This was a nice read. Thank you.
I was looking into the skill list of Bulldogs, one of my favorite sci-fi Fate creations. Things I like about the changes they made:
- no Lore, not setting appropriate.
- no Notice: players will use any skill related to what's being noticed. A good burglar is better at detecting plain clothes cops and break in weaknesses, for instance.
- Academics is broken down into setting appropriate skills (they used science, and systems).
- replaced Resources by Haggle, with a simpler mechanic. You may want to ditch this entirely since buying and selling doesn't mesh that well with T2.
- no Investigate: it's an action RPG, Science can be used for general deductive reasoning, otherwise another specific applicable skill (i.e. Systems to investigate a hack, Larceny to investigate how the safe was broken into, etc.)
Notes:
- if you fragment skills, you make it harder for someone to progress along that field (needs more advancements to raise it all), which may be what you want.
- The opposite for coalescing skills.
- A skill list smaller than 18 will make your characters stronger, bigger than 20, weaker (they start with 10 trained skills out of 19 existing on the default list).
- keep in mind characters have only 6 starting skills at +2 or above.
Will you be using the default skill list or will you tweak it?
There is something to be said about non combat focused accessories. Water reclamation & filtration system. Air purification, I can see a vacuum rated suit that has the air storage and CO2 scrubbing as an installable module to reduce weight in breathable atmosphere missions. Jetpacks. Battery pack, with standard connectors so not only it powers the suit for an extended time, it can also power your energy weapons and tools. A grappling hook/winch.
And, not an accessory, but hook points all around the suit to haul crap around in satchels and the like. Logistics is paramount for war.
Have it be modular, so you can build platoons of armored soldiers. An long range comms/EW module, a belt fed grenade module, a heavy weapons ammo/power supply module, zero G jetpack module, etc.
It's lifted straight up from the source material. As far as seventies series go, S: 1999 took itself quite seriously, in a good way. It's still sort of zany and the science isn't there in the plot, but the models and the casting more than make up for it.
Thank you and welcome!
This looks real cool!
Zozer Games has a few solo Traveller books that are well regarded.
There's one aptly named Solo for general traveller adventures, there's Hostile Solo for an Alien / Aliens feel and some really cool squad mechanics. I think there's a third supplement, but I'm not sure.
Edit: aha! The third book! Classic Traveller style, I'm guessing by the price there's minimal artwork.