Freelance Traveller
- Starbase Progress - A Traveller Homepage (Patrik Holmström)
- (http://www.docs.uu.se/~paho9211/trav/)
This is a semi-professional looking site with good layout and the odd on-screen graphic, and easy navigation (either with or without frames ... nice touch). Pages load at reasonable speed, too. The theme of the site appears to be that of the sales catalogue of "Dimashq Starships", "Dimashq Vehicles" (a subsidiary?), and "Arms & Ordinance".
From Dimashq Starships what you get are 25 ships and things ranging from the 1 dton Crystal Ball sensor drone to the 900k dton Recurrent Glory super dreadnaught. From an initial look around they are designed using FF&S2 and Andrew Akins' spreadsheet. TL is 15.
The Dimashq Vehicles section is still in its early stages with only 11 TL8 missiles (overall stats, no design).
From Arms & Ordinance you get 4 TL12 ETC autopistols and 10 assorted TL8 weapons ranging from a revolver to a HMG. There is also a battery discharge modifier table (of possible interest to gearheads).
There is also a link page (taking you to 10 other sites) as well as access to both the Traveller webring and the Gearhead webring.
Finally, there is a "What's New" page. From this you can see that updates appear fairly frequently. One minor problem here, however, is that some of the links are broken (for example the Pirate Interdiction Cruiser, the Police Patrol Grav Car, and the Mengingjord Super Dreadnought).
In summary: a well put together site, but evidentially still a work in progress. As the content increases along the lines mapped out in the site this will become for T4 aficionados what the Dean Files is for MT.
Improvements: apart from fix the broken links (obviously) and increase the content as shown to be planned (perhaps focusing more on the underweight vehicles and guns sections), there are two areas of potential improvement. First, while not necessary, some illustrations and/or deckplans would be nice. Second, some background on Dimashq would be great ... who are they, how big are they, how long have they been around, that sort of thing. Also, why is this site called "Starbase Progress" and not "Dimashq Corporation"?