Traveller's Aid #9: Fighting Ships of the Solomani is IN !

[EDG]

It was the only way the book was going to get published (and you were one of the people moaning about the delays).

Oh come on, of course it wasn't the only way the book was going to get published - it could have easily been genericised and published as an Traveller OGL product. And it probably would have been finished a lot sooner too. At least then it would have been immediately useful to the rather large market that plays Mongoose Traveller, and would probably get a lot more sales as a result. Instead you chose to publish it as a T20 product, thus supporting a very tiny, increasingly isolated and ever more irrelevant niche in the Traveller market.

I'd say that I'm glad it's out, except that QLI is screwing over the people who actually paid for a TA subscription and have downloads remaining on it by not letting them download it from there immediately (though given the state of the QLI web store, I doubt that anyone who had a TA subscription would actually be able to successfully download anything from there anyway). So they're not much better off than they were before.

 

[Sturn]

Traveller's Aid #9: Fighting Ships of the Solomani is IN !

I understand that rightly so some are upset. Start another thread for that please. I would like to hear conversation on the TA content itself please, which seems to be the original intent of this thread.

 

[Dave Chase]

...
Shall we get back to discussing the product anyway or kill this thread off?

Tough question to answer.

The nice side of me says, lock it and end it.

The neutral side says, let be until it gets nasty.

The other sides says, people need to know, not the nasty bits but they need to know the rep of the company and individual who runs/brags about it.

Dave Chase

 

[FreeTrav]

I think that the topic of QLI, their customer relations, and their author relations are valid for discussion; however, I don't think that other threads should be hijacked to do so. I'd prefer to see a separate thread started, and if it is necessary to refer to it, do so, while firmly requesting that responses on the topic of QLI's deficiencies be kept there, rather than the thread that was started to discus the value of the particular product. It is clear that the topic of QLI generates a fair amount of bitterness - with good reason, of which the unfamiliar should be apprised - but allowing that to poison other threads is not something that I am a fan of.

 

[EDG]

There's nothing to "poison" here though. There's been no discussion about the product at all here.

Frankly, I'd say if you want to talk about it, go to the T20 forums on the CotI boards. It's not even designed to be compatible with MGT, so why waste time and space talking about it here?

 

[FreeTrav]

It's not even designed to be compatible with MGT, so why waste time and space talking about it here?

Without addressing this product specifically (as I do not possess a copy of it at this time), I'll answer this question in the general case by saying "because products not designed for a specific version of Traveller may nevertheless be easily convertible TO the desired version of Traveller, or, in some cases, may be usable off-the-shelf". In such a case, I'd hope that such discussion would include discussion of adaptation - but I would consider general discussion of its value as Traveller material to be acceptable, even without specific adaptation discussion.

That's just me, though. The final say on such things must, obviously, reside with the Forum Administrators, just like I have the final say on what happens on the Freelance Traveller forums.

 

[EDG]

"because products not designed for a specific version of Traveller may nevertheless be easily convertible TO the desired version of Traveller, or, in some cases, may be usable off-the-shelf". In such a case, I'd hope that such discussion would include discussion of adaptation - but I would consider general discussion of its value as Traveller material to be acceptable, even without specific adaptation discussion.

Andrew said earlier that this will eventually have conversion stats to MGT at some point (given how long it's taken the T20 version to come out though, I'd expect the conversion to show up around the year 2015). But until then, I don't really see much reason to discuss converting it here (and I doubt that one would be able to discuss that much anyway - to have any meaningful discussion of it you'd have to describe everything in the book explicitly and thus making its contents available for free anyway, which I'm sure Hunter wouldn't approve of at this early stage). There's a perfectly good Travellers Aide forum for it on CotI, I think people would be better off discussing it there.

Either way, this isn't a general Traveller board - it's a Mongoose Traveller board. You'll notice that there hasn't been much discussion of things specific to other editions of the game here for precisely that reason.

 

[Sturn]

Frankly, I'd say if you want to talk about it, go to the T20 forums on the CotI boards. It's not even designed to be compatible with MGT, so why waste time and space talking about it here?

So we shouldn't discuss TNE products here either right? MegaTraveller? It's Traveller, this is a Traveller forum, even if not the exact Traveller forum for the publication many are still here because they are interested in Traveller. It's not an MGT product, but referees have been melding pieces from many systems for years. Especially fluff. I see no problem with discussing it here.

Anyone care to review the product this thread began about?

[Removed a paragraph that was non-sensical since I mixed up two members' 3 letter names]

 

[Bygoneyrs]

Ok I have a question, to anyone that has actually seen the product. Regardless of the stats, what about the ships designs/floor plans themselves? Are they any good and different? I can come up with my own stats on the ship if I need to, but looking at it as a purely reference material...what about it's ships floor plans? Are their different or unique ship floor plans in it?

Penn

 

[MJD]

I can't speak for the art because I've not seen it, but I have seen some of the other stuff Andrew has done.. so I'd guess it'll be good.

The content was, as I recall, pretty decent. Michael ran the Solomani Navy tactics and history section by me and I liked it. I did the ship concepts (not the actual designs but the concepts and desciptions).

