First Impressions – Supplement 10, Merchants and Cruisers is the typical BBTB (Big Black Traveller Book) in soft cover that we’ve come to know and expect. The physical printing quality appears to be well done. The book itself weighs in at a meaty 130 pages, of that 128 are deck plans/ship descriptions. There are 53 ships in total, mostly Imperial, but with a smattering of Darrian, Aslan and Vargr. I particularly liked the Darrian ships. Overall there are (in my opinion) 20 good to excellent deck plans, with the remaining 33 rather poor, and some useless (again, my opinion here).
The Good – The excellent deck plans typically include an external view of the starship in question. I found the deck plans to generally be well laid-out in a logical pattern, with nice touches like tables, machinery, lifts, etc clearly marked as such. The external shots are nicely done, as are the other handful of external ship illustrations for the not-so-good deck plans. Others have mentioned they enjoyed the Centaur class mercenary carrier, which seems very interesting. I like the external imagery, but the turrets seem to be scaled oddly (too big for their relative size).
The Bad – Each ship has a short two-three sentence write-up, with about half having a fuller, more proper write-up. For some ships it was sufficient, but it would have been nice to have added more text here to give each new ship some background and interesting information that referee’s and players could use to help ‘customize’ their ships, or how they are viewed by the players when they encounter them.
There are also a few designs that could have benefitted from better layouts on the page. For example the excellentVargr Khoghue Class Armed Junker is squished on the upper half of the page. I understand why they tried to keep each of the decks inline horizontally across the page, but I think it really detracts from the wonderful graphics.
There is also an entire missing ship deck plan for the Darrian Donosedh Class Medical ship. It lists the ship description and specifications, but there is no illustration or deck plan.
The Ugly – For many of the ships with the poor deck plans, they are almost useless. Entire decks shaded out as ‘fuel’, or entire decks of cabins. And on some of them the symbols used to indicate machinery, weapons, or sensors are downright silly. Especially on the smaller ships, where they completely detract from the deck plan. For example, in the front of the book we have a 10 ton Escort fighter (it’s actually present in the preview file you can view online). The deck plan for it is, well, horrible. Especially when you flip 120 pages and compare it to the Nolrrgarrai Vargr Strike Fighter. Both have equally short descriptions, but the Nolrrgarrai is light-years better. It includes 2 external images and one very detailed internal image.
There are also a number of designs that are quite confusing. The Ritchey Class Escort falls into the poor design category – but also confusing as well. Looking at the deck plans you will find that deck 5 consists of a pinnace hangar and a number of cabins. What I have no clue about is the (L) shown next to all the escape pods on the deck. The legend gives no indication of what they mean. And then on Deck 6 you have a number of (P) icons next to a few other escape pods, but again the legend provides no explanation for what they are.
Next on the head-scratching list is the Queen Elizabeth. It’s a 1,400 ton ‘flying hotel’. The crew compliment is listed as 9, with 21 additional crew listed as “…(maids, clerks, chefs, manager, and so on) and to act as stewards”. The specs say there are a total of 118 staterooms, and 111 tons set aside for luxuries. But no listing for how many cabins are designated crew, and how many for passengers. I suppose the assumption would be that there are 111 passenger cabins. The other interesting thing is that the accompanying deck plans show 4 decks, and 100 staterooms are missing.
Conclusion – For anyone who has followed my complaints on the board against the poor production qualities, I’m sure some are wondering why the hell I would buy the book – and you aren’t alone, I sometimes wonder too!
But I did it for two reasons – the first was to support my local game store. I purchased both the Merchants and Cruisers book as well as the Starports book. I want to reward them for giving a damn about carrying games and not just comic books.
The second reason was because in order to provide a fair review, I did need to see the other ships that people spoke of in defense of the book. And, in their defense, I am quite pleased with them.
But it’s hard to argue FOR a book that once again shows the poor quality control that has been plaguing Mongoose for quite some time. Missing deck plans and illustrations are inexcusable. These are basic proofreading and editing concepts. A simple checklist for each ship description would have caught this error.
It’s also hard to fathom how they would commission such great work, and then pollute it with illustrations that belong in something you would release for free. It makes me want to skip over the overly simplistic designs and just pay attention to the nice ones. The reality is that with just a little bit of effort they could have released a much better product for no cost. Having the radiation symbol graphics, the ‘missiles’ that indicate maneuver drives, or the simplistic power plants takes more away than it provides. And the larger ships, with the massive blocks indicating bays or hangars outlined by lines that blend in with the grid pattern is also just plain bad.
Final Thoughts – Fervent Traveller fanatics will buy this book and enjoy it. As will players who haven’t seen the many iterations of Traveller and don’t really know any better. For me, it harkens back to the bad old days of T4 and the horrible illustrations that came with those. If you haven’t already done so, take a look at some of the GURPS Traveller source books and see the higher production quality that only some of the ships in M&C achieve.
Overall I would rate the book two stars out of five. With just a little effort this would have been a solid three, and had the same person who did the excellent 20 deck plans been responsible for all of them, I would definitely rate this as a “must have!”.
Unfortunately I think Supplement Ten rates a solid “meh…” of indifference. Of course your opinions may vary, and I do encourage anyone and everyone to make their own opinions known and share with the rest of us.
