I have been looking forward to this release since I saw it was coming. I have enjoyed my previous purchases of Independence Games ships and supplements for years. So let’s get into the review.

Overall I’m pleased with my purchase. The length of the PDF is reasonable for the price – official page count is 40 pages, but actual (i.e. usable with information/illustrations) clocks in at 36 pages. As I have come to expect from the publisher and illustrator, the artwork is top-notch. All of it is very clean, making the PDF easily printable if you prefer to have your own hard-copy or to share images of the ship with your players. It includes some variations of different types, with short descriptions of the variants listed in their own section. However the ship stats and deckplans are only for the primary listed class.

I also want to take the time to call out the extra details I love about these series of ship books. In nearly every one they have a size comparison for previous ships – which give you a sense of scale in both written and visual comparisons. I think that’s a great eye towards detail and is very much appreciated! There’s also a short (about 1-page) example of an interstellar cargo carrier, the British Interstellar Company, that briefly gives a history of the company and ties in the other ship supplements that have been previously released. That’s a nice nugget to be used in games to help gin up plot points if needed.

Now, on to the critique and questions. Every designer has their own reasoning for why they did things. And every other person (usually) has their own head-scratching moment of “why’d they do that?”. So here’s my head-scratching commentary.

For a cargo ship, it seems pretty heavily armed, with 20 turrets and a point-defense system. Since the ship description calls this ship out to be basically owned by the larger lines, that would mean its routes are going to be those that require a LOT of cargo space – which means between busy and habitable worlds. Busy shipping lanes are rarely the target of space pirates because navies tend to put their ships in those areas. The ship is also armored. The naval variant could possibly explain the weapons and armor (though from a regular wet navy they are significantly armed/protected) – but from a pure merchant standpoint it’s hard to justify such extra expenses. The addition of an armory and brig on a merchant ship also seems a bit excessive. Brigs are expenses that merchants don’t want to deal with because that space eats into your profit – and an armory falls under the same thought process. Those two items would be better suited for naval vessels than pure merchants.

I’d liked to have seen more details around the ships accommodations and tying together the well-laid out deckplans with the descriptions. While the distinct areas are clearly marked on the deckplan, the area numbers don’t tie specifically back to the description (and these two sets of information are about 10 pages apart). The decks are clearly split up, though the organization of these are slightly off. Normally you’d either start with the lowest decks and work your way up (which itself is unusual, though logical) OR you’d start with deck 1 and work your way down to deck 7. For some reason the layout starts with deck 4, goes to deck 7, then starts back with decks 1-3 laid out on the final page. Deck 4 is the “top” of the main cargo area, so perhaps they wanted to start there, or else they were looking to start with the main cargo area and then move their way through this section, then go back to the other ones? Either way it seems a little odd to me (hence the head scratching).

The overall layout of the ship’s cargo holds, in general, makes sense. A careful reading and viewing of the ship / deck layout helps you understand the main hold is three decks high (with no actual decks), and the secondary are two high. The deck plan itself states “3 decks (9m)”. At first I thought it was three separate decks looking at the text, but after comparing the three sets of data I realized that was an incorrect assumption. But it may be one that others could make. Maybe a little more clarity around the description or the label?

Speaking of cargo holds, there is no mention of any cargo handling equipment inside the hold, such as overhead tracks/crane to move cargo around or to assist in the unloading. According to the cut-away diagram accompanying the text description of the ship there is supposed to be a two-deck tall bow cargo hold, but when I look at the deck plans I cannot find it – at least as I would expect it to be placed from the illustration. The deckplans do show a much smaller cargo section at the bow of the ship, but the cutaway scaling leads me to believe it would be, well, larger than the deckplans make it out to be. As an aside, I can’t seem to find the stated cargo capabilities of each of the separate holds. That would be nice to know.

The general layout of the ship seems well thought-out, with a few exceptions. All of the major holds show the ability to open up to be loaded/unloaded. The description states that the ship isn’t meant to land, so all cargo transfer will be done in a vacuum. Only the larger forward hold shows the capability to use an airlock (the other two do not) – but the airlocks as shown are virtually useless since their width is only 1DT wide. I cannot imagine what kind of cargo would be moved through a lock that tiny (though they are quite long). Again, I suppose certain gyrations would be possible, but not really practical. And since this ship is space-going only, it would require all cargo to be packed in vacuum-rated containers, or else smaller containers (such as you see via trucks on the road today) are packed in larger ones. Perhaps the authors assumed there would be a two-tiered system whereby cargo transported between planets are sealed in vacuum-rated containers and containers for planetary delivery are similar to the thin-skinned aluminum/canvas ones we see on the road today? Once again it is possible, but no real mention of the activity of loading/unloading or anything else is mentioned in the text. I would have liked to have seen more descriptions of such things – and even, perhaps, descriptions and illustrations of cargo tugs that are used for the ship. That would have been a fine addition in my opinion. There is one illustration of the ship approaching a large hub-and-spoke station, so maybe a few paragraphs about how the ship would normally dock with one to transfer cargoes?

Generally I’m very satisfied with my purchase – I’ve yet to have buyers remorse from anything from Independence Games. There are some areas that I think would benefit from more descriptions (and since it’s a PDF there isn’t really additional costs associated with adding more details/explanations). I think it’s a solid 4+ stars. I was vacilating between giving it a 4 or 5 star rating and eventually settled on 5. I don't want to dissuade anyone from purchasing, nor do I want to make it look like the authors didn't do a bang-up job to begin with. I think most buyers appreciate the little things that make a great supplement shine even more.

I’m looking forward to purchasing future supplements from this team of designers and artists.

