Heh. k - here's what happened: found the Fralthi, realised that I suck after not playing WC in ages, and decided to just Invuln my way through the turrets. (Yeah, I'm lazy). The LC docked, the marines took over the Fralthi, and suddenly ALL the ships turned red. You can't autopilot while there are active enemy, and you can't kill BW ships even if they've turned on you, so the mission can't be completed.
Obviously it's a bug, but I figured it might have been a cute trick.
On UE in general: I really am horribly rusty (man... I use to assrape Fralthi back in the WC2 days. I got old somewhere along the way. :/ ) but I agree with the concept of having the game be "coherent", i.e. your ships are pieces of shit; you're always genuinely outclassed rather than simply outnumbered but in a godship like WCP, etc.
That said, I've already developed quite a dislike for this mission: it's tedious to have to replay, and it seems to be buggy as fuck into the bargain. In the Scim, *even if you have all the Vaktoth killed before the message even ends*, the Fralthi isn't reachable: you get the 2nd Vaktoth wave halfway instead. Since some people have managed to get there in the Scim I guess it's an intermittent problem, but it's pretty damn annoying. After the third time you get shafted by that, you just lose interest. (Before finding this forum, I'd assumed that the Fralthi simply doesn't turn up if you pick the Scim).
Hard = good. Defective = not good. :/
Not blaming you for it: UE's an impressive undertaking made all the more so by the hassles involved in having to create it by hacking the binaries, and Origin's own QA has always been shoddy at best (remember killing Thrakath THREE TIMES anyone?), but having to deal with problems like this so early on (especially in what's an end-affecting mission ffs) is definitely going to turn a few people off.
Still, sod it.
I fully intend to enjoy the game as much possible, and congrats on getting it done.
Cheers.