Well, I just picked up TNE. The basic system is, as I suspected,
quite acceptable, though the typos need some work.
I note that the plasma weapons all have penetration listed in the
anti-vehicle format, but I can find nowhere in the rules where it states
that this is so.
I also notice a failure of imagination in the grav tank, which has
considerably weaker armour than an M1A1 does, and a primary weapon that
is not as effective as a rifled 105mm tank gun.
And grav has been changed to something that looks a lot like what
they use in Star Wars or H. Beam Piper's stories: something that
cancels local gravity, and does nothing else. No more grav propelled
vehicles, guys. Now grav vehicles have normal reaction jets to move
them sideways, and the grav just replaces the wheels/tracks/whatever.
BIG BEEF:
The Arses. These guys are the kind of pond-scum my characters have
spent a lot of the years since the orginal Traveller came out pounding
sense into. I am vastly amused by the assumption that "For obvious
reasons, most Star Viking characters will be player characters", since
the Star Vikings, IMHO, are a lunatic fringe group of murdering,
idealistic, morons. Of course, that describes many player-characters,
so maybe it does make sense...:-)
Fortunately, my other big beef will deal with them quite handily.
The "Hub Worlds" (a sample pocket empire) can match the technology of
the Arses, and outnumber them by a factor of about 40. So when the two
groups meet, the Arses are going to be either absorbed or annihilated by
the Hub Worlds, unless the Arses decide to rescue the Hub Worlds from
the intolernat, fanatical government of theirs by nuking them out of
existance. Which, unfortunately, fits well with Arse policy and social
theory.
For those of you with GDW, just how do you expect that the Hub
Worlds (which are bigger and richer than my entire TCS campaign) will
FAIL to reunite the Empire in the next five years. My off-the-cuff
guesstimate has them finishing the first 300 (of 2000 they can support)
battleships within four years, and conquering the area of the old
Imperium in hardly more time than it takes to drive across at J-3.
Remember, these guys are in better shape than the Terrans were at the
end of the Interstellar Wars, and the opposition to such a conquest is
essentially non-existant...
And thank you for including the entire core area of my TCS game in
your "Frontier". Survival Margin had me thinking that part of the GRA
had been left out of the Frontier, but the map in TNE pretty clearly
shows that all the worlds of the Islands and the GRA are still (halfway)
civilized...
---Steve Higginbotham