captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
Since there's a zero percent chance a requested review will ever survive in the other thread, and since I was the (unfortunate) OP, here goes.
Its very nice for what it is, and I don't intend faint praise by that. It's an excellent contribution for those of us who are or intend to run a solomani rim campaign, and a surprisingly good adjunct to GURPS rim of Fire.
It is a book about the solomani fleet, how it came to be, and what its tactical doctrines are; it also covers some info about the split with the "internal security" forces of the government, and drops hints about the member states potential fleets in a crisis. It does a nice job of framing the whole discussion of Solomani intent and goals without resorting to simply portraying them as jackbooted badguys for the good guys to bash around.
The ships are an excellent mix, and seem to stack up well as a companion to the imperial ships in both traveller and CT ship supplements. One can see how the fleets used the tactics they did, and interestingly, underlines the ongoing solomani insistence on close combat weapons over longer range engagements. The ships do seem to not be just the same imperial ships with a few extra bells and whistles -it does feel like a different fleet with a different doctrine.
The range of sizes run from the big buggers (250K dtonnes IIRC) down to the player sized foes (200 & 400 dtonne ships). There are quite a few (I don't remember how many, but it didn't seem skimpy. All ships are discussed with a bit of history in many cases (fun fluss for us boaty history types), some discussion of its use, and often some charater fluff (old, new, poular,crowded, etc). All are fully statted, and look to be typo free as far I've seen (a major failure point with published ship designs). The stats aren't MGT pure, but as with most previous QLI (and avenger) T20 products, they are easily, very easily ported to CT or MGT.
The lack of deckplans is somewhat of a downer but 1. the MGT "no ship without a deckplan doctrine is still quite new and revolutionary", and Most of the ships would have massive deckplans at a very small scale, and pump up the page count massively -and I have to say I don't see to much benefit in deckplans of tigress sized ships.
The exterior views are good, and seem to be relevant to the ships in question, which has been an issue in other products, so, good enough.
I'd say it qualifies as a solid product, of generally good usefulness to anyone gaming in that are, and/or interested in fleet and ship design in Traveller in general.
Those involved in producing it can be proud of it, regardless of the other issues. Thanks !
Its very nice for what it is, and I don't intend faint praise by that. It's an excellent contribution for those of us who are or intend to run a solomani rim campaign, and a surprisingly good adjunct to GURPS rim of Fire.
It is a book about the solomani fleet, how it came to be, and what its tactical doctrines are; it also covers some info about the split with the "internal security" forces of the government, and drops hints about the member states potential fleets in a crisis. It does a nice job of framing the whole discussion of Solomani intent and goals without resorting to simply portraying them as jackbooted badguys for the good guys to bash around.
The ships are an excellent mix, and seem to stack up well as a companion to the imperial ships in both traveller and CT ship supplements. One can see how the fleets used the tactics they did, and interestingly, underlines the ongoing solomani insistence on close combat weapons over longer range engagements. The ships do seem to not be just the same imperial ships with a few extra bells and whistles -it does feel like a different fleet with a different doctrine.
The range of sizes run from the big buggers (250K dtonnes IIRC) down to the player sized foes (200 & 400 dtonne ships). There are quite a few (I don't remember how many, but it didn't seem skimpy. All ships are discussed with a bit of history in many cases (fun fluss for us boaty history types), some discussion of its use, and often some charater fluff (old, new, poular,crowded, etc). All are fully statted, and look to be typo free as far I've seen (a major failure point with published ship designs). The stats aren't MGT pure, but as with most previous QLI (and avenger) T20 products, they are easily, very easily ported to CT or MGT.
The lack of deckplans is somewhat of a downer but 1. the MGT "no ship without a deckplan doctrine is still quite new and revolutionary", and Most of the ships would have massive deckplans at a very small scale, and pump up the page count massively -and I have to say I don't see to much benefit in deckplans of tigress sized ships.
The exterior views are good, and seem to be relevant to the ships in question, which has been an issue in other products, so, good enough.
I'd say it qualifies as a solid product, of generally good usefulness to anyone gaming in that are, and/or interested in fleet and ship design in Traveller in general.
Those involved in producing it can be proud of it, regardless of the other issues. Thanks !
