforms. I understand the idea and the motivation behind it, but I don't think you can tell a story across frees effectively, and it tends to make missions like this one look worse than it is. In a battle, it'd be fine; as a free, it stands out as being a bit indecipherable story-wise, and not as engaging as you might otherwise expect for something that's pretty well built.

The Assault Gunboat is easily my least favorite ship, but this is a well-balanced mission suited for the craft.

Very solid mission about protecting a mass boarding operation, with enough action to keep you occupied while things are going on (even after you've taken care of the bombers).

It's a solid TIE Interceptor mission, where you role is definitely to support to primary objective (destroy the Rebel FRG, protect your FRG and VSD)

Lot of objectives on this one! They can mostly be ignored in favor of simply destroying everything. Some messiness with craft orders and waypoints though definitely brings it down a bit, even though it's certainly playable

Whether you're slowly watching other TIEs slam into the ship or using the ISD nose cone bug to destroy it, there really isn't much of a mission here.

It's a fun idea and I think the briefing is terrific. I think it just gets a bit... dull. Probably needed the Lucas "faster, with more intensity" treatment.

Also think it's a bit mean not to ensure pilot is always rescued - mission would be more fun if you knew you could just go as hard as you can regardless of whether or not your TIE is going to explode.

Very very very quick to finish though if you don't care about score, which this mission desperately wants you to care about.

I think it's a pretty good Missile Boat mission - destroy a pair of CRLs before they run away, while being terrorized by some support fighters with Missile. Fun and quick.

I think it's a very well designed large scale battle, and it's certainly a fun mission. Only complaint be that I'm not sure the primary and secondary goals are as well aligned as they could be for how many moving pieces are happening here.

Keep an eye on some T/As being transferred while a whole lot of B-Wings & co. fire on anything and everything.

Probably too high of a rating, but I had fun and it's a Missile Boat and that combo doesn't happen very often

There's not a lot of good TIE Bomber missions in the compendium. This is one. Definitely worth playing!

I love a good TIE Fighter mission, but this is not the way...