Are GURPS Tech Books released in wrong order / badly planned?

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by Tzeentch

-- 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.

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.

UT also, in my opinion, suffers from the fact that sci-fi future settings can be so danged varied. A blaster from Star Wars, a Laser Rifle from fall out and a Las Gun from 40k are very different weapons! While a sword is a sword, no matter what it looks like.