Strikemaster class Brig, by Gypsy Knight Games

Once again I picked up a new ship from Gypsy Knight Games (GKG) based solely on the enjoyment I had from past products. I wasn’t specifically looking to integrate this ship into a Traveller campaign (which is easily doable), and I don’t have an ongoing set of gaming sessions set in their alternate Clement Sector setting. I got this for three very simple reasons. The first is that they put out some kick-ass high quality gaming supplements. I have yet to be disappointed with any of the things I have purchased from them. Secondly the artwork and deckplans are nice. Many publishers scrimp on the artwork, especially full color artwork. The Traveller GURPS materials where chock-full of grey-scale artwork, but it added a lot to the pleasure of the game, and I wish more publishers would listen to their gaming constituency and do the right thing. Finally I like to support my gaming community, especially the small publishers who do this more for the love of the game than as an attempt to earn a living at it. Enough of the fan-boying, let’s get on with the review!

The cover is always a helpful sales tool, and as usual the artwork of Ian Stead is enjoyable just to look at. The ship, while small, still looks deadly and menacing without having to resort to a lot of distractions. The first few (five to be exact) pages provide some history behind the creation of the ship. When I first saw the teaser post that the Strikemaster class brig was coming, I first thought, “WTF… a brig?? Nobody has used the term brig for a naval vessel since the end of sail”. Luckily enough, the included introduction answers that very same question I had! There are a couple of pages of fiction outlining the beginning of the civil war, with ships having to pick which side they want to support. The fiction itself is decent enough, and with a little bit more polish it could be easily expanded upon for a nice short story.

One of the things to keep in mind is that the Clement sector setting is very much about smaller-scale ships. No 500,000 Dton Tigress class dreadnoughts floating around. The Strikemaster itself comes in at 400 tons. Building multi-thousand ton warships is fun in and of itself, but most gamers play with much smaller ships, so this fits well within a gaming session. It also lends itself to a size of ship that a player has a remote chance of surviving an encounter with. A full-up 5k Dton destroyer typically wouldn’t even break a sweat swatting down a PC’s Free Trader or other smaller adventure-class ship. But at 400 Dtons, the Strikemaster does fit the role of ye olde naval brig - a small, fast combatant that is able to hold it’s own with similarly sized naval vessels and poses a significant threat to mere merchanters.

Ship Design and Description Once again GKG does an excellent job of describing the layout of the ship, both visually and textually. They make note that the primary armament, a particle beam barbette, is mounted dorsally. The accompanying images also amply illustrate this fact. The ship layout is well done, both logically and visually. You see not only the expected areas (bridge, airlock, crew quarters, docking bay, etc), but little things like the bathing facilities that would not be in every cabin like on a passenger liner. Areas set off from the mess deck for food preparation and storage, even between-deck lifts. I do like the fact that some designers call these out on deckplans. It just makes them feel more realistic.

The room descriptions match well with the deck plan illustrations. The ship itself has three primary decks, with the upper level being officers country, with an officer’s mess, the main deck with the control spaces, ships crew quarters/mess, ships troops/mess, and the hangar. The lower deck is set aside for cargo and engineering. All pretty standard and logical. I do have a couple of quibbles and questions about the choices though. It’s a small ship, and to have three separate mess areas seems a bit excessive to me. While larger ships have more space to burn, smaller ships do not. And the design follows the idea of a ship with a crew much larger than this one’s. I could see, perhaps, keeping officers and crew separate, but not the ships’ crew and troops. A ship this small is really not the type that can afford the luxury of dedicated marines.

While there is a great level of detail and information concerning the ship itself, there seems to be relative dearth about the crew. The total crew complement is listed on the ships information card (5 officers, 14 crew, 6 troops), but I didn’t see anywhere a breakdown on exactly what positions were being filled. Obviously the 6 ships troops makes for easy reading, but is that 5 troops and a single officer, or is that 6 troops? How many are ratings vs. NCO’s? Are the troops led by a marine LT? The background of the brig specifically calls out the typical level of command for the ship itself. Since it’s considered a junior command (and also was in the days of sail), that would mean there would also be more junior officers, such as 2nd Lt, or ensigns still working on their skills as an officer.

Artwork and Extras One of the things I really enjoy about the GKG ship supplement is the artwork. I’ve said it before and it really bears repeating – you can’t put in enough great art in a sci-fi book or gaming supplement. The game itself requires imagination, and it’s far easier to visualize things when you have something to start with. The credits call out Ian Stead, and two other artists (Bradley Warnes who did the people portraits, and Michael Johnson who did ship deck plans). It’s (almost) like you are getting a Jane’s style explanation of a warship with the different views of the ship outside of the normal imagery of them being in space. Being able to see a ship from different views really helps to sell the fantasy.

The last few pages are taken up with some illustrations of a ships’ commander, Benjamin Waters, and a d6 chart of possible missions/encounters for a game master to use when wanting to incorporate a Strikemaster into their gaming session. This is a nice touch and an added bonus in my opinion.

Shortcomings I was (and am) pleasantly surprised with the details for the ship itself and descriptions on the interior of the compartments. Always helpful if you need something to help describe the interior to players that happen to be onboard one of the ships, for whatever reason. It also really helps in selling the image. There’s an entire page dedicated to a commander of one of the ships, but sadly absolutely nothing about a crew. Not even a breakdown of the typical crew positions. A few more pages, even just two, could have done a lot to provide more details and background for the ship, it’s crew and it’s operations.

Do keep in mind that what I consider to be shortcomings may not be universally agreed to. Every designer has to make their own choices, and ultimately it’s going to be up to the individual player and purchaser to agree or not. For some what they are getting may exceed their expectations. Others, such as myself, like to see things fully fleshed out.

