It’s the same story start to these two missions – Stingray is on the O-Deck talking about losing Dallas on the previous mission. He makes the claim that the malfunctions Dallas was experiencing could only have been sabotage. Sounds plausible enough. After all, we do have a saboteur aboard, we just don’t know who yet. But, as Hobbes points out, why Dallas?
Now Hobbes has all the tact and subtlety of a brick through a window, but he does have a point. It’s just that it’s probably not something you should be bringing up within earshot of the recently deceased’s wingman. Still, in the grand scheme of things, what does sabotaging Dallas’s ship get our saboteur? Is it just a move to sow additional chaos, or was that fighter meant for someone else and Dallas just drew the short straw? We’ll never know.
Either way though, we have a mission to fly, and we’re not flying with Stingray. No, we’re still flying with everyone’s favorite maniac depressive. This is where the missions diverge rather dramatically.
The losing path mission is just a generic patrol. Who had the terrible idea of sending strike bombers out on a basic patrol we’ll never know. Maybe it makes sense? This is the losing path after all, and having torpedoes available to take out any Kilrathi capital ships maybe makes sense? I don’t know. If that’s the case, then Sabres seem like they’d be the logical choice. Regardless, there are no heavies to be found on this patrol, just Drakhri medium fighters and Jalkehi heavy fighters.
The winning path mission is more interesting. We’re off on another patrol, right up until we aren’t. It seems that Angel took Paladin’s advice and put Stingray right back on the flight roster. Except he ran into too much opposition and punched out. Since we’re closer than the SAR Sabre, we get to go pick him up.
But wait, there’s heavy opposition closing on Stingray’s position, and Tolwyn says to leave him. Well, what’s Tolwyn going to do to us anyway? Send us back to station babysitting detail? Meh, let’s go rescue that pilot.
There is decently heavy opposition here. Nothing that we can’t handle, but enough to make for a reasonably challenging mission. But by the end, everyone’s successfully back on the boat. Maybe Stingray will have a change of heart about us after this.