Yesterday I was out and about in Metana doing HS to build some levels. I took Metana H14 Critical ion storm and while I was doing it, the death clock ran down and I lost the mission but chose to finish the queen. Since then, Metana h14 continues to show up on the mission list though if you take it, all you get is the mission intro, no group or kill data. You have to abort to move on. Today I took a regular Critical to h14- two missions showing to the same sector, one regular critical and the other the ion I broke. Lost the mission and finished the queen. It looks like the standard crits aren't causing any issues when I beat the queen after the death clock fails me, just the Ion Crits.

Which leads me to 'and stuff'. I'm getting annoyed at failing these missions because the help you give me sucks. :P

I'm using a quad Gemini Hornet. Something most newbies could get and use fairly early on. It takes me several runs to bring the shields down depending on the lag I'm getting in the sector. Yeah, I could easily beat these missions in a rag, but thats not the point. I'd like to be able to encourage newbies to use equipment that they already have to beat these missions. Having the death clock toll when I've just got the queen to 25% is darned annoying. Now I'm sure there are players skilled enough to beat win with a hornet easily. I'm not that good, and neither are the newb's that end up trotting down to Sedina because they heard they can buy swarms there. The ships and weapons they have available should be more than adequate to do the job.

Ok. Thats my rant for the week. I promise. Maybe.

On a side note, thanks for making Hive Skirmish fun again. I think overall that you have the right balance now.

I submitted a bug report on this... the H14 critical doesn't exist (even though you can take the mission). Essentially until this gets fixed we can't get to the leviathan. Hope they fix it soon!

Well, sorry guys. Its my fault. The mission did exist properly when I took it yesterday.