Chainclaw's Top Ten Sci-Fi Spaceships!

Another top ten? My god, when will it stop? NEVER! Ahem. Anyway, taking a break from just Star Trek alone, I decided to think on other things I enjoy. You know what really gets my brain going at full tilt in a good sci-fi movie? Sure...characters, yeah, yeah, the plot, of course....but in all honesty though one thing hooks me. Cool ass spaceships. I've always been something of a tech head when it comes to science fiction, and a well designed star ship just gets my imagination running wild. There's many great concepts, and of course books feature great descriptions, however, a movie, video game, or television show really shows those designs come to life. So delving into shows/movies of the past and present, I decided to bring to you the spacecraft that just never failed to make me think "What really is possible in our future?".

Without futhur ado, Chainclaw's Top Ten Sci-Fi Spaceships.

10.Star Fury- Ok, I'm not a poser, I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm a huge Babylon 5 fan. However, the few times I saw the show, these menacing looking star fighters made an impression. With vectored thrust pods on each of four wings, these thing could LITERALLY spin on a dime in the weightlessness of space. They also push form and function, while being mean looking ships, they are small, and compact, kinda hard to hit. A squadron of these looked scary, and they definitely packed enough firepower to give anyone who came across them a bad day. To be fair, as stated, I haven't watched a lot of Babylon 5, so I didn't see these guys in action much. The fact that they were cool enough to leave an impression though, warrants being number ten.

9.Vic Viper- O.k. silly name, I admit. If you're not sure where this ship is from, remember a game called "Gradius" in the arcades and NES of your youth? There we go. The ship did indeed have a name. The Vic Viper is a sleek, very stylized ship, but the cool look isn't the main reason it's on the list. First of all, one of the reason I love shmups is because when you're a kid, you imagine it's YOU flying the ship, saving the galaxy. The other reason, well, is if you have to pretend you're the last hope for mankind, this is the ship you want. The Vic Viper had a dazzling array of weapons and options to power it up. Heck one option was CALLED "Option", an energy sphere that mimicked your main weapon, shadowing a bit behind your last maneuver, and depending on which sequel you could get up to three of these bad boys. Cool right? The thing is though, while you could pretend you were the pilot, there was no real back story, no awesome tales of the heroic...um...Vic Viper Pilot, saving the day. That lack of history or development lowers the cool factor.

8.UD-L4 Cheyenne- Not familiar with the name I imagine, but the image above...you know this ship. More commonly known as "The Aliens Dropship" the Cheyenne had a wicked design, and that nice bit of realism to keep your suspension of disbelief up in the film. Unlike the Vic Viper where history is a bit of a negative, the Cheyenne, due it's realistic setting, is enhanced by no back story. The ships look pretty well used, and despite not using the ammo compliment onscreen, they have a very obvious amount of firepower. That's the difference, I want to see this ship in action, not just dropping the Colonial Marine's off and flying back. That mystery is why this ship ranks higher than the previous entry.

7.The Havoc- Remember the Hirogen write up? Similar outlook. This ship (from the video game series Star Wars:StarFighter/Jedi Starfighter) just looks mean and powerful. When you play, you wanna play using the Havoc, it's fast, has great weapons, and even has a backstory to it as it's a prototype design. There's not a lot to go with here, but I like this ship, and my list and all....

6.Millennium Falcon- Ok, one of the most popular sci-fi ships in cinema, so if you don't know this, you need a bigger rock to live under. This is a prime example of an inanimate object having it's own character. Piloted by Han Solo and Chewbacca, the ship seemed to have a mind of it's own though. Breaking down, yet usually delivering in a pinch, it's reputation as "the fastest ship in the galaxy", the Falcon just had that great mythos for an old ship. Let's not even forget the design. Weird, assymetrical, but it worked. The biggest thing about the Falcon is in every movie in the original trilogy, it played a huge part. Weather getting Luke to the princess, to helping Han and Leia escape Hoth, to delivering the final shot to the new Death Star, it's safe to say the Falcon was as much a "castmember" as the living, breathing, actors.

5.Slave-1- To me, this is one of the most menacing ships ever designed for a movie. The look, the smooth lines, odd flying profile.... it's just a perfect vehicle for a villain. Slave-1 has a pretty long history too, being seemingly handed down in the Fett family, at the very least to Boba. Like the Falcon, it had character, like I said it looks mean, and in AoTC it showed that meanstreak, this things loaded with all types of standard, and exotic weaponry. I won't dismiss my bias, this was one of my favorite ships as a kid, and seeing it be awesome in the prequels was one of few highlights in those films. Oh, and, um Boba Fett hauls around prisoner's from his bounty's in it, that increase it's evil factor?

