I tested it, and I'm afraid to say, it wasn't as good as I expected. Read on if you can take criticism, skip to the end of the rant if you can't.
dragonsniper, I'm not trying to discourage you, but I couldn't help but notice the numerous flaws of your mission. What follows is a long rant.
[rant]
Firstly, it throws me into the fray with no bearings and no objectives, immediately crashing into the Julius with an innumberable amount of friendly and enemy craft in the mission. Sometimes this can be a good thing if you want to give the player a real surprise, but this chaotic beginning made me struggle to keep alive on medium difficulty, a display of bad balance if you ask me. I couldn't get my situational awareness due to the immense amount of ships in the mission, which made me pretty disoriented. Again, this could be a good thing but in this case it wasn't. Additionally, since there was so much action at the beginning, I didn't have time to actually read the messages streaming by and had to press F4 to access the mission log to re-read the mission log. This is another common error.
The most fatal flaw in your mission, however, was the absolutely
pointless Battle of Endor mission going on in the background. Apart from a bit of chaotic, insane action at the beginning, and a bit more fighting at the end, the entire mission was uneventful, and, I daresay, pointless. The battle between the 2+ Saths and the I don't have any idea how many allied ships had no significance to the player whatsoever. None of them attacked the Julius, and only fired on each other. This sucked up the resources on my computer, which usually runs at around 50-60 FPS. During the mission I had 20 FPS, due primarily to the pointless battle going on in the background. There's a time when you have to stop thinking about storyline and atmosphere and start thinking about gameplay.
It also struck me as pretty strange that Command seemed to have no problem sacrificing numerous allied destroyers and superdestroyers (!!) to save a corvette, and also the fact that Command seemed to have an ever lasting supply of warships which he only sent in on a whim. That was a nonsense. 10+ destroyers, sending them in to kill a few Shivan ships, ordering them to depart, and when the next Shivan wave came, Command sent yet more ships. Random violence in the background that made no sense whatsoever. There is a point where you have to stop thinking about how cool it would be to see a Hades fighting two Demons and a Sathanas and start thinking about realism and storyline.
Not only was the massive battle going on in the background pointless and of no significance to the player, it was also horribly scripted. All of the ships seemed to have either no orders or orders to attack other warships. Chase orders for warships are known to be very stupid as the AI does pretty idiotic things when given orders to attack other warships. The allied craft wobbled around, crashed into each other, and shot into each other's backs. When the Arcadia warped in (!!) it smashed into the Demon which went flying backwards at 500 m/s. One of the Orions at the beginning started moving around and splattered a fair amount of my wingmen.
From what I could see,
NONE of the extra ships in the mission were needed. The only necessary ships were the Julius, the allied escort, and the enemy fighters. None of the Ravnas, Demons, Orions, Hades', Hatshepsuts or Sathanes needed to be there. Their presence was unjustified, badly scripted and, most of all, pointless.
[/rant]
I'm sure that you put a large amount of effort into this mission, dragonsniper, and I appreciate that. Unfortunately, a mission's quality is not determined by the size of the mission file nor the amount of effort that goes into it (though effort
does play a large part). What matters is how much fun the mission is. To make a mission fun you need a mix of gameplay, storyline, atmosphere, etc. etc. This mission was not fun.
What you have made is commonly known as a Battle of Endor mission. Though it's not as bad as some Battle of Endor missions I've seen (namely my own), I do have to say it isn't the best. Mobius is capable of making excellent Battle of Endor missions. They work, they are fun. But that's because he is an exceptional FREDder... I'm not saying you're not one either, but it seems to me like you're just starting with FREDding. When you start FREDding I know it's tempting to use huge amounts of ships, because it's cool. But when you start off, you have to aim a bit lower. You can't run before you know how to crawl.
What I recommend you do now is start over. This time, make a simple mission. A convoy escort mission, or a little strike on an enemy cargo depot or something like that. Over time, as your skills get better, you'll be able to go back and make a better version of that huge mission. But for now, you gotta aim low and actually make some quality missions.
Every FREDder has made these mistakes at least once. I know I have. I know this may sound a bit patronizing but it's the truth. What you have to go back and do now is learn from your mistakes.