Quite a few products for the Star Trek RPG's were in the pipeline, several nearly complete, when Last Unicorn Games was purchased by WotC last year. What might have become of them under WotC's "D20 Uber Alles" marketting push is now merely a matter of speculation, given Decipher's acquisition of the liscense...and so these products might have languished on a hard drive somewhere, never to have seen the light of day.

Some of these books, though, were the work of individual writers. Among these are the Dominion War Sourcebook, the Ship Recognition Manuals, and the much awaited Spacedock...all the work of Steven Long. Steven was able to regain rights to the work he'd done on these books, and with the help of others, has begun releasing them as netbooks on the TrekRPGNet web site (www.trekrpg.net). Spacedock and the Starfleet SRM (the first of several), are already up and available for download...the Dominion War Sourcebook and further SRM's are in the works.

As might be guessed from the name, Spacedock contains starship construction rules for the Star Trek RPG, with a focus on Starfleet ships of the current TNG/DS9/Voyager era. More in-depth details for other races, as well as material for TOS, will be given in future SRM's covering those topics.

The ships produced by this book are much more detailed than the ones listed in the core books for the LUG Star Trek line...there's enough here to make any Treknology gearhead deleriously happy. Everything from various models of impulse drives to ACB jacketed phasers and regenerative shielding is there.

Spacedock also contains an overhaul of the Starship Combat system. The core mechanics remain, but the result is much more sophisticated than the one presented in the core rulebooks. Details abound, from torpedo firing patterns to rotating shield harmonics. Event the effects of ion storms and nebulas are covered. Care is taken to note that these rules are written to conform with the rules of Star Trek drama, with concerns for balanced wargaming running second. Notes are given to allow conversion back to the basic system.

The book ends with three sample ships, the Defiant class, the Galaxy class, and the Klingon Vor'cha class.

The book is distributed in PDF format, and has a well-structured layout that compares favorably with the works previously published by LUG. The only thing lacking is artwork.