4.U.S.S. Reliant- I know, I know, Star Trek again? I can't help it, this is a great ship design. A standard Federation ship, Khan hijacks it, and uses it to damn near destroy the Enterprise. Sure, Khan is sneaky and doesn't just go head to head with the flagship of the Federation, but facts cannot be ignored, this little ship put a buttkicking on a much larger, more powerful ship. The Reliant also, I think, has a place in my childhood as it was the first full on new design for a Federation ship. For so many years it was the Enterprise, and thats it, even in ToS any new ship shows up? Enterprise design. It was cool, and new, and the fact it gets spun around and used by a villain? Classic way to make a design memorable.

3.The Gunstar- Man, The Last Starfighter. That takes me back. Back to when you could have a kids movie featuring a good guy's ship with "Gun" in it's name. This old gem is just a badass. Big, heavy, powerful looking, it just fits the bill it's given as "The Last Starfighter". If this is the last hope to save the galaxy... I'm ok with that. Let's not forget the "Death Blossom" last resort attack. The damn thing spins like a gyroscope, firing off blasts in every direction. Good enough to give the Kodan Armada a really bad day. It's a little nostalgic sure, but this is a ship I always had a soft spot for.

2.U.S.S. Enterprise 1701-A - Wow, another Star Trek ship? Shocking! Ok, hear me out. Besides the Millennium Falcon, this is beyond a shadow of a doubt the most well known design for a space ship, and the early movies gave us a more detailed, cooler look of the ToS design. One thing I give this ship, is the poor girl goes through hell in the first three movies. Wonky warp malfunction in the first flick, Khan shoots it up in the second, and Kirk sadly self destructs it in the third. Then, we get an awesome rebirth of the classic ship at the end of the fourth movie. Much like the Falcon, the Enterprise is just as much a character in the Star Trek films as the actual actors. Hold on though, how is it not number one?

1.The SDF-1(Super Dimensional Fortress Macross)- Robotech, one of the first anime series I watched as a kid. Macross was brought over to America, and I realized what the term "ridiculously powerful" meant. The SDF-1 is not only a starship, but a city, and again, as usual, the last hope for humanity. A wrecked Zentradi ship that was reversed engineered for human operators, the SDF-1 is possibly(nevermind, it is) the most powerful ship on this list. From the Pinpoint Barrier defense system, the Daedelus Maneuver(which smashes a freaking naval vessel through the hull of an enemy ship, and unloading the weaponry of all robots on-board inside the enemy craft), to the legendary Reflex Cannons... the SDF-1 is not a ship to take lightly. Not to mention this ship, as mentioned before, has an entire compliment of massive transforming and non transforming robots, as well as being a freaking robot itself. The SDF-1 is overkill in the most delicious, awesomest way.

There you go. Feel free to disagree...however, you have to admit, if these ten ships were coming at you in space...You'd be scared.

Thanks for reading!
-Tony/Chainclaw.

Bouv's RPG Reviews #5:Robotech Book 5 - Invid Invasion

Robotech Book 5: Invid Invasion

The final of the "core" books, Invid Invasion covers the third and last Robotech story, the Invid Invasion/New Generation. This series saw Earth taken over by the Invid as they now harvest the protoculture that is growing on the planet (released at the end of Southern Cross) and use humans as slaves. There are no more world governments. The most one can hope for is a large town government. Humans live in fear of the Invid and each other. Bands of resistance fighters continue to fight the Invid, hoping that the Robotech Expendianary Force (with the SDF-3 and heroes like Rick Hunter) come back and free the Earth. Some attempts had been made but both had failed.

Arrangement: Here we are at the last of the first-run sourcebooks (i.e. books based on the actual Robotech properties). The rest of the books will be original material put out by Palladium. Like all their other books, this one starts with a quick introduction and then goes into using pre-existing characters in this time period and then describes the two different time periods (in the Palladium version, the Invid come back). It goes into OCC’s (again, new ones or using existing ones), a bit on mecha combat, skills, combat, and then a blurb on older mecha. Next up is the new mecha, weapons, vehicles, and other equipment. They also add in a section (from their TMNT Supplement “Road Hogs) on vehicle combat and special maneuvers. Next is the Invid section with a good history and information on the different stages of invid (and being able to play the Stage 5, human like ones) followed by Invid mecha, hives and a small size comparison chart. In a bit of change, the NPC stats come next followed by world information (which also puts in some good plot threads – where high concentrations of rebels are, Robotech Masters and Zentradi, and invid hive locations). The final part talks about the genesis pits and has some random encounter tables.

