Gave it a whirl. Gotta say, I love your art style. Really consistent with selling the whole "junk pirates" theme, plus it just looks good.
So, the new mission! At first, I ordered a defensive action in the middle of the map, and sent the civilians to the right. Then realized that I should probably move the holding action to the left a bit - into the nebula, to slow down the lumbering enemy ships. So, did that (running low on command points once, but ordered the capture of the comm relay behind enemy lines to get back on track).
The flagship (the
RNS Minestrone, heh heh) is really, really tough, and also weak offensively. At first I thought that would lead to trouble - but it could chew up fighters decently enough, and the armor came in really handy as I was leading the Onslaught and Enforcers to the left side of the map.
The two Enforcers ended up in the very top left corner of the map at the end, and the Onslaught got lost somewhere inside the nebula
Sadly, not before it fired a torpedo salvo at the
RNS Goulash, which was lost with all hands - despite the valiant efforts of its gunnery officers, who were able to shoot down two of the torpedoes with PD lasers.
In the meanwhile, I was deploying the Stoats and retreating them after they got at least partway to the civ rally on the right side.
Surprisingly, the rest of the enemy fleet was completely taken out by the Junk Pirates light craft. They carried the field and were able to cap all the enemy-side objectives. I suspect it may be possible to outright beat the enemy forces, though the Onslaught would be tough - or at least time-consuming - to defeat. All in all, I had a lot of fun beating the mission. The heavy armor on the flagship actually allowed me to adjust strategies mid-fight, and the whole "distract the enemy while the freighters get away" thing really worked.
Battle results screenshot (click to enlarge):