Originally Posted by vicky_molokh (Post 1267182)

Am I alone in the feeling that Low-Tech, High-Tech and Ultra-Tech were released in the wrong order and/or not properly planned?

Originally Posted by Dammann (Post 1268490)

I'd eat up a UTC series. UTC I would actually use. I'd love to see a companion about weapon design, ala this thread, with a design sequence and worked examples. I would certainly be fascinated to read a series that discussed social implications of various UT fields, too. There is room for crunch as well as fluff, although advice on integrating technology into a sci fi campaign doesn't seem so fluffy (in the pejorative sense) to me.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh (Post 1267182)

Greetings, all!

Am I alone in the feeling that Low-Tech, High-Tech and Ultra-Tech were released in the wrong order and/or not properly planned? UT lacks some of the neat weapon upgrades found in HT, and surprisingly doen't have any G-suit at all; HT & LT seem to produce strange results when combined (the armour rules seem to be not quite compatible); UT battlesuits - which are supposed to make infantry resistant to small arms - are defeated most typically by HT rifles with proper AP ammo. Overall, UT seems to suffer most from the 'unpolished' feel, though I'm not that much of a HT/LT nut, so I might be overlooking stuff.

Oh, and even Bio-Tech seems to have discrepancies with other books - notably the 1:10 drug price issue (though Pulver thinks BIO is actually right and UT is wrong) and the BIO spaceships vs. Spaceships spaceships discrepancies.

Perhaps there is / will be some grand unified PDF / article / thread that would make those books compatible? Something like the thread on using UT and BIO with THS.

Thanks in advance!

Originally Posted by Tzeentch (Post 1267588)

-- Ultra-Tech would look a bit different if we had the other tech books to look back on. The original UT proposal and draft was significantly different because the format you now see as "standard" in the tech books didn't exist when the book was first being written. And some high-level design decisions were made during the development process that caused radical revisions to the text.

-- Even with all the bumps and issues, I still think Ultra-Tech came out looking signficantly better than the old Ultra-Tech 1 and 2, or 4e Magic for that matter.

Originally Posted by DouglasCole (Post 1268493)

Seems like Pyramid is the right venue here. Enough small stuff that lots of qualified people can contribute. Every take - even on the same thing - is likely to have validity to a subset of gamers.

Originally Posted by Dammann (Post 1268505)

Well I already buy Pyramid. I am thinking this is a way for SJG to get a little more of my money!

Seriously, though, you may be right. A design sequence for UT weapons might be only long enough for a Pyramid article.

Originally Posted by Verjigorm (Post 1268496)

I think you're right: UT looks so bad because the follow-up books are SO good. I think UT also suffers from being a bit specialized, in that LT and HT are still quite effective as sourcebooks up to that point, and depending on what you're going for with a UT campaign... well, you might not need UT.

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk (Post 1268508)

Eh, as far as 4e books go, I put UT just ahead of Magic and behind everything else. UT is not AS bad as Magic, but I can't use the guns section in anything where modern day weapons might still be around, the drugs in Biotech are just plain better, and even in campaigns where drugs or guns aren't a big deal there's still all kinds of typos.