So I have mostly had issues catching the Corellian transport IF i can even get that far. I guess maybe i'm attacking the shuttles at the wrong time cause the platform is destroying me whenever I go to get them. I actually managed to do it somehow ONCE but I dont remember what I did, and the platform was disabled, but then i think someone destroyed the platform too? so then i failed lol.

is there somewhere i can download a save with this level beaten? haha. i've stopped playing for months cause of this level and just picked it back up and remembered why. i just wanna play the rest of the game!!

Yes, you're attacking at the wrong time. I made the same mistake.

At the start of the mission transfer all laser energy to shields and set both recharge rates to max till all your systems are fully charged.

First engage the other fighters until you get the message that the transport has finished docking. It should be far enough away from the platform at that point. You'll still take a few hits but it's manageable. Use missiles to quickly bring down the shields of the crafts that need to be disabled but be careful not to destroy them. IIRC the transport and the shuttle can both take 1 missile and the CT 2.

You know if you want you can just turn on invulnerability and unlimited weapons and skip it instead of using a different save file, just saying. I did that on a couple of levels and now I'm going back and trying to beat them :).

ha! so i figured it out. same thing happened again, where i disabled all the ships and the platform, but no one captured the platform. i guess there's some glitch where the transports just start flying around in circles in the middle of nowhere. i just had to destroy a couple of them and then they sent new ones that started capturing the platform. feels so good to finally beat this dang thing. now i just need to learn how to use the tractor beam for the next mission :D