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The Starship Operator's Manual, Volume 1 was intended to be the first of a series of books covering the topic of starships in the Traveller universe. Unfortunately it was the only volume ever published, but given its comprehensiveness, it doesn't feel incomplete in any way.
In any case, I'm going to drop the officially correct "Volume 1" for the rest of this review.
About the Book
Starship Operator's Manual is divided into four parts: starship systems, crew duties, the 200-T Free Trader, and game rules.
The Starship Systems discussion takes up the majority of this book (and represents some of its greatest value). A total of nine topics are covered: maneuver drive; flight controls; jump drive; power plant and fuel; sensors, communicators, and transponders; main computer and security; hull and environment; cargo and passengers; and weapons and screens.
Each topic is discussed in a very regularized fashion. There are sections about each system discussing: history; theory; a descriptions of subsystems; and some related topics (which provide library-data-like information of note to the topic). As I've already noted, I consider this systems discussion the best part of the book. It gives you the information you need to talk intelligently about the systems in a Traveller spaceship and it'll also help you to arbitrate if a PC ever wants to do something quirky with those systems.
Each topic also tends to have two boxes of additional information. First, there's usually a graphical representation of how all the subsystems interrelate. Second, there's an in-game text box written by "The Old Timer" discussing the system.
All of the text in the Systems section is pretty interesting, despite the fact that it's an encyclopedic look at a spaceship. The Old Timer boxes, however, surpass that. They're quite fun to read, especially since they interrelate ship systems and historical events in the Traveller universe. I'm not sure how much they add to an understanding of the ship systems, but they certainly make it all easier and more enjoyable to read.
Crew Duties is a short 3-page section which describes 23 different roles that people can take on a ship. It's a terrific overview that will give you ideas for making every PC on a ship important.
A sample ships shows off how some of these systems really work, and that's the Free Trader. Almost all of the Free Trader info is graphical, and it makes the ships of the Traveller universe real. To start with, there are a set of labeled exterior shots, a full blueprint of the ship's three levels, and pictures of three alternative profiles for the Free Trader (which we usually see in its Beowulf incarnation).
The center of the book features an interesting innovation: nine individual pages, each of which shows a picture of an individual part of the ship, with a description of it. Thus you get to see: the bridge; the cargo hold; a corridor with an air lock; a crew stateroom; the fire control; low berths; the jump drive room; the passenger lounge; and a passenger stateroom.
Much like the system descriptions, these pages will let a Traveller referee add a lot of verisimilitude to his game and accurately respond to player actions in the environs. (And though it's all specific to a Free Trader, you could doubtless crib some of the information for other ships).
Finally, the Game Rules section gives some really precise "task charts" for piloting a ship. Though some of this is specific to MegaTraveller (which had higher skills than most other Traveller games), there's lots of more general material too, such as precise calculations for moving a ship around, for the time involved with calculating a jump, for the length of a jump, etc.
Generally, the content of Starship Operator's Manual is golden for any GM who wants to have more background on the ships that players spend so much of their Traveller time in. Though it doesn't directly provide plot hooks or gameable material, it offers the very solid background that any GM would love to have.
As such, it earns a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Applicability to Mongoose Traveller
As I noted at the start of this review, I opted to read (and review) the Starship Operator's Manual primarily because it still remains very relevant.
There are no MegaTraveller stats for the first 58 pages of this 66-page book. Instead, you just have dense descriptions of all the systems of a starship. Be warned that DGP's assumptions about how starships work aren't the same as Mongoose's. In particular, I note that Mongoose talks about jump drives depending on an artificial singularity, whereas DGP depends on a lanthanum grid. None of these differences are likely to matter much in a Traveller game, so I'd suggest going with the extensive description that exists for these systems--which means the Starship Operator's Manual.
As I noted, even the "game rules" section has a lot of good material that you could pull out (if you really want complex calculations for transit times).
The biggest barrier to purchasing the Starship Operator's Manual is of course that it's out-of-print--and, like all the DGP properties, is in IP hell. However, I've seen it regularly in stores for $30-40 and have seen occasional auctions that are more in the $15 range. It's well worth the latter price, and even the former range isn't bad.
Style & Design
DGP always had layouts that looked really good for the era. Today they seem a bit more minimalist, but they're still neat and clean.
Starship Operator's Manual also has a few other good stylistic elements going for it.
First up are those two "boxes" that I mentioned for the starship system sections: the Old Timer text makes the book highly readable, while the system graphs help GMs visualize how everything fits together.
Second, the individual pages showing off rooms in the Free Trader are terrific. I've rarely seen such a great correlation of text and graphics to actually represent something in a roleplaying game. There are a few quirks, where the picture and the text (or the map) don't match quite perfectly, but they're very much the exception to the rule.
My only qualm with the book's style is its general lack of interior illustrations other than the system charts and room drawings already noted. That's a lot of what keeps the book feeling pretty minimalistic: you often get page upon page of text.
Nonetheless, Starship Operator's Manual was great at the time, and its style still remains pretty innovative today. I've given it a "4" out of "5" for Style.
Conclusion
If you're willing to accept the assumptions that DGP makes about space travel (which may at some times conflict with Mongoose), then Starship Operator's Manual remains a terrific resource for starships in the Traveller universe that every GM should get (if they can afford to).