Mecha: Like a lot of the other books, this is where we see a lot of mistakes made (mistakes known even back then, pre-internet days!). The Alpha fighters leave out some of the head mini-missiles and jet lasers (seen in the ending credits, though some will argue that is an animation error). The Beta fighter’s weapons are really messed up. Its chest and shoulder missiles and one GU-XX are good. The rest is bad. It claims to have medium and long range missiles when those are actually sensor pods. In the show we see the Beta fire its arms cannons but they are not mentioned once or as the other leg-mount weapons used in jet mod. The GU-XX pod is listed as a 35mm gun pod but other sources claim it to be an energy weapon (even seen in the series to be more “energy” like). The Cyclones were good except for two things: The Battler was said to have chest missiles but doesn’t (nor is it ever seen in the series to fire any) and the MDC is off (more than an old VF-1 Veritech!) They also improbably list two fighters – the VF-1V Vindicator which is a bigger version of the Shadow Alpha fighter – it never existed, just an animation size error and the Shadow Fighter should have also included a drone version. However, most of that is small potatoes and with the chest missiles on the VR-052 Battler Cyclone, I can see a couple reasons for their inclusion. First, it is titled "Battler", implying it is a front line combat unit so would have more firepower. And secondly, in an RPG setting, having 4 missiles and a hand gun can mean rolling up a new character quickly. Better to increase the odds of survival.

Equipment/Vehicles: Mostly good, though some stuff was reprinted from other sources (tanks) and not actually seen in the show. One of the mess-ups was the “Wolverine” assault rifle and “Wolf” pistol. These are actually the same weapon that, like the Gallant, can have parts added on to make it bigger. It would be a while before this mistake was fixed. The additional rules for vehicle combat were a nice touch (as mentioned, taken from the Road Hogs supplement for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rpg, which that supplement was inspiried by Mad Max style of vehicles). However, there are a some good choices for even non-mecha pilots to chose from here.

OCC’s: Some good stuff, though some is just similar to Book 1 - Veritech pilots, military specialists, tc. What’s nice is it includes more than just military options – there are scouts, freedom fighters, or just plain ole “civilians”. They also do a good job of saying “this is a mix-setting; all previous OCCs would work well too!” and giving some tips to update them to the new setting (increasing skills). One disappointment was the decision not to include the M.O.S. from the Southern Cross book.

Invid: I like the information presented here as it does a lot of background information and stuff not seen in the series (did we ever see an actual invid besides the Regis and the other human-looking ones?). Their mecha is nicely described along with the “kill zone” (eye sensor which is shown in the series a lot). There is information the different types of hives, what to expect from the hives and even the genesis pits and other invid experiments.

World Information: For a smaller section, there is a lot of information crammed here. In the TV series, we just get to see South, Central and North America. The world information gives more on the rest of the world, especially where some larger resistance is taking place (Africa) and where some Robotech Masters and Zentradi are hiding out (Indochina). One thing Palladium did was state that after we see the Invid leave in the TV series, they would come back, with a much smaller force, to harvest more protoculture. This allows different campaigns (and one of Palladium's later books would take place during this period).

Artwork: It is great! Kevin Long is back doing the bulk of the artwork along with Kevin Siembedia and compared to the Southern Cross book, a huge difference! He does great detail pictures of the mecha, showing where the missiles are stored, the missiles firing, mecha in action, etc. There is some reused art, but not a lot. The cover is similar to the Southern Cross cover – an orange background (must have been on sale or something). My only issue is that not everything is given a drawing (like the tanks and trucks).

Overall: Back when I first got this book I would have given it a solid A-. A lot of the information was great but I knew from the beginning some was wrong (Beta fighter since there were two episodes where it was clearly firing the cannons on its arms). It gave a lot of information on the world and even allowed for the Invid to come back later. Nowadays I would give it a B-. Sure, some info is wrong but the art is great and it still has a good feel. While lacking in space ships (which would be presented in Robotech II) it can be forgiven for that.

