Mercenary, Heavy Weapons.

[Border Reiver]

The Mercenary book is pretty damn good until you reach the new equipment and the whole book almost fails in my opinion because of it. If you have even a pinch of military experience or are interested in weapons in anyway then you'll be severely disappointed. This is a real failing. Don't get me wrong, there are gems in there but they are hidden by a fetid pile of......

A shame really as the rest of the book is pretty much fun. I'm about to have a quick solo experiment with the mass combat rules before trying them out over skype tonight.

Perhaps a better gearbook might be in order, take some hints from T4 and from Avenger.

 

[Supergamera]

I have to agree that the weapon section seems a bit off.

Things like "balls of energy" for mortars seem to be out of spirit for Traveller. Plus, the TLs don't match with the description in the Artillery Battle Dress section.

"Frag Cannons" and 2 inch flying metal discs make it seem like the writer was playing something on the computer while writing the section. Also, a Meson Gun is not a called strike from a Starcraft Ghost, complete with warning light.

There are a lot of good ideas in the book, but the quality (including fonts changing in the middle of a table, multiple times) doesn't compare well to the core book.

 

[Border Reiver]

The heavy weapons and new artillery battledress are what really irk me. Marauder suits might work as artillery mounts but Traveller Battledress isn't really like that.

The concept is fine but using the battledress term is a little confusing, the artillery battledress conjures up a picture of a man sized armoured figure with a comically long 6 metre gun arm fed by a 20 round belt of large caliber shells.

I'm a bit picky when it comes to ironmongery, sorry. :roll:

 

[Border Reiver]

The new careers, events and mishaps tables and all the merc stuff is excellent.

The equipment is just a little bit poor, no let me rephrase that. It is atrocious. Did the playtesters fall asleep on the job? I'm off to rewrite my Mongoose Traveller arsenal. :x

 

[Klaus Kipling]

Not got it yet so I can't really comment, but I would hope that a core book would include stuff that is not necessarily what you'd consider OTU/Traveller.

As Traveller is to drive Starship Troopers aren't Marauder-type suits appropriate?

Will feedback when I get it, but it looks like it may be required to house-rule the weapons, just like every other version of Traveller for me. Will be easier with MGT tho (only one single table), but it is actually fun to rejig the weapons, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[simonh]

Not got it yet so I can't really comment, but I would hope that a core book would include stuff that is not necessarily what you'd consider OTU/Traveller.

I'd prefer the approach from the TMB where the main text is all completely OTU compatible, but a few optional extras are thrown in, like the world building variants and the variant FTL drives and power plants.

But these sort of thing is easily fixed in post, after all sticklers for OTU canon (and for many, but not all purposes I'm one of them) are the kind of people that will do their own writeups, go to the web pages or download fanzines and get it exactly the way they want, everyone else will just have fun with what's in the books and not worry about it too much. Don't blame them.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Border Reiver]

I agree, I expected and wanted non-Traveller weaponry but using such a well known (and defined) Traveller term as Battledress for a powered armour artillery platform is a little out.

Give me Mecha. Give me "Energy Balls." But be a little more circumspect in how they are defined.

As too the Heavy Weapons, well AT Gun is a Howitzer, Frag Gun is an airburst weapon activated by falling velocities. Seriously has the author even seen historical and modern artillery Totally looney definitions.

On to the positives though. I've had a quick shot of the mass combat rules and they seem not bad. Abstract enough. Tonight will be a real test.

 

[JimG]

I agree, I expected and wanted non-Traveller weaponry but using such a well known (and defined) Traveller term as Battledress for a powered armour artillery platform is a little out.

Give me Mecha. Give me "Energy Balls." But be a little more circumspect in how they are defined.

As too the Heavy Weapons, well AT Gun is a Howitzer, Frag Gun is an airburst weapon activated by falling velocities. Seriously has the author even seen historical and modern artillery Totally looney definitions.

I have to agree with this assessment. Overall, I'm slightly disappointed with the book, but it will be a useful addition.

 

[District268]

The equipment is just a little bit poor, no let me rephrase that. It is atrocious. Did the playtesters fall asleep on the job? :x

I'm sorry to say but I have to second what Boarder Reaver said. The equipment section on the whole in my opinion is very poor.

 

[-Daniel-]

Oh man, have I lost my excitement now....

Now I think I do not care when it arrives.

Daniel

 

[Border Reiver]

Ok now we've ruined your night let's see if we can get you excited again. Firstly the new careers, Wet Navy, Air Force as regular military; Guerilla, Commando, Cadre, Warmonger, Security, Striker. Great fun, some quite hi-power stuff here but not unbalanced. I'm impressed by the expanded event tables (d66, something I remember suggesting back in the core rules playtest) and mishap tables.

The additions to the combat system I can take or leave. Kill shots add to the fun for the players, Blind Fire is the sort of crap you see untrained militias in third world countries doing on your nightly news. If your player decides to use that then smack them hard. I also wonder if the author understands "suppressive fire" as although they seem to get the concept, the execution seems a little :?