Should you pick it up? That’s an easy one. Ab-so-lutely! The price point (a very inexpensive $4.99) makes it a literal steal for what you are getting. Plus you know you have the satisfaction of supporting one of the few independent gaming houses out there that support Traveller in a consistently high-quality way. None of the “shortcomings” that I’ve mentioned take away from the quality of the work, the great art, or the enjoyment. For the price of cheap burger I can support my gaming community and get something of value – as opposed to an expanded waistline! 

I picked up the Lee because I've been continually impressed with GKG's solid product line. As usual they have included a sample crew and fiction in regards to time aboard the ship. And you really can't beat the wonderful ship illustrations they put between the covers. It's so hard to convey to publishers sometime that art really helps sell things - especially sci-fi things. It's already a world of fantasy and when you put in decent illustrations it brings it even more to life than just the text. I also really liked the idea that some of the sample crew were uplift characters. It gives more flavor and character - something many ship supplements lack.

The layout and design of the ship is pretty solid. Even though it's for their alternate Traveller setting, a referee or playing group could easily drop it into a new or ongoing campaign. At 400 tons the Lee is a solid tramp freighter. And just a few things to dance a little gleefully over - lifts for movement between decks, airlocks with actual storage nearby, decks laid out in a logical manner... even something as simple as stairs to move between the lower and upper areas of the cargo hold/engineering stations. That might seem rather boring and simple to most, but I find realism in ship plans rather refreshing!

The narrative about the ship gives some background on how the design and certain aspects of the ship came about. The additional touch of something like that is generally the hallmark of people who know how to catch the imagination of a player. A brief description of the upper and lower decks follows. Each compartment and room has sufficient enough text explaining the features and functions. Even simple things like what is generally stored where in lockers is included. Because the designers decided to separate the crew from the passengers by placing them on separate decks, each has a full galley (with storage space) for each deck. The cargo area is equally generous in both size and features. There are loading hatches at the rear, the port and starboard. Internally the deck is double-high (6m) that allows the carriage of larger outsized cargo, or containers stacked two-high. While it's not necessary, I think it would have been nice to have had a little bit more description here, like if there is any sort of internal cargo movement mechanisms, or perhaps where many crews like to park their grav forklift or similar cargo moving gear. While one can assume that most ports have their own equipment (and unions to unload it!), ships like this don't always call at the best of places and thus need to be prepared for all contingencies.

I exchanged email with the publisher in regards to the armaments of the ship. Like many Traveller ships, the turrets are sometimes positioned where you cannot have a magazine present beneath (or above) the turret mount on the hull. The write-up of the ship explains that there are no reloads available. When discussing this with GKG it was explained that the ship is built for carrying cargo, not fighting. While I would not want to have a ship that only had a single missile or sand canister in my turrets, it's a fair enough explanation. It would be interesting to see some variants that actually were able to carry some ammunition in properly placed magazines. Another refreshing aspect is that they explained the why and how of their decisions. Often you'll find a design that just allocates cargo space to ammo even though it's not practical, or sometimes even possible, to reload the weapons.

All in all I am very happy with my purchase. The price point makes even these minor quibbles pale in comparison to what you are getting for your money. It's DEFINITELY worth $5.

I guess the only thing "bad" I have to say is that some of the ship description text could be tightened up a bit to make it flow better from a reader's perspective. Not that it's grammatically incorrect or anything like that. It's an extremely minor thing and I only bring it up because I had to write so many papers in college and grad school that my instructors beat proper writing into my head. :)

The Beta-rules are in too much flux at the moment to really review the product. The new core rule book isn't going to follow the same path as the previous one, and this may be good, or not so much. The tag line says it's everything you need, but that's not entirely true as you'll still need to purchase the additional core rule books to round out the initial set of information. That is unless you happen to enjoy playing Traveller where pretty much everyone has the same ships, the same weapons the same everything.

There's a lot of small changes to the rules that add up to a big change in the overall game. It's not just one thing here or one thing there, it's lots of things here and there. But somewhere buried in all there is sill the intent for it to BE Traveller. Or at least a sci-fi game that has the inherent feeling of Traveller.

If you are on the fence about this I don't have any good advice for you on which way you should proceed with the game. It's not ready to be played right now and you'll be waiting for quite some time before it is. And when it does come out, you may not feel it's enough to justify replacing your 1.0 sets of books for the 2.0. I highly suggest to anyone who is trying to figure out which way to jump that you point your browser over to the Mongoose forum and catch up on the discussions. That's probably the best way for you to determine if this new version is right for you.

The latest mini-supplement from Mongoose in the Borderlands Planet profile series, Tanith clocks in at 18 pages, though there’s only 14 pages of text, along with a couple of low-res grey-scale illustrations.

The planet of Tanith is heavily influenced by the mercenary trade, and as such the first page is dedicated totally to mercenary company operations and concepts. If you haven’t seen this in a previous supplement it’s actually good information. If you have (or say you’ve picked up a copy of Hub Federation Ground Forces from Gypsy Knight Games), then it’s mostly filler. But nicer than many other examples of filler out there.

While I haven’t purchased any previous system profile booklets in the series, I am very pleasantly surprised with the level of detail and backstory included here. Some of the older Traveller pieces detailed out the system, and MJD does the same here – which is great in my opinion! Now a referee has more to work with. Not only do you have a basic idea of what’s present in the system you have a history on the planet (Tanith), a listing of a refueling station located nearby owned by another stellar entity and a few lines about how the two don’t get along (i.e. potential plot points!). Furthermore they provide you with details on another planet in the system (about half a page worth) that you can use to provide more adventure opportunities for your players. And, if not, it’s always nice to have more, rather than less, detail about a system and its’ people and just why they might be there and what they are doing. The last page in this section (three full pages) has details on every other planet and anything of that might be of interest for a player to go investigate.