Bouv's RPG Reviews #4: Robotech Book 4 - Southern Cross

Robotech Book 4: Southern Cross

The fourth book in Palladium’s original Robotech series is the first one to step away from the Macross back-story and take on the second of three storylines. Southern Cross deals with probably the least popular section of the Robotech cartoon. The Robotech Masters have come to Earth and it is up to the Armies of the Southern Cross, including Max & Mira’s daughter, Dana, to fend them off. Spoiler alert – at the end, almost all the military forces of both sides are wiped out. While it is the least popular of the three series, Southern Cross does contain many important plot details to the overall Robotech universe with the Robotech Masters (creators of the Zentraedi) and Protoculture (the uber-fantastic power source).

Arrangement: The book starts off with a quick introduction and what different time periods that can be played as the Southern Cross (working with the RDF, fighting the Masters or preparing for the Invid or anything in-between). Being a “new” book, new skills (including M.O.S.’s) and O.C.C.’s are now available to chose from (the “15” Armies of the Southern Cross are each an O.C.C.). The combat tables come after the skills followed by some optional rules. Up next comes the descriptions of the each of the 15 armies/O.C.C. (TASC, ATAC, GMP, etc.) They add in a bit about “special teams” which pretty much tells the GM and PC’s that they can go ahead and chose different OCC’s and still work together. Next (in the middle of the book!) are character sheets. After that is the mecha of the Southern Cross and EBSIS, followed by regular vehicles and equipment. After all the vehicles and equipment comes the section on the Robotech Masters (background, O.C.C.’s, mecha) followed by updated information on the Earth (including another, minor, earthbound antagonist, the “Merchant Republic”) and finally some NPC stats and “Japanimation” notes.

OCCs/Armies: A lot of the information here is good but like we see throughout the book, misidentified (which, to Palladium’s credit, they were working with very little material in the days before the Internet). Some branches aren’t separate “armies” onto themselves but branches from the Tactical Corps. One of the best things introduced here (but not carried over in their other material until the “2nd Edition” stuff came out) was the M.O.S. – Military Occupational Specialty. What this allowed was for anyone to play an ATAC OCC but still have unique abilities (Science Officer, Mechanical Officer, etc. like is seen in the series). The Southern Cross book doesn’t have the “Electrical Engineer” or his peers like Book One does so this helps cover that aspect of the game. Along with each OCC are the illustrations showing off their own versions of the armor, along with different helmet designs for officers and such.

Mecha: This is probably one of the two spots were most of the errors in this book occur (which, with the advent of the Internet, became more noticeable than in the 1980’s and early 1990’s). The Logan Veritech Fighter is mostly correct; the one thing they added, like the VF-1, were extra lasers, which it doesn’t have. The AJACs has a pretty good description, though, to make the time-period more “game-able” they make its debut earlier than actually seen in the series. What they leave it for the AJACs is that there are two versions – one for space (left out) and one for Earth (shown). Mainly it’s only stylistic changes. The hover tank is pretty well done also with only the add-ons we see later on in the cartoon series left out (rocket boosters, enclosed cockpits).

The Southern Cross battleoids, however, are where the most glaring mistakes come in. Many are assigned to the wrong branch, others are called battloids when they were closer to power armors, and some were given to the EBSIS states (the EBSIS was a fictional for the role-playing game, based off of notes by Carl Macek). The coolest part of this section, though is the fact that many of the battliods only appeared ever so briefly in the animated series (and thus easily missed) so it is pretty cool to see them and have stats for them.

Vehicles: Pretty good in this section though some of the vehicles we do see in the series are left out (but not many). This gives a lot of standard military vehicles to use (hover cycles, trucks, APCs, jets). The biggest let down was lack of some pictures and the fact we only get two space ships detailed (with no pictures to go with them!).

Equipment: Some pretty good information on the armor of the Southern Cross, including some add-ons. The hand-held weapons are mostly good, a few are misidentified. One big difference between Southern Cross and Macross is now PC’s can have Mega-Damage armor to protect them (and not have to rely solely on mecha) and because Mega-Damage with the energy weapons presented.

Robotech Masters: Some good background information is presented along with the hierarchy of the Masters (including stats if you want to either make NPC’s or have characters run them). They go into the Master’s mecha though here they seemed a bit under-armored, compared to what we see in the series. Some of the other equipment is detailed though the only ship that is given any detail or stats is the main mother ships we see (though there are clearly other ships in the series).

