Mars, maglevs speeds, and gauss guns

[Phil Masters]

While the treatment of Mars maybe suffers from creeping progress in terraforming and other areas from book to book (and to be honest, I certainly find the working wild ecology mentioned in In the Well a step too far), I didn't think that the Mars of ItW was any less Chinese than that of the core book. Matter of how you read things, I guess. Creeping complexification is a curse of game line books, as every author wants to add on More Kewl Plot Hooks. (Mind you, it happens in TV series and stuff too.)

I hadn't looked at the weapons much, but my assumption was that the things detailed in ItW were specifically vehicle gear, and hence could tap vehicular power supplies. If you assume that the big constraint on electromagnetic and energy weapons in TS is a fairly realistic/conservative treatment of batteries, then having them be a bit scary-powerful actually makes sense.

And to be truthful, if you want inconsistency between TS books, look at the different treatments of memetics - a dubious pop culture fad in Fifth Wave, a real weapon in other places. Even if we've mostly stopped it from turning into magic frikkin' mind control...