High Guard Update 2022 - Coming July 29th!

Matt assured me months ago when I asked about this because of the dreadful Core Rulebook 2022 update, that there would be plenty of time between the release of the pdf and it being sent to the printers.

If he's has gone back on assurances...
Well it's been a day. Over a weekend. And this book is slated for an end of year printing, so I really don't think the sky is falling just yet, although I do stand beside my earlier post to let people PAY you for the privilege of being an uncredited volunteer assistant editor, so fewer of these issues are seen in public.
 
Other companies I’ve proof read for have given us the final pdf as payment. A £40 pdf for what could be a fair few hours work is not unreasonable.
 
I have been credited in a few products for my help in "proof reading" them. I would consider an error free product payment enough.
All things considered, however, if you think this is bad try to play Megatraveller with my 1st edition books and see how far you get. Or 1st edition new era, or 4th edition Traveller. The number of errors in Mongoose Traveller 2nd edition is minor by comparison. Also, all but 1 error that made it into the final High Guard 2nd Edition (the original) was corrected.
As for the blueprints I would be willing to bet many of the errors were on the old isometric plans and nobody noticed them because they were a pain to try and decipher.
 
Firstly, I want to say a Great Big Cheers to everyone at Mongoose for doing a great job on all the books.

Secondly, I echo people saying they would help out with error checking etc.

Free League and other companies frequently do a similar thing -

/release a beta to people who pre-ordered
/commence error checking orgy
/filter error reports and make changes
/release a shiny new pdf
/send it off to the printers
/have a nice cup of tea and a biscuit
I wasn’t aware that Free League did that, but that does seem to have become Mongoose’s policy.

We heavily edited this book multiple times from the first manuscript to layout and then through two drafts. Several editors contributed, a few from outside the company. Hundreds of corrections were made in the process. And yes, we’re now collecting feedback for a final round before it goes to print.

So far, it’s not too bad. I’m pretty pleased that we caught so many issues. Yes, there are a few more, but for a beta release of a book this complex, it’s quite clean. We’ll fix the things that everyone finds and then go to print with a very sharp publication.
 
I wasn’t aware that Free League did that, but that does seem to have become Mongoose’s policy.

We heavily edited this book multiple times from the first manuscript to layout and then through two drafts. Several editors contributed, a few from outside the company. Hundreds of corrections were made in the process. And yes, we’re now collecting feedback for a final round before it goes to print.

So far, it’s not too bad. I’m pretty pleased that we caught so many issues. Yes, there are a few more, but for a beta release of a book this complex, it’s quite clean. We’ll fix the things that everyone finds and then go to print with a very sharp publication.
I can think of at least two recent Free League products that had some error checking input from eager customers, Blade Runner and Twilight 2000 (both top games).

I think it's a good way forward, especially with something as fiddly as Traveller.
That being the case, I'll put some time into it myself for this new High Guard book :)
 
I do layouts for a lot of books too so I get a preliminary pass on those as they are being put together. Fresh eyes never hurt, especially from people that know the nuts and bolts of the system.
 
When I pay 100 quid for a limited edition I expect it to be free from errors like the construction flow chart :)

And another couple of minor points.

personal energy shields are now TL15 (Third Imperium sourcebook), why are ship mounted shields TL16 and in the exotic chapter? I would expect them a couple of TLs lower.

similarly the quad turret is baseline in T5 so it should be baseline in HG too.
 
I think this is a very good update to High Guard; however, I concur with people who would like to see typos hunted out before it goes to print. Here are a few gotchas from the fleet combat chapters. I've categorised them as [MAJOR] if they need to be fixed for the rules to make sense. The others are more typographical in nature.

p107-108. The headers for range of weapons are a bit too low. I'd suggest deleting "Range", and shifting "Short", "Medium", "Long", and "Very Long" up a row. At the very least, the example of the tigress should have all the weapons shifted down two rows, so that they line up with their range attributes.

p107 [MAJOR] the Tigress' Meson Spinal mount should have damage multiple 11,000.

p111, "and is cannot be repaired" should be "and it cannot be repaired".
p111, "are obtained from the table page 111" should be "are obtained from the table on page 112".

p112, in the italicised paragraph, "The effect lasts for one round ... immune to ion weapons" should not be in italics, as it's not part of the example.

p113 [MAJOR], I don't understand what's going on with repulsors. Since we don't know what the attacking ship's Offensive DM will be, I don't see how we could fill in the form. Further, the formula given (defensive DM minus offensive DM) will sometimes result in a negative number (i.e. when the attacking ship's offensive DM exceeds the target's defensive DM).

p116 "the next closest or next furthest" should be "the next closest or next farthest"

p118 [MAJOR], in the example, I don't see why the offensive DM and defensive DM are being used. They are used for attack effectiveness.

p118 [MAJOR], since armour and damage for weapons are both scaled down by 3.5, I would expect the attack effectiveness damage multiples to be much higher. 100% accuracy would (IMHO) give a damage multiple of 3.5, so the best this table can produce is less than half of weapons hitting (1.5 damage multiple). Maybe I'm missing something, but these numbers feel very off.

p119 [MAJOR], since spinal mounts either hit or don't, they should either have their damage multiplied by 3.5 or multiplied by 1D. As written, they're effectively doing damage on an unarmed target as if they rolled all 1s.

p121 [MAJOR] why does radiation reduce turrets, point defence, and EW? That doesn't happen at all in ship combat.

p121 [MAJOR] "Each round, a ship's crew can repair a number of systems affected by Critical Hits equal to its Crew Skill score multiplied by five, subtracting the severity number of the Critical Hit". It's unclear what this means. I think it should mean that each critical hit repaired requires a number of 'points' equal to its severity level, and the ship has a number of 'points' equal to crew skill * 5.

p124 [MAJOR] under attacks, the rules for gauging distance between fleets from the original High Guard book (page 92) are missing (e.g. how to gauge distance between two fleets that are both at very long range but in different sectors).
 
similarly the quad turret is baseline in T5 so it should be baseline in HG too.
Things are not always the same between the two. Ion cannons can be found in the Mongoose 3I, but not T5 for example. (Not an official answer.)
 