World Information: Some good stuff, updating the world for the past 15 or so years when Books One and Two left off. What’s nice is that with the EBSIS and Merchant Republic, we get antagonists that do broaden the adventure levels for the time-period. I’m not too sure how much is completely made up on Palladium’s side of things and how much is based on drafts, notes, and conversations with Macek and Harmony Gold. With Earth-bound antagonists, it can add a variety of game play to the game.

Artwork: This is where the book gets funky. There are some really good b+w line art in the book, however, a lot of it gets ruined by over-shading/shadowing it (some mecha look mostly like silhouette drawings!). I’m not sure the reasoning behind it but it definitely takes away as you lose a lot of detail. Some of the artwork is reused from the previous Book One. However, many of the weapons and battliods are drawn out which is nice, since, as mentioned, the series sometimes gives us a second of it on the screen. The cover has a simple fight scene in a wasteland setting with a bright orange background.

Overall: When I first got this book, I would have given it a good B/B+. I was never a huge fan of the Southern Cross section of Robotech but I loved seeing all the information on the mecha! However, I also a bit disappointed by the lack of more information on the Masters and more on the world. Looking back now, the book would be a C-, knowing how much information was wrong. However, they do admit right at the end of the book that a lot of the information is pure speculation on their part, based on animation models and brief scenes in the animation and not on any other books or material. The OCC’s were mostly good and the introduction of the MOS was great but not carried on anywhere else. I think one of the “pipe dreams” of Palladium was to always try to get a Southern Cross Sourcebook out but they never did. This would have detailed the world some more and given up information on the Southern Cross in space (moon bases, Liberty, more on the ships and Masters).

Bouv's RPG Reviews #3: Robotech Book 3 - The Zentraedi

Robotech Book 3: The Zentraedi

The third book in Palladium’s initial Robotech RPG, the Zentraedi goes into more detail about the Zentraedi, specially, their ships and a lot of deck plans. For a while, this would finish off the Macross-era books as Books 4 and 5 would get into the other two series.

Arrangement: The Zentraedi book starts out with a quick introduction and tells players how to create and play Zentraedi characters, OCC’s, Zentraedi in the RDF, along with some optional rules and different tables. Some of this was presented in Book 1 but most of it is new or expanded, including “quick villain” tables and some character sheets and a missile log. Following that, the book gets into mecha. The basics (battlepods, etc.,) are reprinted but some new material is presented, a lot of it only seen once or twice in the series. The bulk of the book then follows which on the Zentraedi fleet. The book does a quick rundown on the weapons (to save on space so they don’t have to reprint them every single ship), engaging ships in combat, how to deal with fleet on fleet combat and other information. Then it details each ship AND includes deck plans (except for the last two ships, the Destroyer and Scout). This is followed up by some quick info on the Robotech Factory Satellite and Dolza’s command ship and finished off by NPC stats.

Artwork: Most of the artwork is pretty good and detailed. I felt that some of it has too much shading, which can lead to fewer details on the artwork. There is artwork reprinted from books One and Two but most is new. The best pieces of art, in my opinion, are all the details given inside the ships and the layout of the battlepod cockpits.

The front cover is pretty basic, with some of the characters from the show along with a fleet of ships, soldiers, and some mecha (which works well for a cover) and back cover are also pretty good, showing an officer’s battlepod fighting a M.A.C. II.

Mecha/Equipment: As mentioned, a lot of this is reprinted and maybe just contains a little bit of additional information from Book One although they don’t reprint the RPG stats for those vehicles, just descriptions. They add in information on the Recovery Pod, Cyclops Reconnaissance Craft, shuttlecraft and some other small items, some of which is only seen shortly in the series. Like Book Two, it also details their underwater capabilities and gives a speed chart for all major mecha presented so far.

Ships: By far the reason many people probably bought this book was for the ships and the deck plans that go with them. While most games may not feature large scale ship to ship combat, the Earth was home to many crashed ships that would be great for adventures. They do give a lot of information on Zentraedi ships in general, including a scale and weapons but then go onto to give good descriptions of each vessel. The deck plans are really nice and laid out what each room is going to be. It was disappointing that the two smallest ships didn’t have plans (though they could be found elsewhere eventually).