The following section provides more details on the port of Tanith, the surrounding region, some background on the operations and economics as well as a primer on local conditions. Since we are talking about a port of mercenaries there is plenty of info on what you might expect defensive wise on the ground, in orbit and what kind of ships you might encounter. I found it to be interesting to both a referee and player.

Since the supplement talks about Tanith being so friendly mercenaries, it’s only natural to write up a section on some of the denizens for (potential) hire. There are six pages dedicated to this, with each sample organization getting about three-quarters to one full page write-ups. Now some of that space is taken up by a TO&E listing (that’s table of organization and equipment), but for those that aren’t savvy on military structures or organizations it’s nice to have. And even if you are it makes for easy at-a-glance understanding of unit structures and capabilities. The additional verbiage on each unit just rounds out the whole thing.

The final five pages are devoted to potential adventure hooks. While none of the hooks go into great detail or provide things like d6 charts to generate enemies and loot, they do provide potential referee’s or players enough ideas upon which to build upon. And, in my mind at least, that’s half the battle. Sometimes getting the initial spark going is all that is needed. If you are the type of person that likes everything detailed out and handed to you, well, I think you might be disappointed with what’s here. But most everyone else should be quite pleased with it.

Aside from the low-res artwork there’s not much to complain about there. The information is presented well and in reasonable detail. It would be nice to see some further detail on things that do get mentioned. For example, remember the earlier detail about the fueling station operated by a potential rival being in-system? Just what kind of station or forces would be seen there? The high port is described as being little more than a mooring station for unstreamlined ships, and then it immediately goes into talking about how heavily armed with missile batteries, particle accelerator barbettes and a fighter squadron is also based there. So does that make it a 1,000 ton light battle station? A 5,000 ton space station? This trend continues into the mercenary company descriptions. Some information like troops being equipped with gauss rifles as standard gear is good, but descriptions of generic missile teams, or EW operators, or vehicles equipped with magazine-fed 180 rounds-per-minute mortars (but only carry 40 rounds onboard) kind of leave you hanging. If you did want to use one or two of the mercenary companies you don’t have the full unit descriptions available.

Overall I was very impressed with this, even with some of the information holes that seem to be there from my reading of it. The price point is very fair (another $2.99) for what you get. It’s a solid product for a fair price. And even if you aren’t looking to adventure in this area the information contained inside can be easily adapted to just about any Traveller setting or system.

The new series of ebooks has advanced to the venerable Type R Merchant, lovingly nicknamed the 'Fat Trader'. The booklet itself follows the same pattern as it's predecessors - the first part of the book gives background/source material, followed by sample operational information, deckplan, ship-walkthrough and some sample ship background material.

Other things also follow through - the low price of $2.99 for the supplement, the lifting of nearly all illustrations from the core rule book, and the same semi-res (not sure if it's low, and it's definitely not high) 3D deckplan layout.

Some new concepts/background material on freight handling are introduced here. First there is talk of 'specialist loading cradles' for ships that can auto-unload a ship, "many ships can be turned around in little more time than they take to get in and out of the cradle." There's additional mention of an overhead crane/gantry system to move cargo containers around inside the ship, "handlerbots" (prevalent at class C ports), and then having to use the slower internal crane at D and E ports. An assumption is that a "handlerbot" is a grav-capable piece of equipment, and it's already stated that it's a fully-automated piece of equipment. There is mention of cargo tie-downs for containers (1, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100ton sized) and other cargo. Similar to what was in Firefly there is mention of small cargo mover that some ships purchase (Cr75,000) that also has the ability to move the container. The description listed later on indicates that this cargo vehicle is also called a handlerbot. There's nearly half a page background on containers in the book talking about various features and functionality. It's not super-detailed, but it's all interesting.

The next page is dedicated to speculative trade. The topics jump around pretty quickly, with no concept going much more than a paragraph. Most of it is pretty well known or discussed elsewhere (buy low, sell high, speculative trade, selling illegal goods, etc).

After the section on trade there's about two and a half pages going into more detail about the workings of the ship and the cargo holds, operational information nuggets, variations on the normal configuration (such as tankers) and a couple of paragraphs on converting the cargo hold to carry more passengers or for specialized missions, like science or whatnot. It's stated that some ships travel with holds depressurized to reduce the load on the ship's environment systems - except that there should be little load on them if nobody is going in/out of the bay. It does make more sense to keep them depressurized for security - except that means the containers and such are travelling in a vacuum (and unheated one at that) and we have absolutely no data on how well the containers can handle that environment for long periods.

Finally! A location of the mysterious third hardpoint! According to the explanation given, the two hardpoints (port and starboard) can take energy-based weapons but not any sort of weapon that requires ammunition as the standard designs have no provision for magazines. The third hardpoint is located exactly where the launch is carried. Which begs the question, if that is the case, is there really a hardpoint there? This is the first example I have heard of where an empty hardpoint is also used as an airlock/external craft docking clamp.

