Here are some comments and responses from the original thread over at Quarter to Three.
"If you find this game, let me know. For me, the closest I've found is Mass Effect 1, but it sounds like the streamlining they did to ME2 will make it lose (or loose for the mouth breathing tarditrons) what it did capture of the Traveller magic."
"I also dig the new Mongoose books, picked up a half dozen of them or so."
"Freelancer might be of interest, though it sacrifices randomness for a plot that takes you from system to system. "
"Space Rangers 2 might also meet some of your criteria. It has the tactical combat, the open-ended universe, and a sort of "crew" in that you can hire on guys to help you out.
There was also an actual Traveller system game made years ago. It's called Megatraveller 2 : Quest for the Ancients. It's OLD (yes, with capital letters) and thus unlikely to satisfy in the graphics and features departments, but it sure as hell was huge, and allowed for customization of crew members, equipment and tons of side quests. I don't recall if there was any trading or not. It was a lot of fun 20 years ago though, and based pretty faithfully on the Traveller RPG system at the time."
"Kerberos Productions is developing a game called Northstar. It is supposed to be exactly what you(we) are looking for.
Apparently the UI they developed for Fort Zombie is supposed to be the interface they were planning to use for Northstar. So our prospects are not looking very promising."
"I actually think the X series could be decent if you weren't looking to focus more on the crew, but since that's the case, it would probably take a lot of internal roleplaying on the player's part to make that interesting."
"It's Eve Online."
"There was also MegaTraveller 1 - The Zhodani Conspiracy. I absolutely loved that game. When I bought it, I played it on my Tandy 1000 -- but I didn't know that it required a hard drive. I copied various files to four 5.25" SD floppy disks and manually switched the disks at certain points throughout the game. Older (!) games that have that Traveler feel is Sentinel Worlds 1 - Future Magic and the sequel Hard Nova.
Why, oh why do we not have games like this any more?"
"Have you tried Star Flight I/II or Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic?
Sure, they're old - but they both offer open world space RPGing that you just can't get now adays."
"Another vote for the original Mega Traveller series from me:
http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/...aveller-series
You wont find anything else that has close to the depth of game play of the rpg system, and despite old graphics they are still great games, shame they didn't make anymore really."
"Oh I know, I'm a huge roguelike fanboy and follow the scene a fair bit. You'd be surprised at how complex some of them are now, and how many are being created. There's lots of tools to reduce the amount of grunt work required (eg libtcod).
RLProspector would seem like a good base for a Traveller game to start from."
"My RPG group plays Battlestations (tabletop boardgame) a lot. They love it. I don't play it really, because it's more board game than RPG (but with RPG elements). I don't overly enjoy playing board games with large groups. Anyway, it's a great game, apparently. They even play it over the computer. I can find out how, if you are interested."
"As for current games, Parkan II is the closest I can think of to what you're looking for."
"I wish I could recommend something for you, but I think I'm searching for the same game."
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=59774
Omitted are my posts including some brainstorming about how to make a Traveller CRPG or pontifications about the role of Snapshot in defining familiar tropes in turn-based squad oriented games like X-Com or Jagged Alliance.