Finally, I do hope that someone from Mongoose is watching the boards and paying attention to the feedback from their paying customers. They seem to have been getting better with production values, but they still have some really big misses in every book. I would rather them delay releasing a product until its been through quality control than have a rushed product that makes me cringe every time I think about purchasing a new book and I have to wonder what’s going to be the big miss this time.
The Good – The excellent deck plans typically include an external view of the starship in question. I found the deck plans to generally be well laid-out in a logical pattern, with nice touches like tables, machinery, lifts, etc clearly marked as such. The external shots are nicely done, as are the other handful of external ship illustrations for the not-so-good deck plans. Others have mentioned they enjoyed the Centaur class mercenary carrier, which seems very interesting. I like the external imagery, but the turrets seem to be scaled oddly (too big for their relative size).
The Bad – Each ship has a short two-three sentence write-up, with about half having a fuller, more proper write-up. For some ships it was sufficient, but it would have been nice to have added more text here to give each new ship some background and interesting information that referee’s and players could use to help ‘customize’ their ships, or how they are viewed by the players when they encounter them.
There are also a few designs that could have benefitted from better layouts on the page. For example the excellentVargr Khoghue Class Armed Junker is squished on the upper half of the page. I understand why they tried to keep each of the decks inline horizontally across the page, but I think it really detracts from the wonderful graphics.
There is also an entire missing ship deck plan for the Darrian Donosedh Class Medical ship. It lists the ship description and specifications, but there is no illustration or deck plan.
The Ugly – For many of the ships with the poor deck plans, they are almost useless. Entire decks shaded out as ‘fuel’, or entire decks of cabins. And on some of them the symbols used to indicate machinery, weapons, or sensors are downright silly. Especially on the smaller ships, where they completely detract from the deck plan. For example, in the front of the book we have a 10 ton Escort fighter (it’s actually present in the preview file you can view online). The deck plan for it is, well, horrible. Especially when you flip 120 pages and compare it to the Nolrrgarrai Vargr Strike Fighter. Both have equally short descriptions, but the Nolrrgarrai is light-years better. It includes 2 external images and one very detailed internal image.
There are also a number of designs that are quite confusing. The Ritchey Class Escort falls into the poor design category – but also confusing as well. Looking at the deck plans you will find that deck 5 consists of a pinnace hangar and a number of cabins. What I have no clue about is the (L) shown next to all the escape pods on the deck. The legend gives no indication of what they mean. And then on Deck 6 you have a number of (P) icons next to a few other escape pods, but again the legend provides no explanation for what they are.
Next on the head-scratching list is the Queen Elizabeth. It’s a 1,400 ton ‘flying hotel’. The crew compliment is listed as 9, with 21 additional crew listed as “…(maids, clerks, chefs, manager, and so on) and to act as stewards”. The specs say there are a total of 118 staterooms, and 111 tons set aside for luxuries. But no listing for how many cabins are designated crew, and how many for passengers. I suppose the assumption would be that there are 111 passenger cabins. The other interesting thing is that the accompanying deck plans show 4 decks, and 100 staterooms are missing.
Conclusion – For anyone who has followed my complaints on the board against the poor production qualities, I’m sure some are wondering why the hell I would buy the book – and you aren’t alone, I sometimes wonder too!
But I did it for two reasons – the first was to support my local game store. I purchased both the Merchants and Cruisers book as well as the Starports book. I want to reward them for giving a damn about carrying games and not just comic books. The second reason was because in order to provide a fair review, I did need to see the other ships that people spoke of in defense of the book. And, in their defense, I am quite pleased with them.
But it’s hard to argue FOR a book that once again shows the poor quality control that has been plaguing Mongoose for quite some time. Missing deck plans and illustrations are inexcusable. These are basic proofreading and editing concepts. A simple checklist for each ship description would have caught this error.
It’s also hard to fathom how they would commission such great work, and then pollute it with illustrations that belong in something you would release for free. It makes me want to skip over the overly simplistic designs and just pay attention to the nice ones. The reality is that with just a little bit of effort they could have released a much better product for no cost. Having the radiation symbol graphics, the ‘missiles’ that indicate maneuver drives, or the simplistic power plants takes more away than it provides. And the larger ships, with the massive blocks indicating bays or hangars outlined by lines that blend in with the grid pattern is also just plain bad.
Final Thoughts – Fervent Traveller fanatics will buy this book and enjoy it. As will players who haven’t seen the many iterations of Traveller and don’t really know any better. For me, it harkens back to the bad old days of T4 and the horrible illustrations that came with those. If you haven’t already done so, take a look at some of the GURPS Traveller source books and see the higher production quality that only some of the ships in M&C achieve.
Overall I would rate the book two stars out of five. With just a little effort this would have been a solid three, and had the same person who did the excellent 20 deck plans been responsible for all of them, I would definitely rate this as a “must have!”.
Unfortunately I think Supplement Ten rates a solid “meh…” of indifference. Of course your opinions may vary, and I do encourage anyone and everyone to make their own opinions known and share with the rest of us.
Finally, I do hope that someone from Mongoose is watching the boards and paying attention to the feedback from their paying customers. They seem to have been getting better with production values, but they still have some really big misses in every book. I would rather them delay releasing a product until its been through quality control than have a rushed product that makes me cringe every time I think about purchasing a new book and I have to wonder what’s going to be the big miss this time.