There's also some interesting verbiage regarding ammunition as a whole. CT missed the boat when it came to talking about the actual workings of the missile launcher. Just how many missiles at ready did a turret carry? Was it just one in the pipe? Or could you also store additional ones below in the hardpoint tonnage? This question has vexed many a player and also has generated a LOT of commentary over the various versions, including MGT's. Dougherty states clearly, Reloading is rather rare for most ships; a typical missile launcher carried one in launch position and two more ready to be autoloaded, which is plenty. So the answer to the perenial question, how to beat a Sicilain, err, I mean how many missiles are carried on-mount is canonically answered - three. The only other question raised here is the "two more ready to be autoloaded". Which, in my mind at least, means they aren't set up in a feed system. Of course, one could argue that since there is no adjacent magazine then of course they'd have to be manually loaded (from the two at ready in the hardpoint). I guess it would get rather crowded in there with a triple missile launcher in the turret and six missiles awaiting loading.

There's a short section on having players using the Type-R as their preferred means of campaign transport, but it's only about 1/3rd of a page in length and it's really not that useful of information to most players (too much success hauling cargo can ruin the referee's continual attempt to reduce the amount of gold they have earned). There's talk of giving them a 'very old' ship that requires more maintenance work (and costs) - except the rules really don't differentiate new from old as far as your maintenance costs go.

The last three sections are about operational costs, the 3D deckplan layout and explanation of the various ships environments and finally three sample ship descriptions. It's nice that some of the numbers have been broken out for you and how much it costs for X, while you can expect to make Y in return. Though some of the numbers are very useful (fuel costs Cr500/100). There is mention of the included low berths that the technology is pretty standard and freezing/revival is done by whoever has some medical training. And basically if you have complications or die, well, you shouldn't have been cheap and travelled in a low berth.

I've complained before and I'll complain again. The graphics are terrible quality. While the 3d res version is useful, zooming in just blurs things too much. The artwork is recycled low-res imagery from the core rulebook, and crammed onto the same page as the 3d deckplan is the one from the book. Though on this one "section 9. Engenering" is a type that made it through editing.

With the other systems, like the cargo deck, getting additional information and detail, why didn't the escape capsules get something similar? They are woefully ill explained and many designs don't even have them included. In the very first paragraph we get "The ship has one 20-ton launch and a full set of escape pods." And then... nothing. The design actually puts a pair of escape pods on the lower deck near engineering and escape pods in both port/starboard areas. Heck they even have dedicated escape pods in the crew-only section! Kind of what you'd expect from emergency equipment, but one would also (hopefully) expect more on their operation.

MGT is heading in the right direction with these supplements, but they consistently seem to miss the mark on some of the little things. While they are pretty inexpensive at $2.99 ea (for the ships at least), trying to cram all four deck plan illustrations on a single page makes no sense because there isn't a restriction on length. And if there were it would be very easy to get rid of easily two pages of filler illustrations that really do nothing for the book as a whole.

For the price it's definitely worth adding to your collection. With just a little more effort and thought they could easily put out a much better product. I guess the next real test is going to be the subsidized liner that we should be seeing shortly. I have high expectations, but sadly not much hope.

I know the thread's about a year old, but I just recently picked this up from DTRPG and I gotta say it's how ship books should be (more on that later). As with the other source books I've purchased from Moon Toad publishing it has a very high level of production, the graphics are crisp and there's even (gasp!) color! I know it's not practical to always publish in color, but damn, all eBooks need to be designed and sold with at least SOME full color illustrations in them.

I pretty much liked the entire book. I thought that there could have been a tad more on the descriptions, but I'm a detail oriented kind of guy and I think it makes a lot of sense to NOT think about space when making a pdf document. They don't charge you by the byte.

The design is well thought out. First where there is a turret that shoots things other than beams it has a magazine. You'd be surprised by how many designs don't take that into account. They just pop something down on paper and they are done. There are multiple airlocks where you might expect them to be, PLUS they have listed vac suit storage right next to them. Another shocker when it comes to deck plans!

I really liked the extra illustrations, showing the ship in port, or flying. It gives a lot more life to the idea that ships aren't always on their own. In one image there's even a venerable scout/courier on a nearby landing pad.

Overall I thought the production quality was very high. I found a couple of minor blueprint errors, but nothing that you couldn't easily overlook. I did find the design somewhat odd. From an efficiency design view it seems to make more sense (to me at least) to move the launch and cargo deck from mid-deck to the lower deck, and swap the engines up to the 2nd level. It makes the design cleaner as well as offering the ability to have the launch dock from the front, or have some sort of through cargo deck much like a type-R merchant has. That's a personal preference, and after seeing so many sci-fi ship designs there are going to be ones that look cool but don't necessarily follow through on things like that.

In regards to my earlier comment about "it's how ship books should be" - I think if you combined more of the background/operations aspects that MJD has written in the new Referee aid's you have a killer combination. Moon Toad's graphics are FAR superior to anything I've seen yet from MGT, and I have harped on the low-res versions of deck plans and imagery in these series from MGT. I would happily pay the extra few dollars it would cost to have better artwork and clearer deck plans.

At $6ish USD the book is fairly priced and, I think very much worth the money.

Look in the discussion area for my in-depth review. This is a great supplement with no major flaws. There are a number of minor ways they could improve it and make it even better. It's a solid 4 stars, and it definitely is worth five bucks.

I picked up the Free Trader supplement up the day I saw it was available. The price was the same as the previous one (Scout/Courier), a reasonable $2.99. Mongoose has said that the price point is the regular one, but DrivethruRPG has it listed for $4.99, but on sale at $2.99. A minor labeling discrepancy I suppose.

The supplement comes in at a decent 16 pages. The first two are dedicated towards the cover and internal index. The rest of the pages are dedicated to text and illustrations. The external ship image (which takes up about 2/3rds of a page) comes straight from the Core rulebook. The other images are 3D deck plans (more on those later). The external image doesn’t do much for the reader since its not new art, nor is it even high-quality art. I think more readers would have appreciated some color artwork here. There are some wonderful versions of the free trader out there that would have been a better use of the space, though I do understand that this was probably already paid for, and keeping costs down is something every publisher and business has to take into account.