So, as far as the text content goes, I can say that it was definitely good back in 2003 when it was put together. I'm not sure what might have been changed in the intervening few years of course, but at a guess I'd go with very little.

Which means that this is almost certainly a good T20 product, with some relevance to other versions in terms of the background information and such.

Relevance to current Traveller? No idea.

 

[Sturn]

Ok I have a question, to anyone that has actually seen the product. Regardless of the stats, what about the ships designs/floor plans themselves? Are they any good and different? I can come up with my own stats on the ship if I need to, but looking at it as a purely reference material...what about it's ships floor plans? Are their different or unique ship floor plans in it?

Penn

No deckplans. Art includes external views.

I bought a copy since I've been working on a campaign guide in the Solomani Rim. Wrong time period, but for completeness I wanted everything I could reference so I don't contradict anyone else's work.

Only skimmed it so far, but it does have fluff. Not just stats and pictures of ships.

 

[steffworthington]

As you may be aware, I have no problem with criticising QLI as I had a personal stake in the print version of 2320AD and produced art I was not paid for.

That said I've got lots of Mongoose products (MGT, MRQ etc) and find it a little (searches for right word) embarrassing on behalf of mongoose for the users of its board to be attacking another company (no matter how deserved). Thats the only reason I suggested moving on. It IS, after all, a definite thread hijack.

As for the validity of mentioning other versions of Traveller, well, my shelf is filled with CT, MT, GT, TNE, (No T4), and my own home brew Traveller based on Niel Gow's 'Duty & Honour' system. I had no intention of ever running GT or TNE but just bought them for the reference material so I think the mention here of other versions is entirely valid.
Besides, its TRAVELLER. It's been licenced more times that Ross Kemp has shaved his head.

 

[Bygoneyrs]

Hey I have collected anything Traveller over the last 30+ years, and will keep doing so regardless what. Now as to politics, well what was done to MJD was wrong. I have no stake in that issue, other than I know that Martin has some pretty good stuff and it is all worth having. As I said I just like having a complete library of reference stuff. Now for me deckplans are always a plus to have, BUT if the product doesn't have any then it's value for me goes down greatly. I can always come up with my own set of details stats for a ship, and almost always do anyway.

Penn

 

[Gruffty the Hiver]

Ok I have a question, to anyone that has actually seen the product. Regardless of the stats, what about the ships designs/floor plans themselves? Are they any good and different? I can come up with my own stats on the ship if I need to, but looking at it as a purely reference material...what about it's ships floor plans? Are their different or unique ship floor plans in it?

Penn

There are no deckplans of anykind in the book. There is a section at the beginning about fleet organisation and some history describing certain battles. There is a CGI image of each ship, a brief blurb about each ship, and a T20 stat block for each ship.

 

[Vile]

There are no deckplans of anykind in the book. There is a section at the beginning about fleet organisation and some history describing certain battles. There is a CGI image of each ship, a brief blurb about each ship, and a T20 stat block for each ship.

Mind you, deckplans would not be useful to MGT, because of the different design systems. The stat blocks could serve as a basis for conversion to MGT, I suppose.

How big and how detailed is the fleet organisation section? What period does the history cover? Is it limited to just Solomani naval battles?

Basically, I'm asking - is it useful (for a MGT gamer) to have this PDF other than for its no doubt very pretty pictures?

 

[andrew boulton]

Oh come on, of course it wasn't the only way the book was going to get published - it could have easily been genericised and published as an Traveller OGL product.

Ah, so you think we should have published a totally different book...

It's a book about the Solomani Navy.

 

[andrew boulton]

How big and how detailed is the fleet organisation section? What period does the history cover? Is it limited to just Solomani naval battles?

2 pages of history and equipment, 4 pages of organisation and tactics (down to squadron level), 4 pages of decisive battles, 32 pages of ships.

Like all T20 books, it's Rim War era.

 

[EDG]

Ah, so you think we should have published a totally different book...

Not "totally different", just "tweaked". You could have still made them as warships, just generic ones. You could even have intertwined their histories and so on, just not tied them to the Charted Space setting.

It's a book about the Solomani Navy.

So it's for a different ruleset, a different part of Charted space that's on the other side of the Imperium to what MGT covers right now, and it's set in the wrong era, for a war that isn't directly relevant to the Spinward Marches. How is this supposed to be useful to anyone playing MGT again?

 

[MJD]

It's taken this long to publish a manuscript that's been complete for half a decade.Can you imagine how long it would take if they had to find a writer to alter any of it?

Nah, going with what they had was the only viable option if it was to appear before the license expires... or the sun goes nova.

 

[MJD]

I suspect you're used to our setup (several writers and also volunteers for various supporting tasks) rather than that at QLI (no writers having alienated all the content providers). WE could have tweaked the manuscript easily enough beause we have the people. Not so QLI.

In any case, I suspect it had to be a T20 book beause it's supposed to be part of the TA series. Of course, that would mean it had to be availabe to the subscribers, and right now it's not.