Crystalline Entity Mission Idea

I was on the phone to one of my sons earlier. We were talking about the crystalline entity event problems and started brainstorming ideas as we often do about how things could be different and maybe even better.

Anyway I thought I would post our ideas and see what others thought and the thread can either mull things over or die as I am not planning to post again really.

Our basic idea was a proper flushed out multi part mission.

Phase 1
There would be a ground part to start with. The planet is under attack by the entity (bit like the TNG episode) and you would try to rescue colonists for evacuation. Seeing that the tholians play a part in the entity mission these days they could have ground forces hampering you too.

You could even have some objectives for bonuses like accessing consoles to wipe memory so that the tholians don't get access to info, a bit like colony invasion I suppose but slightly different obviously. It could be timed so you have 5 minutes? to rescue as many colonists as possible.

This planet could have been researching tech to fight the new threat from the entity or entities as I don't believe we know where they really came from. They might be an engineered lifeform? Are the Tholians or someone else engineering these lifeforms to fight for them? Are the tholians acting on behalf of someone else?

Anyway if we went with that idea then the consoles on the ground part of the mission could include programming for a sound weapon that fragments the entity or shatters it. there could be pieces of prototype weapon to collect too for our ships to use to fight the entity. If you don't get all the pieces and programming then you can still fight the entity but it will be harder to kill it.

Phase 2
Would be in space. Colonists have beamed to or boarded transports and you have to protect them from Tholian ships until they can warp out of the system. The sneaky Tholians might have also developed some tech that they have placed in space near the planet that opens rifts randomly to the mirror universe. Those rifts pull mirror ships through to our universe if we were to go more with the current event entity idea.

Phase 3
Would be more like the current entity missions were we fight the entity and tholians. There could be a slight difference though and we could use the sound weapon if we managed to get all the things that we needed for it.

In theory this could give all the classes a use too. Some of the consoles on the ground can be for engineers only, or maybe a forcefield can be dropped much faster by an engineer accessing a console instead of having to waste time waiting for it to drop by itself. Some colonists might need healing so sci could help with that. Obviously healers can help the transports in phase 2 while escorts hold off attacking ships and so on.

Anyway there it is, comment or let the topic drop.