The introduction runs about 2 and a half pages (excluding artwork). There’s a general overview of trade within the 3rd Imperium, some background on the concept of the free trader and how they fit within the overall trade dynamics and some background on mail and minor cargo movement to smaller, backwater worlds. In my copy there is some odd editing/spacing of the second paragraph of the introduction. I don’t know if that’s part of the master copy or just mine. In regards to the mail portion of the introduction, it’s not clear if what was written was meant to be canonical or not. The idea of exactly how the mail system works is spread out through a number of books, and at no point is much print space given over to ‘splainin it to Lucy. The core books refer to mail containers, being 5 Dton’s in displacement, and each one can net the carrier Cr25,000 for delivery (that’s somewhat of an assumption. The book just states that’s the rate for a single container, with no mention of what occurs if 2 or more are needed). The supplement states that each time the mail ship services a port of call it receives a flat Cr25,000. However, if we go all the way back to Book 2, from Classic Traveller, the explanation for mail in the supplement makes more sense. In Book 2, the Cr25,000 fee is paid (per single Dton, up to 5 Dton’s) on a per-trip basis. I believe that this is simply something that gets muddled in not only the translation, but also because it’s spread out over multiple books and supplements. The last portion of the introduction is a half-page on the concepts of jump mains and the differences in service. Vessels capable of J-2, J-3 or higher tend to avoid individual planets and instead service the long-haul, time-sensitive market. They bypass worlds and service larger ports in clusters, or make the jump between systems that lower jump-capable vessels cannot. All information that is contained elsewhere in the books, but it’s nice to see it wrapped up and placed in a supplement where it has total relevance.

The next section talks about the various Free Trader models, their history and how they go about making their presence known in the universe. There’s a nice nod to why the Free Trader is considered a tramp freighter. It’s cheap (relatively speaking) and easy to operate, which is why it’s seen all over the Imperium, most especially in the smaller markets and remote worlds. This section also touches on passenger traffic and some of the concepts that need to be considered when hauling people rather than crates around.

The revenue and overhead section is chock full of tasty ideas and numbers that will still the beating heart of any player or referee who likes to see and understand the underlying numbers related to space craft operations. There’s a very good example of what happens when you try to go too cheap on not paying your monthly maintenance costs. The remaining portion of the section discusses the revenue aspects of a Free Trader. There are even a few paragraphs in there on what a ship’s owner might make if they were to charter their ship out to someone else.

At this point we get to the next section – the deckplans and a description of the ship and its innards. There are four pages in this section, two each for the Free Trader and Far Trader. As with the previous supplement (Scout/Courier) we have a 3-d deckplan viewed from a somewhat overhead view, though not directly overhead. The plans for the Free Trader seem to be a duplicate for the deckplans listed in the Core Rulebook. It’s at this point where I think far more could have been done. First off, with the Free Trader, on the upper deck there is a cabin that has no label attached to it. It should be labeled as a crew cabin. It would have been nicer to see more views of the ship, perhaps with a side view showing the decks stacked properly on one another. Since they are so faithfully rendered, the deckplans carry over the inherent flaw – there is a single ladder going between the upper and lower decks (and it also doubles as access to the upper turret). This is, however, explained away in the supplement. It would seem that in reality there would be no way you could ever sell high-passage aboard a freighter that requires people to climb up a cramped ladder to gain access to their cabin and cramped spaces. Ah, reality!
At this point I’m not sure where the author got the deck plans for the A2 variant, also referred to as the Far Trader. Going back to classic Traveller, the Far Trader had a definitively different look to it than the Free Trader. The deckplan provided in the supplement is NOT what is listed in the core rule book or, to the best of my recollection, any of the various versions of the Far Trader published in previous editions. Not that there is anything wrong with introduction new variants. But it did strike me as very odd that the Free Trader was a faithful representation of the previous Free Traders, but the Far Trader was absolutely not. Fortunately the description of the ship does acknowledge the variation. One thing between the A1 and A2 is the mention and placement of weaponry. For the A1 there is mention that turrets can be fitted, but nowhere on the deckplan does it show where they are mounted. The A2 discusses placing them on opposite’s sides of the hull and the deckplans list where they would be mounted if they were to be placed. The final two pages are dedicated to three different ship examples – a classic Free Trader, a somewhat modified A2 Far Trader (modified to primarily carry mail in a detachable pod) and an A2 modified to be a naval auxiliary/armed transport for a system navy. Each of the descriptions only has about 1/3rd of a page with which to build the narrative for the specific ship.

Conclusion Overall I’m pleased with the direction that the supplements are taking. Personally I would not mind spending a little bit more money to get a more enhanced product. In general I think my chief complaint (and it’s not all that strong of one) is that what is there seems so close to what should be there. I would say about half of all gamers equally value the content (rules, tables, etc) with the story (side notes, explanations, history, etc). Both supplements feel like they are getting so close to rounding out the stories, but leave off the final few chapters. I’d really like for the supplements to finish the stories they are telling, at least as far as buying more into the descriptions and explanations.

The artwork definitely needs more work. Greyscale images make perfect sense when it comes to printing because color = more money. But when you are talking electrons the argument goes out the window. I fervently hope that the publishers hear this and understand that many gamers don’t mind spending more to get more. I’d also like to see the deckplans be published in a higher resolution format, ideally with a better angle (or multiple) to get a better feel for the ship. Again, we are talking electrons here, so adding in a few additional megabytes for more and better illustrations costs next to nothing for distribution.

