High Guard: Ship software and ship combat missing

[ericwood8]

I have Mongoose High Guard Update 2022. It shows a bunch of star ships with ship software such as: Jump Control 2; Library; Manoeuvre; and Intellect .
The "ship’s computer" section (Page 73) of High Guard does not list them. It refers to Core book (on page 161). Why do this and not have it be full versed expert of starships? Did you really need to save a page?

 

[rinku]

High Guard is not a stand alone product. It doesn't contain the core space combat rules either.

 

[J. L. Brown]

High Guard is not a stand alone product. It doesn't contain the core space combat rules either.

High Guard is the central bible for ship construction; it extends even beyond the default setting. It makes sense that important (and especially non-setting-specific) ship software should be described there.

The 'Core Rules' are not authoritative; they are focused on player characters & presents stripped down versions of rule systems that player characters might need a place-holder for during the course of the game. CSC is another example of 'core rules do not give a full picture'; as is Mercenary; as is Bounty Hunter; as is Vehicle Handbook; as is Robot Handbook, and so on.

 

[Endie]

I’m glad that the High Guard book didn’t duplicate everything ship-related from the core book. I paid for it to get as much new stuff as they could squeeze in.

 

[ross]

I’m glad that the High Guard book didn’t duplicate everything ship-related from the core book. I paid for it to get as much new stuff as they could squeeze in.

While I understand that, what makes sense? I think that all the features and options should appear at least in the charts for construction in High Guard. High Guard is positioned as the starship construction system. So all of it should be listed even if it’s not described.

 

[ericwood8]

High Guard is not a stand alone product. It doesn't contain the core space combat rules either.

I would love for High Guard to have core space combat rules as well. Thanks for pointing this out.

 

[ResslynHalvik]

I think it would be good if HG did contain everything you need to design/specify a ship. It's reasonable for it not to contain everything you need to play a game involving starships, but having a single book to take off the shelf to design a ship is desirable

 

[Varulv]

... having a single book to take off the shelf to design a ship if desirable

Yes, anything else is just very frustrating.

 

[Condottiere]

have an index explicated
where everything related
for spacecraft design is located

 

[MonsterX]

Having to flip back and forth between books during a combat is frustrating and adds a lot of unnecessary complication. It is already kind of hard because many combat-relevant rules are listed only in the descriptions used when building ships. I use the PDFs which have the big advantage of text searchability, but I often need to do one search per book. Consolidation of the combat rules into a short PDF booklet, and organizing them in a more user friendly way, would be very helpful indeed.

 

[ResslynHalvik]

have an index explicated
where everything related
for spacecraft design is located

If only there was, I don't know, some kind of spreadsheet tool that listed everything in a structured way, citing the official sources for each item

 

[Sigtrygg]

And then all you need is the cash to buy 38 books...

write an updated, completely revise High Guard, a 3rd edition.

Get rid of the grandfathered ship designs, they are outdated by the new rules anyway.

This frees up page count to have all the rules in one book. This should include everything from T2300, Pioneer, the lot, plus plenty of options for the that doesn't exist in the Third Imperium.

Forbid authors from making up new rules and systems, they have to use the rules as written.

Publish in 2027...

 

[Terry Mixon]

And then all you need is the cash to buy 38 books...

write an updated, completely revise High Guard, a 3rd edition.

Get rid of the grandfathered ship designs, they are outdated by the new rules anyway.

This frees up page count to have all the rules in one book. This should include everything from T2300, Pioneer, the lot, plus plenty of options for the that doesn't exist in the Third Imperium.

Forbid authors from making up new rules and systems, they have to use the rules as written.

Publish in 2027...

Mongoose can’t do anything on a schedule. That 2027 will slide to 2030, easy.

 

[Endie]

And then all you need is the cash to buy 38 books...

write an updated, completely revise High Guard, a 3rd edition.

Get rid of the grandfathered ship designs, they are outdated by the new rules anyway.

This frees up page count to have all the rules in one book. This should include everything from T2300, Pioneer, the lot, plus plenty of options for the that doesn't exist in the Third Imperium.

Forbid authors from making up new rules and systems, they have to use the rules as written.

Publish in 2027...

There are two sorts of people buy traveller books: those who agree with you (a tiny minority, I bet), and those who like to have an excuse to buy the latest book or supplement.

Your problem is that most of the people in the first group still buy the new stuff. And even more of the people in the second group buy the new stuff.

So Mongoose, being a sane company who follow the same playbook as every other successful, small RPG producer, are not going to think “hmmm, let’s stop putting out new tech and lose sales to satisfy a vocal little group who, if we are honest, want us to follow down the massive commercial dead end that is Traveller 5.”

There is no pristine, world-simulating, final word version of Traveller. Like every game it gets released, it becomes less tidy over time as more sources are released, it gets revised to tidy it up, it gets less tidy as more books are released, until either the game eventually fades away or we all get killed by Virus and the after-effects of the Empress Wave.

That said, very specifically ban MJD from making up any new rules in every single module he writes. That gets my vote.

 

[Endie]

Also I don’t care about T2300 content and the jury is very, very much out on Pioneer, since it looks like just being low tech stuff. I don’t want to buy the Traveller High Guard book expecting particle beams and black globes and end up ploughing past endless pages about how to lob Sputnik Mk2 into orbit round a colony.

And I am confident, judging from the lack of T2300 posts on these fine forums, and the eery calm in the Discord channel, that most Traveller buyers would be equally annoyed to pay forty or fifty pounds for High Guard and find that a third of that price was paying for content for different games.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Also I don’t care about T2300 content and the jury is very, very much out on Pioneer, since it looks like just being low tech stuff. I don’t want to buy the Traveller High Guard book expecting particle beams and black globes and end up ploughing past endless pages about how to lob Sputnik Mk2 into orbit round a colony.

And I am confident, judging from the lack of T2300 posts on these fine forums, and the eery calm in the Discord channel, that most Traveller buyers would be equally annoyed to pay forty or fifty pounds for High Guard and find that a third of that price was paying for content for different games.

I mentioned this is a different thread, but the simple solution is the CRB, High Guard, Vehicles, Robots, etc are all general, setting-agnostic rule books.
Then a game like 2300 gets its own version of these books, minus the CRB, that only details the changes from the generic Traveller ruleset, such as TL limits and giving examples of ships in that setting. Rules are not duplicated since most of the rules in the CRB or High Guard or the others can apply to specifically published setting. For example, the 2300 drive should be in High Guard as the setting default. The jump drive should be the default in the Charted Space setting books.

Then, as books get updated, we can pay for the updated information in the PDF versions, based on how expensive it is for Mongoose to edit them into the previously published material.

Mongoose makes tons of money, and we get a system that is actually setting-agnostic and setting-specific with everything you need for each part located in a sensible place.

The only people who are left out are those who only purchase hardcopies, which is less and less of the market as time goes by anyhow. Most people I see on here use both the PDFs and the hardcopies. I am not sure how many of us only use hardcopies and what the average ages of those people are.