A well-written battle, hellishly hard on difficult, as the author says. I enjoyed the plotline, but I also killed my "former friend" a few times too... Too bad, Kiru... :P
I discovered that if you fly MP and craft waves are set to "unlimited", then not all craft arrive. Make sure that you are set to "Default". This occurrs because one of the parameters is that "entire flight must arrive" before some enemy flights will arrive. On unlimited, that can't happen.
This has to be the easiest battle I've ever flown! It took me 15 minutes to complete on "hard".. what kind of AI seeting was used for these rebels... "Homer Simpson"? DoH! So it gets a 1 because somebody had to spend the time to build it.
This was a well-made mission with lots of targets to kill. I hated getting destroyed 58 minutes into it cause I was greedy, but I wanted the serious score! Total time to complete 2:04:33... I had nothing else to do, and I didn't shoot first either... ;) Excellent job!