I suspect we’ll be seeing more supplements coming, sooner rather than later with the speed that this one was released. While I haven’t purchased the Subsidized Trader from Moon Toad Publishing and artist Ian Stead, I suspect his supplement will give Mongoose a run for their money. He’s included excellent artwork in his publications to date and I think he sets a high bar for them to compete against. We, the players who purchase and keep the gaming community alive, can only benefit from a competition for our scarce game dollars. Ideally we get a good market where everyone is happy with the content. Ideally!

I couldn't justify a 4 star rating, but it's a good 3.5 stars. I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked this up, but the price point is low enough that there's very little risk even if it was a total disappointment.

For those that like more references and explanations regarding a planets UWP, this book does an adequate job of explaining them and providing real-world examples. None of the sections are bad, a few could really use more details, and there are some that they do a really good job with. There is some inconsistency with the explanations - in some sections they start at the beginning of the chart and work their way 'down'. But in others they do the opposite. It's not a huge issue, just a minor quibble. The art inside is fairly standard, with a spacey clip-art feel to it.

I thought the two sections that could have used a lot more content were the Bases and the travel zones sections. Both of these usually get the short of the stick in virtually every supplement I've ever seen published. Sure, what more do you need with "Naval Base Present"? A whole lot, that's what! It would have been easy to add pages on the various types of naval bases/scout bases that one can encounter. A naval base could be anywhere from a couple of shacks on the ground, to say the Traveller equivalent of a submarine tender with patrol cruisers, all the way up to depot-class bases. This is an area that has so much to explore, but rarely is. On the travel zones, these hardly ever have much detail. Amber or red zones are present in virtually ever sub-sector, but rarely are we ever given much background behind them. Previous books have talked up how the Navy is typically punitive in assigning zone classifications, while the Scouts tend to be protective of worlds with theirs. So there's all that area to be explored, not to mention the concepts behind how they are interdicted, how players might try to evade interdiction, and what the Imperials or others might do to catch them.

Still, I'm not disappointed with it. It's definitely worth passing on Starbucks one day to add to your Traveller toolbox.

I agree with the previous review - the supplement is 'ok' for the price point of $2.99. Most of the description contained in the book is already known or published elsewhere. It's nice that the author spent some time giving the ship more character, but there are little tidbits that probably don't quite belong, such as multiple references to the tiny nature of the ship and the violence that may occur from stressed out crewmembers. The problem with that idea is that MOST ships in Traveller are cramped like this one, and if crewmembers who sign up for space duty have such a difficult time, how are passengers who are paying huge sums going to feel?

The first five pages are devoted to explaining about the history of the scout ship, some background on the duties of scouts and their ships, how an individual might be awarded a scout ship for service, and finally some text relating to missions and such.

The next three pages are given to the ship itself, including the deckplan. It kind of sucks that it's greyscale and also relatively low-res if you zoom in for details. With a pdf you really aren't limited size wise, so a cleaner image would have been nice. There's a passage in this section related to control of the scout in an atmosphere without power. It's the first real mention I can recall of what happens with a ship that loses it's power in an atmosphere - in this case without power or steering surfaces you are screwed unless your engineer can get your gravitics back online. Though it would have been nice to read about thrusters that an ace pilot might be able to use to pull up the nose or stop the flat-spin.

There are a couple of illustrations, with two of them being recycled from Scouts and Core Rule book. The relatively new one is a 3-D isometric layout of the scoutship. It's not bad, but a couple of complaints about it. First since it's being viewed from an angle, some of the illustration is hidden from view. Second the description of the book (and possibly the 3-D layout) doesn't quite jive with the layout plan that has existed from the Core Rule book (and is copied onto the page). In the description of the bridge it says there are two workstations. The 3-D view cuts off the rear workstation view, so one cannot see if the artist drew them there or not. But the deckplan shows four. I would have hoped also for a better layout, showing the decks from multiple angles. Even an extra page (or two) devoted towards this or variants would have been quite welcome (and better suited towards a $4.99 price point).

The last few pages are given over to some sample ships. Not bad, but more or less filler. The Cat Ship is definitely filler, but provides, perhaps, an interesting nugget for a referee to use.

I hope that Mongoose will do a better job on a supplement like this if they do another one on some of the other ships (Free Trader seems like a natural to me). There's really no excuse to scrimp so much on content when you aren't killing a tree to get this out to the public. And please, lets get better with illustrations and artwork!

This was my first purchase of a JBE product. I had read the discussions on the MGT board and was interested in taking a look at what was being offered.

The supplement is 11 pages in total, of which only six having gaming information. The other five are the covers(2), a page covering the required OGL legalese and another information page with some more license/acknowledgements, and finally and introduction by the author talking about the sector and the direction he's taking with the supplement (it also includes some backstory for the sector as well). The additional backstory is a nice addition, the rest of the pages are to be expected.

Now, let's get on to the meat of the product. There is a sub-sector map page and accompanying table providing the breakdown of each system on the map. There are a total of 28 systems listed. Each of the major sub-polities (there are two) has their system clusters marked off on the map. There's also a single Zhodani planet along with a few empty hexes marked off as claimed by the Zho. No Imperial planets.

There's a page and a half detail for the subsector, providing some backstory on the region as well as an overview of the economics and political alliances. And there's some backstory on the pirates who flourish here as well. Fortunately for PC's, the pirates in this subsector are more concerned with smuggling than ship stealing or raiding.