Then there is the mass combat system and the rules for running a merc unit and creating merc tickets. It looks after a couple of run throughs that the mass combat has a few errors in it, details later, but is passable. The merc rules are great fun, an improvement over those found in the original Book 4 but perhaps still needing more chrome. And all that stuff about unit headquarters, wow. Must have had a REMF on hand to provide all that detail :lol: Nice.

Extra bonus is a roster of Merc NPCs to fill out your TOEs in your new merc unit, very handy in the absence of something like 1001 Characters or Veterans (not the most useful Traveller books ever but they were used, please don't take this as a suggestion). There are only a few of them but it's a handy addition. I'll note that none of them have a stat less than 7 excepting two with Soc-6, most having 9s or 10s (whatever happened to hexadecimal for the stats then? It's not that hard)

 

[EDG]

Just a suggestion, but you could try being more constructive with the criticism rather than just saying "this is crap".

I doubt if anyone's really getting a good idea what you specifically didn't like about the equipment lists. What didn't work? Why didn't it work? How do you think it should work? Was anything actually broken or did you just not like it? If you answer those then Mongoose can at least get something useful out of the criticism.

 

[Imperator58]

Hmmm...
I may hold off on this one, then. Equipment is basically what I wanted the book for. We'll see if there's a revised printing later, perhaps.
Okay, so that's TWO No-Gos: Merc and Beltstrike. Here's hoping for High Guard.

 

[-Daniel-]

Ok now we've ruined your night let's see if we can get you excited again.....

Thanks for the run down. While the new careers and skills might be interesting, I admit to being a gear head. As such the equipment section was one of the main attractions for me. However I will look at it once it comes in and go from there.

Thank You Again.

Daniel

 

[Border Reiver]

Just a suggestion, but you could try being more constructive with the criticism rather than just saying "this is crap".

I have said a few things on COTI but we know that's not for you so, you asked for it :wink:

Field Artillery. A bit of a specialised subject for me I know but even if I didn't have years of experience in that field I'd know that an AT gun is not known as a howitzer at early tech levels, that is any gun designed for high angle fire (not just parabolic fire) which seems to be what is called a Frag Cannon
roll, damages are comparable and mysteriously the Frag Cannon seems to have a lower range than the direct firing AT Gun. The Frag Gun is described as using parabolic fire to bring an airburst round on top of troops. Not very flexible, hardly King of the Battlefield with Smoke, High Explosive, Illumination, Nuclear, Terminally Guided, Chemical or Bomblet Rounds; with timed, proximity, delayed or impact fusing. In fact the airburst round apparently works out how it detonates by its descent ("falling") velocity despite most high angle rounds achieving a terminal velocity long before they hit the ground. In fact even in WW1 an airburst could be achieved with a simple mechanical timed fuse though a proximity radar fuse is as likely today.

Mortars firing energy balls, a little bizarre but I can deal with it.

Tent Barracks, a shelter taking up to six man hours to construct. You could dig a hole out and revet it quicker.

The MagRail Guns trump everything in their class. Must be the authors pet weapon firing a devestating barage of spinning disks. Innacurate and having cruddy penetrative effects, looks good on a video game but as a weapon nope, and certainly not the best personal weapon available.

Battledress, a well defined and illustrated Traveller trope. The ultimate in personal armour seems to be morphing into Armageddon 2089 Mecha. We now have Artillery Battledress, personal armour that have their arms replaced with field artillery pieces. Fine if you want mecha, give us mecha, but trying to imagine a 2m suit of powered armour toting a 4m artillery (and that isn't that big for a field gun) barrel as its right arm is a bit laughable. Or perhaps the 100rd internal magazine for the heavy caliber shells. Just call them Mecha.

It's late and a fox has just gotten into my chickens so I'll finish this tomorrow.

 

[danbuter]

The crappy equipment section just made this a no-buy for me. The first in the series, as I loved all the other books.

While the careers sound nice, I don't need them. Same with mass combat, etc. I really wanted a nice selection of well-balanced and logical equipment.

 

[Golan2072]

Does it have at least normal heavy weapons such as machine guns. flamethrowers, autocannons and so on? And does it have normal small arms such as SMGs?

 

[Anonymous]

It has normal heavy weapons like machine guns & flamfthrowers yes, in the normal weapons part it included carbines & Flechette weapons.

I really dont see what the problem is with this section, if its down to how they are decribed then change it.

 

[Emryys]

...let's see if we can get you excited again. Firstly the new careers, Wet Navy, Air Force as regular military; Guerilla, Commando, Cadre, Warmonger, Security, Striker.

This is what I've been waiting for! 8)

...additions to the combat system...

Sounds fun...

Then there is the mass combat system and the rules for running a merc unit and creating merc tickets...

Should make for fun campaigning...

Extra bonus is a roster of Merc NPCs to fill out your TOEs in your new merc unit, very handy...

Agreed... Now I must buy!

 

[MongooseMatt]

Equipment is basically what I wanted the book for.

Then that is the issue - this is not an equipment book. That comes later.