This is an interesting supplement for a few different reasons. First is that it provides players and referees alike a good amount of information concerning vehicles in the near future and how to go about modifying and creating your own. The rules provided in the beginning are based on a system of “spaces” that can be allocated different things from cargo to weapons to travellers to armor. The number of spaces a vehicle can have is based on the general chassis/design. A light ground vehicle for example can have between 1-20 spaces whereas a ship would have 50+ spaces. The spaces determine how much room you have for “Stuff”, the base cost of the vehicle, and how many tons it takes to freight your design in the cargo of another vessel. Those with high guard (or other similar games with starship design) will feel right at home with trying to optimize things and keep them under a size and cost. After reading through the book I fired up my favorite spreadsheet software to keep track of costs and sizes and went about designing an armed six-seater vehicle. The process was pretty straightforward except when things bog down calculating the exact cost of the “spaces” of a vehicle, especially when armor comes into play. Some things like camo are X cost per space, whereas some things like armor are a percent increase per space. The book makes it clear that you always go back to the first value when calculating, but it does get a bit messy. Options wise there are plenty of things to do with your vehicles and you can construct pretty much anything from a TL 3 sailing vessel to a TL 10 hover tank to a TL 15 bioweapon-sporting submarine reasonably quickly. Things with armor and multiple “plusses and minuses” to agility, speed, fuel economy, fuel capacity, cargo storage, personnel capacity, and ammo storage can get a little much to manage, but it’s all doable and it gets easier as you run through a few different designs. The book also makes it clear that at the end of the day you should use whatever makes sense to you regardless of what the rules say to do. There are even suggestions on handling cheaper mass-produced vehicles as needed. The second half of the text is a guide to a bunch of standard vehicles that you can expect to see in a traveler game from a P-51 (cunningly called the Vanguard) to a Nuclear Machinegun toting drone. Some of the images that the authors chose to go with the vehicle designs remind me of 1990s adventure game graphics where they show pre-rendered (in glorious 8-bit color) 3d models that were never quite right. It’s not a bad thing as this is just the basis for a paper and pencil RPG, but sometimes my players like looking through these books as if they were fashion magazines for the latest model. From an editing standpoint, the book is fairly well done but it needs a bit of love from a spelling perspective as there are some glaring typos that seem out of place in a modern, slickly produced document. The charts are easy to read and the authors were smart to include references directly to the core rulebook, high guard, and supply catalog as needed. The PDF runs well on my tablet as well as desktop computer. All in all, it’s a pretty solid handbook for designing your own vehicles for use in a traveller game. The provided examples are great for modifying or as a basis for your own designs. There are little things that bother me from a mechanic perspective such as sensors and how modern electronic warfare is conducted, but I can just imagine how that would needlessly complicate things to have specific in game rules controlling them. Content wise 4/5. It’s good and gets my imagination going without burdening things too much. My ultra-modern T-80U with ERA and laser point defense will certainly slow my players down.
Value wise 2/5. It is far too expensive for just a PDF, and it’s pushing it for a softcover. It would have been great had they included a page for say "light tank" and then showed how it changes over time across new technology levels with appropriate graphics. 50-60 pages of those kinds of things would have been great. The book also misses a few modern technologies such as missile/laser warning systems, gunfire locators or even ballistic tracking radars to make it easier to locate hidden attackers. Get it if you want to design your own vehicles and get an idea of extra vehiclular options, otherwise the ones in the core book plus a little imagination here or there will satisfy most of your gaming needs. Now if you'll excuse me I have to finish my horse-drawn planetary defense motorcycle design...