Who says you can’t have the TV shows plot from 40 years in the future taking place during the first Cylon war? Black Lab Studios said “sure why not.”

Okay maybe I’m over-generalizing it but put simple, yes, they have the TV shows plot for this game mode. This is its own mode, separate from the main campaign. It’s a scored game mode, no real rewards other than bettering your score each time you play.

Those giggles you get when you’re the last warship to defend civilians…then lose because you’re nowhere near as badass as Bill Adama.

The basic story of this mode is as follows.
Colonial fleet has gotten intel that the Cylons have a possible staging ground out past the “Red Line” (maximum safe jump range) near an outlying mining colony. Samantha and Helena Agathon lead a fleet with 10,00 soldiers aboard to bring the fight to the Cylons. By the time they get there the colony is destroyed and all that is left is a few civilian ships. Now you three (you, Samantha, and Helena) must bring them back to Caprica safe and sound, all the while Cylons hunt you after every jump home.
It takes 10 jumps to get to the Caprica and each jump you can choose where you would like to go from two choices. If you’ve played FTL or something similar you see the mechanics here.
Every time jump into a system, all the ships start to spool up again to jump for the next sector but all ships spool at a different rate along with the more jumps you do, the longer it takes to spool up. If you’re in a rush and you jump before you sensors can read what the next sector is you may find yourself in the frakking deep. Each sector you jump to will have pluses and minuses for you. Some can be minor for both, such as this sector has been mapped so you spool up faster or Cylons reinforcements arrive faster or it could be very good and/or very bad. Examples would be you jump into a system that can repair your ships and restock and/or a system with a massive armada of Basestars at the start of the match.
Each jump you also collect scrap (no need to gather it, it’s automatic) which you then can spend on repairs and restocking if you jump into a system that offers those services that is. Bear in mind, everything you do, everything you loose (ships, munitions, fighter) stays that way on each jump. If you send all your Vipers out to fight the Cylon, don’t land them and jump, no Vipers next time time.

Depending how you play, you’ll either get long range skirmishes or close range brawls with the civilians caught in the middle.

You get to setup your fleet at the beginning. The standard restrictions apply, no more than seven ships and worth no more than 8000 points total (taking Vipers/munitions into account) and the fewer ships and/or weaker ships you use the better your score. So sorry, you can’t use 3 Jupiters and Minerva class to get the best of score. My best score is 42,000 with a mixed fleet and getting to jump nine and dying to nukes.

Civies (closets to the right) are always getting in the fight but have no armor. But a minor plus, they help your warships in other ways.

Overall I like what they’ve added. They did add new munitions to the game (not restricted to this game mode) and some new mission types to the campaign along with new AI and new tactics to the Cylons. They’re missiles now act like the TV series, going in random directions so they can get past flak which is really cool to see. New maps are very much welcome along with “weather:” storms, asteroids, effecting your ships, weapons, and fighters.
But the downside is this is a very limited mode. Yes you can play it to your hearts content but problems are that once you start, you can’t save and do it later and this game mode takes time so you either have to leave it there running on a turn or exit the game and start over later. It doesn’t reward you elsewhere in the game, as I said, it’s strictly a “better your score” game mode.

As much as I want my Jupiter to takes all the fire, it always ends up as long range artillery.