Overall: Back when I got this book, I would have given it a solid B. Like Book Two, for me, the printing I got, the paper quality seems to have been lower than other printings (almost like a coloring book). It has some good information, especially on the ships, but a lot of it I was never going to really use in my games (Zentraedi as PCs and massive fleet battles…keep in mind I was 13-14 years old when running most of my Robotech games). Nowadays, I would give it a good C+ - some great information is presented (especially on the ships) but a lot is also either reprinted from Book One or just expanded upon. Two of the ships don’t even get deck plans and the information on the Robotech Factory and Dolza’s ship barely fit a column together. At 50 pages, it is kind of short. Had Palladium put a little more time into this book, it could have been easily expanded to 64 or more pages (including more deck plans, adventure ideas and ideas for using working space vessels in a campaign). If you are going to run a lot of adventures and missions in Zentraedi ships (either as bases or to be attacked) then these can come in handy.

Bouv's RPG Reviews #2: Robotech Book 2 - RDF Manual

Robotech Book 2: RDF Manual

Arrangement: This book is one of the smaller of the “main” books, being only 50 pages or so. Let me tell you, that greatly disappointed me because I had picked up the "REF Field Guide" first, which was 160 or so pages so I was expecting something similar! The copy I have is not printed one white paper and in fact, almost looks more like a coloring book (in terms of paper quality) than the rest of their books. The book starts with some optional rules – rank, recovering SDC/hit points, increasing skills and random hit tables for mecha. It then gets into the “meat” of the product – new weapons and vehicles. It has some new mecha weapons, vehicles seen in the series, the Daedalus and Prometheus carriers (seen on the SDF-1 “arms”) with deck plans. It has rules for mecha underwater, a timeline (to 2016), an Earth map (with destroyed zones) with updated world information, including information on the EBSIS (Eastern Bloc Soviet Independent States – a new USSR) and their mecha (modified Zentradi and RDF stuff) & vehicles. It goes into more random encounter and random environment tables followed by more character stats and character sheets.

Rules: One of the things the original rules left out was new skill advancement (i.e. gaining new skills as you go up in level) so they add this into that section. The ranks are nice to see. The best parts are the random hit locations, which can add some variety into mecha combat. It can drag combat on if used all the time but once in a while it good. The mecha underwater is nice, though they do say the Veritech can “fly” underwater. I can see Gerwalk/Guardian and Battliod mode but jet mode I have a tough time believing.

Weapons/Equipment: This is the bulk of the book for most players. The RDF Manual adds new weapons for mecha and humans (though some I don’t know if they were original creations or ever seen in the series). The new vehicles mostly seen at some point in the series (not too sure on the two tanks and neither has a picture to go with it) though some might be misidentified. And the new jet has no missiles, which wouldn’t really make sense (I believe it was fixed in the new edition of Robotech that was released). Seeing both information and deck plans for the Prometheus and Daedalus was a nice treat too.

Timeline/World Information: Tehre is some good stuff here. It gives a lot more background to the series for GM’s to use or for those interested in knowing what happened. In the cartoon series, the Reconstruction doesn't really go beyond New Macross City or a couple other northern cities so having some information about other regions is nice. After Palladium got much of the information from the notes Macek and Co. were using along with Palladium’s own guesses. This means that they are laying down even more groundwork for their own version of the Robotech universe (which would be slightly different from what would come in comics, the McKinely novels, and other places). The world information is nice, as it goes into a lot more detail on the different regions, adds in the EBSIS, and other human-style antagonists to use so it's not the same old same old fighting Zentradi.

Misc. The character sheets are nice, one for each type of mecha (Veritechs, different destroids). There is also a missile table to keep track of how many have been used and types (which can get easily confused when firing volleys!), and a couple more stats for characters from the TV series.

Overall: In my old eyes, this was a solid B. I was expecting more (I first owned the REF manual which is almost 150 pages and was expecting this one to be the same!). I wasn’t impressed with the paper quality but it may have just been the copy from the printing run I got; other printing runs might have been on standard paper for a Palladium product. Today I would give it a C+/ - . It is a bit on the short side but the information is there and pretty solid. It does set up different antagonists to use (EBSIS) besides just the Zentradi and allows for some more “covert” type missions (since the EBSIS is more of a cold war type enemy). The random encounter tables are nice since it is more than just enemy encounters – what you might see in the wasteland, making different towns and cities. Having more equipment and vehicles is always a nice feature as well. And for those who love deck plans...this has them! (insert picture of Daedalus from page 17 or 18 - the ramp extending and different decks)