With so much to cover in this review, I'll break it down into mini reviews, one for each PDF included.

The first 42 pages of the PDF are for the Starship Construction and Engineer's Guide. This PDF will walk you through generating ships from hull to guns and sensors.

The frist thing you do is decide what tech level you will build the ship for then you move on to the hull. A description of how hulls are made is followed by a list of the eight hulls you can choose from. Each hull is rated by shape, Cost, tonage, and tech level. This supplement leads one to believe that hull design in SC2 has not advanced much since all hulls that are listed are TL 7.  

The Hull section is followed by Docking, Emergency Air Locks, Bays,Life Support,Scanners,Denfense,Control, and practiclly anything else you could think of to put on a ship. The Dirve Systems section is the most impressive though, with its great detail. It covers everything from Matter to AntiMatter ratios to fusion drives. The Orien drive is my favorite, basically you blow 20 megaton fission or fusion bombs up behind the ship and the blast psuhes the ship. There is also a very good weapons section.

The next PDF is Smilin' Jack's Used Spaceships which is a colllection of four used ships. Each of the four ships has a diagram showing it's shape and layout and full list of specs. A nicely done description was written Jack's voice for each ship, which reveals some history and interesting facts. Smilin's Jack's is not just a list of ships, there is also a guide to finanacing as well.

The Robot Design Guide is next in order. There are two basic types of robots: Normal Brain and Self-Programming.  Noramal Brain robots have to be manually programed to and Self-Programming Robots are given a skill set to start with, but can learn more on their own. Once you have a brain selected you go on to selecting a torso, extensors, manipulators, locomotion, surface, and powersupply. Once you picked those you chose starting programs (Skills & senses) which is dependant on the brain you choose. Each brain starts with a number of programs and can learn 1to 3 per year(if self-programing) upto its max number of programs. You can create anything from a drone to sentient robot using these rules.

The Vehicle Design Guide is much lighter than the Ship Design rules. At the most simple point you are just adding up the tonage and "factors" assigned to each component. The tonage and "factors" partially determine some stats like speed.  While the VDG will give you enough to build vehicles it lacks the detail that makes the ship design rules so great.

Weapon Design Guide is a great tool for making custom weapons for your SC games. Rules are given for modifing damage,accuracy,price, and concealability. The system basically works by raising or lowering a stat and balancing it out by lowering or raising another. It is more expensive to modifier some things that it is others. The rules are written to use a weapon for the list in the core book as a template and then modify if from there by either raising or lowering stats.

The frist thing you notice with the StarCluster 2 Biotech guide is the mostly naked woman on the front cover, don't worry there's no frontal. Even if I don't take into account the woman on the cover, this is one of the better covers I have seen from Flying Mice.

The first part of the pdf is about augmentation. Genetic pre-birth engeneering. It is split into two section TL8 & TL9, the difference between the two are TL8 augementations only modify attributes while TL can also include things such as: Exotic  Appearance , Arbitrary Shape,Gills, and others. The cultural & treatment of augmented beings has its own section.

Androids are synthetic beings made by creating totally new DNA, so they are not in fact human. Androids can be humanoid in shape or in the shape of any animal. Biotech also details uplifted animals,modified beings, Replacement tech,clones, and most every kind biotech I can think of. The descriptions of how these are all culturally accepted(or not) adds more roleplaying opportunities.

The Good: A hugh amount of detail ,Many options, additional setting flavor, sound hard sci-fi. cross system use makes the BBoT a better value.

The Bad: the vehicle design rules were a bit of let down, but only when compared to the shipgen rules.

The Ugly: nothing ugly

Why you would like it: If you need a book filled with descriptions of ship components and of the tech or if you are already a fan of SC2 this is a must buy.

Why you wouldn't like it: If you don't like hard sci-fi or have no use for a lot of technical jargon and detailed specs.


Buy it here!

Awesome overview, Mike! Thanks!

-clash

no problem!

I also liked the fact that the layout was uniform throughout, just looks more clean a the text flows better.

The bottom line though is that the Big Book O' Tech delivers what it promises, a whole bunch of cool hightech stuff. For me the overall detail is what did made it good.

Thanks, Mike!

One of the things I love about SF is the implications of tech.

Consider just Uplifts - why would a society uplift animals, given that it could? What is the place of Uplifts in that society? Are they on a par with Humans? Below Humans but still free? Enslaved? How has that position changed over time? Is Uplifting a phase societies go through? A fad? What happens after the fad dies out and the uplifts are still there, breeding more Uplifts? Are the Uplifts furry humans or smart animals? Do they have souls - and since souls are a provable fact in StarCluster, do some societies deny the existence of Uplift souls in spite of the fact?

You can do the same with Robots, or Androids -in fact you can use many of the same questions - and you can do similar things with power sources - the highest level of portable power source is a variable-time-stasis field confined micro-matter-antimatter explosion. Everyone has access to a powerful bomb, and can walk around the streets wearing it. What are the safeguards? Can these things be triggered, their stasis fields stopped? At that point energy has become so cheap as to be meaningless. What does that imply about a society? How rich is that society? How do they spend their wealth?

Every technology raises implications for the society that can use it, and more implications for the society that does, or the one that can and doesn't. There's lots of sweet roleplaying conflict right there. When Albert and I wrote the sections of this book, we wanted to raise these implications, but still have an overall coherency to the tech. We limited ourselves to certain basic advances which defined the tech levels, and explored them in different uses, in different fields. We wanted the folks playing StarCluster to have little bombs go off in their heads when the same tech is presented in a different way - "Oh Lord! Soul print locks use the same basic tech as mind transfer - or Jump Drive - or MatTran booths! The entire Cluster economy is based on this tech! What else could we use that tech for?"

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceEvery technology raises implications for the society that can use it, and more implications for the society that does, or the one that can and doesn't. There's lots of sweet roleplaying conflict right there. When Albert and I wrote the sections of this book, we wanted to raise these implications, but still have an overall coherency to the tech. We limited ourselves to certain basic advances which defined the tech levels, and explored them in different uses, in different fields. We wanted the folks playing StarCluster to have little bombs go off in their heads when the same tech is presented in a different way - "Oh Lord! Soul print locks use the same basic tech as mind transfer - or Jump Drive - or MatTran booths! The entire Cluster economy is based on this tech! What else could we use that tech for?"

-clash

and this is what makes SC2 one of my favorite Sci-Fi  games.:haw: