itch.io

Okay, first of all, congratulations on restructuring basically the whole game. Connecting Ventures to Trends is a really great idea, sometimes I feel like some of the Trend changes are way too random to craft a good story, but after this it looks a lot more organic, where the development of theoretics is fed directly to applied sciences. Shipboard Life is nice, with downtime activity, I'd never thought a game about getting to rocks in space while not getting rocks in your own kidneys could be rather comfy. I'm still figuring out the whole relationship between Hotspots and Crew placement, but now it seems with Turn scales and partial Operations, precise time keeping of what the Crew is doing can be much more clarified!

Wow, the Missing is real bleak.

Yes! Will read more after work.

Huh.... so like Agricola but with Hab and Ship modules, and instead of Seasons you get CMEs? That'd be nice too!

Wow damn, TSI is really evolving into "Sci-fi Ryuutama with propellant management and PTSD" at this rate - and that's a good thing! Service Risks and Annual Events really brought out the lethal aspects of Shipboard life as an astronaut, Operations are a good way to gett stuff done "in background" instead of actual Dollhouse play, and then there are the in-between filler moments when you're simply... well.. travelling in empty tracts of space, with the occasional rad belt and plague ship encounter thrown in. Makes sense the astronauts would do something in between to keep themselves from going crazy, would it be kinda like Phoning Home in Crewed Rules?

I was going to write something about how SRDs not having common character generation systems and actions are quite common, drafting a list of TRPGs while doing so, and then I realized the examples I'm supposed to be referencing merely shares the same setting, rolls the same dice, and ARE standalone games... yeah I'm kinda lost on this one also.

Finally! Them faction missions are something that puts each of the factions into perspective a lot better, and usable as story hooks even if PCs are not the ones performing them: but I'm sure you got a lot on your plate right now, no need to rush any of this, I paid for "A" copy, not a monthly magazine subscription, any of the updates you're giving are completely free of charge for us who already purchased it. Getting some small expansions as independent books without them being all over the place can be a challenge, but can also be a better way to sort the books out. The Robot Expansion, for instance, can definitely be placed as a lower priced standalone booklet. It serves no major base building (or facility building in AFWW for that matter) purposes, but is so important in expanding the necessary equipment to bridge that gap between Survival Equipment and ship Components I wouldn't do without it.

By the way, I really need to re-read ALOZ, I think part of the reason for low sales "could be" that this is essentially End-Game content, at least until Phil Eklund releases a thousand expansions for Interstellar and make it another High Frontier 4.

Three cheers for Module 6: Careers and the Lifepath system walking hand in hand to create astronauts that dies of old age before they get in space, this is the true Traveller way! That new cover art is disturbing in a nice kind of fashion, humanity diverging down different paths is already explored with the old art, but this one is really damned drastic.

... Hold on, Lifepath continues throughout the game? I gotta read a little more, Traveller lifepath is something of a "Roll and Done" thing.

Woah, it's really been a while, I haven't even noticed there's a new update, will read soon, huzzah!

Alright! Thanks for the clarification, will look forward to the encounter changes!

After giving Update 3 a more detailed readthrough, I find that some of the sections had their games rules... well.. missing? Is this a design choice or is this unintentional?

This include the following:

Actions Chapter, Space Politics Section: Rules regarding Anti-nuke are now missing,  the one about restricting nuclear components from being boosted. I can still find the remainder in the Operations section, which makes sense, since Hostile Recruit and Income operations are not in crewed rules.

Upgrades Chapter, Species Capabilities Section: This section is missing, and I can't find any mention of it in ABDL, does crew no longer gain Species Cap when their Physical rating is conditioned?

Ecounters Chapter, Intent Cards Section: TSI-Update2 had included a table used for rolling out Crew/Colonist careers, some of the jobs included are here, no tables though. Are they meant to be included in this section, or are they supposed to have their own section?

And here I thought representing all those buildings you had planned out in AFWW would be real difficult due to the scaling difference, turns out its interchangeable! Thank you for adding biome growing and decorations rules too, player founded colonies can finally flood the map with a sleuth of green tokens now. 

Also, with rawstuff refining rules added, it has finally occurred to my dumb self that ink is something that you don't automatically get an infinite amount of once you industralize a spectral site... can't imagine why I didn't thought of this sooner.

I bought it! Dropped you an email about Intent cards too!

Yeah! That sounds great, if rules get clarified enough, I can probably just hack my own Solitaire variant, plus, adding a trading variant to a game already so focused on travelling seems natural.

Ah, sweet, sweet terraforming. The joy of many a player when they realize regular base-building just isn't enough in sci-fi. I think the Infrastructure section did a good job on background terraforming already, but having the crew participating via Decaoperations can definitely up things a notch. And I do agree that base building needs to be expanded, so far we have the economy and law levels, we have the industralization and biosphere levels, we have immigration and government changes, but what exactly gets an abstract colony from huddling in a regolith cave to having sushi dinner in a hyperloop definitely deserves an expansion. 

Although I wasn't quite expecting that there can possibly be an Earthside era in a space game, having a few twists instead of the original Exodus is always nice (now you can have branches of histories on top of your branches of histories), guess I'll have to wait and find out!

Hello! After finishing the series for some time, I'm still reading on and off about the news. I've got to say that the entire This Space Intentionally book is quite easily my favorite book in the series, it adds an entirely new dimension to the game, and allows for so many new gadgets (still a bit short on Promotions though), and I've really enjoyed the Dependency section in A Facility with Words. I'm already extensively using the content from all three books on my table, upto and including Operations and Accidents, the results are fantastic. 

I've read that you are already preparing a new update, including base building rules (I love those!) in, presumably, (A)-Base-(D)-Landing. I've got two questions then:

1. How much would the new supplements cost, and what does Absent Without actually focus on?

2. Would the new update include Solitaire rules? 

Hello! It's me, Zhaoqi, just registered a new ITCH.IO account, almost finished the series and had a quick question to ask:

In the Society supplement, War section, Zone War chapter, certain social trends are given "in the case that a Zone War goes hot", yet i see no social trend corresponding to Zone War on the Exoglobalization social trend graph, only in Mission Control trend graph. Supposedly, if you roll a 2 in Exoglobalization social trend you touch off a Zone War, yet the roll is occupied by another result "Forever War". 

Is there an explanation or fix for this? Many thanks.