There's a total of seven planets that have descriptions provided, with each one getting about half a page. I really enjoyed the detail provided for each one. Kudo's for the editing, since there's enough description provided for each of the detailed worlds to help a referee build a backstory around an adventure. Plus there are the always enjoyable snippets of information that helps provide character to each world. For example one world, known as the breadbasket of the People's Militia (one of the two multi-planet empires), has a problem with pollen that affects offworlders who have to wear filter masks. The author goes on to describe the social/economic layout of the planet in enough detail to provide adventure hooks. The rural nature of the planet offers opportunities for trade and adventure. Smaller towns offer potentially hostile or ill-tempered locals who need something done. And of course there's the built-in opportunity to do some profitable, if risky, smuggling.

The remaining six planets each get a similar descriptive breakdown - providing enough detail to set them apart from the rest while offering reasons and hooks for adventure.

I have two reasons for giving the product a three. The first is that the covers are in color, but the subsector map is black and white. It's easy enough to generate a color map, and the front and back covers (as well as some other pieces) are in color. In this day and age I expect color to used where it's most useful. And maps are (or at least should be) a primary focus of this.

The second, and main reason, I only gave this three stars was the lack of information on the remaining systems, and, to a lesser extent, more background on the two main political entities. There are 28 listed on the map and where system details are provided. But only seven get descriptions. The remaining systems only exist as far as system UPP's go (with a few exceptions to base listings, including pirate). There are two systems listed as Red zones and ten as Amber, so I would expect at least SOME description of why. A handful fall within the seven systems that are listed, but most aren't.

What I think should have happened was that the other 21 systems be given a paragraph description. And any system listed as Amber or Red definitely needed to have defined why they were listed as such. I find it annoying, to say the least, that planets get marked this way and no reason given. If there isn't a reason, then why bother? A referee can easy mark a planet as such if they so choose. If you are going to mark it you need to give a reason. I think it would have helped to provide more information on the two empires. There's mention of nearly 20 pirate bases in the region. I'm sure most are independent outfits, so it would have been nice to know which bases are known as the best places to fence stolen goods or ships, where you can go to repair damage or to get better weapons.

I think the supplement shows a lot of promise, but it's a bit light on details for my tastes. Hopefully the next ones will have more. I wouldn't mind spending double ($6 instead of $3) to get what I'm looking/asking for. It's still inexpensive enough that price isn't an issue.

I picked this up because I was curious about the supplement and it had some positive feedback on the Mongoose forum. And the price was right, just in case it turned out to be a dud.

I liked the detailed career portion (4 pages). The events and mishaps tables are quite detailed and thought out. The career paths are also pretty open as far as the categories go. I do think, however, that those characters who become doctors should have a level of expertise, say Biology -2, Chemistry -2 or some other background to represent their college education. Unless the intent was that in the future people went straight into medicine without an undergraduate degree. I give this section a solid A.

The next section (6 pages) discusses different types of operations, from ground-based to space based. I have a minor quibble about space-based rescue operators and ships being armed. Security should never be the responsibility of the emergency responder. That's what security teams are for. There's some anecdotal explanations about tech in the future making our "regular" fires and such obsolete, which I think would be totally true. There are rules for both localized issues, like a building on fire or a chemical spill, to disasters on much larger scale that could encompass entire continents. Even zombies make an appearance in a quirks table. I give this section a B+.

The third section (1 page) talks about putting these new careers into your existing adventures and campaigns, or even starting one up with emergencies in mind. I agree with the author that most players probably aren't looking to run a fire company Traveller adventure. He does make a good point that having characters with rescue backgrounds integrated into existing campaigns or adventures makes a lot of sense. After all, if some players like to blow stuff up, somebody has to be around to clean up the mess, right? It would have been nice to see some more depth here, possibly a page in regards to an example of how to create something. I understand that things are always ultimately left up to the players and referee, but I like to think everyone enjoys seeing samples and examples. I give this section a B.

The final section (3 pages) offers new equipment and gear for the new careers to use. On the first page I thought some of the descriptions of the bots could use some more detail. For example, how big is the S&R drone? The EMS drone is assumed to be larger than man-sized since it is supposed to hold a person inside. But it would have been nice to see text in regards to the dimensions. The Rescue Battle Dress is listed as TL13 in the description, but TL14 in the breakdown of the suit. It would have been nice to see more details surrounding the actual rescue gear one should expect on the suit rather than the generic (various).

The vehicle section has a nice array of vehicles - a mobile command center, a "old fashioned" fire truck, a grav ambulance, a rescue sub and a grav fire engine. But the details are pretty lacking. For example the rescue sub (it's 600 Dtons) lists a internal vehicle bay. It would have been nice to see an underwater drone optimized for rescue, along with possible a smaller sub designed to maneuver into tighter areas. Since we are talking nautical, there's no equivalent underwater battle dress or dive suit. The crush depth listed for the rescue battle dress is 250m, and the sub is capable of descending to 6,000m. At some point it's probably not practical to go EVA from the sub, but if they need to go below 250m there's not gear.

I'm disappointed that there's no space gear whatsoever. No emergency rescue shuttles, no space cutters to rescue ships and crew in deep space, not even any space rescue equipment (just how do you cut through bulkheads and ships hulls in an emergency?) Traveller has a space-heavy element and there's nothing whatsoever to address it. There have been other various supplements over the years and game systems that had listed such things. What about a medical transport ship? Or a hospital ship? I give this section a C-. It could (and should) have been a lot more.

I think it's only worth 3 out of 5 stars at the moment. The price point of $4.99 when I purchased it made it a cost-effective purchase. I do hope MGT and/or the author revisits this and adds more source materials to it. It shows a lot of promise.