Pg. 20 Step 6 Install Computer. Paragraph 2. The Computers installed in a ship work just like personal computers (see the Traveller Core Rule Book page 110). Traveller Core Rule Book is page 104. Traveller Core Rule Book Update 2022 is page 110. I would guess you might want to use the 2022 update for wording.
 
Pg. 38 Multi-Warhead Missile, Last sentence "Just before you make an attack roll, multiply the number or missiles in the salvo by three". I think it should say "the number of missiles".
Pg. 39 Multi-Warhead Torpedo, "multiply the number or torpedoes in the salvo by three". I think it should say "the number of torpedoes".
 
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Has anyone identified a good use for spray on solar panels that cost more than your power plant plus an emergency generator, and yet yields a maximum of 2/5 your basic emergency life support needs AND prevents other kinds of hull tech?
Or am I misunderstanding (miscalculating) the concept?
 
p.14 states that Solar Coatings cannot be used with any other hull options, but The Spinward Extents, p.345, states that TL12 Solar Coating can be used with Heat Shielding and Stealth Hull options.
p.45 power outputs and TLs for Solar Panels and Solar Coating are inconsistent with the same rules on p.345 of The Spinward Extents.
 
Pg. 38 Multi-Warhead Missile, Last sentence "Just before you make an attack roll, multiply the number or missiles in the salvo by three". I think it should say "the number of missiles".
It is per salvo, and you could have two different salvos from different ships attacking on the same round.
 
p.14 states that Solar Coatings cannot be used with any other hull options, but The Spinward Extents, p.345, states that TL12 Solar Coating can be used with Heat Shielding and Stealth Hull options.
p.45 power outputs and TLs for Solar Panels and Solar Coating are inconsistent with the same rules on p.345 of The Spinward Extents.
HG2/2022 lets you use them with radiation shielding. They are prohibited on ships that enter atmosphere because they will rattle off.
But the question was, has anyone found a good use for them. What is the advantage, considering the limited utility coupled with high cost?
 
Did the pdf come with a version number as some of us have requested for some time now?
The recent update to the Robot handbook had a date on it. This was the first release of the HG update, so why date it, I guess?
Robot_Handbook_280722.pdf
 
HG2/2022 lets you use them with radiation shielding. They are prohibited on ships that enter atmosphere because they will rattle off.
But the question was, has anyone found a good use for them. What is the advantage, considering the limited utility coupled with high cost?
The rules in The Spinward Extents (p.344 - my mistake) have Solar Panels providing a lot more power per ton, making them more cost-efficient.

Solar Panels
TL Power per Ton Cost per Ton
6 1 MCr0.1
8 2 MCr0.2
12 3 MCr0.4

The cost for Solar Coating is also a lot lower.

Solar Panel Hull Coating
TL Power per Ton* Cost per Ton*
6 0.01 Cr1000
8 0.02 Cr2000
12 0.03 Cr4000
* per Ton denotes ship tonnage covered.

As you noted, High_Guard_290722 states that Solar Coating can be combined with Radiation Shielding on p.44, but it also states that Solar Coatings cannot be combined with any of the other listed hull options on p.14, while The Spinward Extents, p.344, states that only TL12 Solar Panel Hull Coating can be used with Heat Shielding or Stealth Hull options.

It's a tad inconsistent.
 
I would love to see some clarification on modular hulls, particularly for adapting earlier materials to the new rules.

A couple of specific things:
- the rules say you can’t include structure options in a module, but the Ghalalk has armored bulkheads for its missile bays. I *think* what‘s intended is that you can‘t use modular space to add structural options to the main ship. In other words, I couldn’t use modular space to add additional ship armor or armored bulkheads to a component of the main ship, but it’s okay to add things like bulkheads to things in the module.
- it isn’t entirely clear what hull cost options needed to be added to the module’s cost. The modular cutter modules apply the streamlining costs to the modules, but there aren’t any examples showing reinforced hulls, military hulls, etc..
- None of the example modules provide armor or appear on ships with armor, so it’s hard to get a good read on whether armor tonnage needs to be included in the module. Element Class Cruisers actually built modules like small ships, with space allocated for armor, but it seems like that’s not necessarily how you should design modules in the new rules. It’s more space for the components inside the module. The armor is consistent across the ship. The write-up of the Ghalak still describes them as 2600-ton pods, so it’s not clear what’s included in that tonnage.

The main thing I’m trying to do is reverse engineer the Ghalalk so that I can redo the other element cruisers and Deepnight Revelation. It would be lovely if the book example actually broke out the mission pod so that there’s an example of a more complicated module. Or if it could be shared elsewhere.
 
And then you get an over achiever, who discovers, first, one hundred and one errors.

I assume the current one is version 2.5.1.

I'm working my way through the Field Catalogue, so when's version 2.5.2 expected?
 
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