Let me get back to you on that. That's the first time I've come across that complaint that I recall. I'll have to investigate.

The whole Zebs treatment of  SW2 is horrible.

That whole asteroid base thing and the attempts to negotiate by the Drals...  Ugh.  As if...

jedion, some of what you suggest is covered by financial issues, such as not discovering the second planet in the Zebulon system for 4 years. Probes and expeditions cost money, and research grants aren't bottomless.

As for the quarantined planets, this may also be money related. Vaccines costs money, lots and lots of money. Those 4 planets may be quarantined as a sacrifice while the planets that can be handled reasonably are inocculated. Eventual attention could be given to those planets. In the meantime, the plague is working its course on those planets. Perhaps it even took a stronger hold on those planets. Maybe there is something there causing a resistence to the vaccine. There could be many reasons for such things. I see that as lots of ground for development rather than cutting off. At least one of those systems (I forget which one), was listed in the original rules, if I remember correctly. Alpha, I think. (Under a different name, of course).

For me, I assume Snoball is a UPF secret because it is on the edge of Sathar space, and too easy to attack, and therefore too costly to protect. Think of it from a governmental perspective.

I think the reason you suggest for the blow-by-blow on the Sathar wars is exactly right. It's a historical perspective. And besides, why wouldn't a timeline give thorough details on the most important events in Frontier history? To exclude such pivotal battles and assassination attempts would be to suggest that the Sathar war wasn't important to the Frontier. Again, like I mentioned above, no matter how thorough the timeline, there is plenty of room to add in your own stuff. It's not preemptive, it's a structure, that's all. My view is that anyone who feels restricted by such a timeline lacks imagination. I believe it was Dostoyevsky who said [paraphrase?]: 'creativity thrives under restriction'.

So if what is being said here regarding Volturnus is true, it's the only substantial problem, and sounds to me like it is easily fixed with a minor adjustment to the order of events in the timeline.

Actually I was thinking of the standard KH equipment atmo-probes, you get 1/HS and can launch them from outside the system to seek out a specific planet. They are a great cost and time saving item as you can launch a half dozen or more form any reasonable size survey ship  With the habitable zone of a system being so narrow It seems sloppy that a "noted scientist" should miss a habitable world for lack of sending an atmo-probe. In fact the statement in SF-0 that says Volturnus was explored by Remote probe is probably a refference to the survey probes

I find it hard to believe that four planets would be written off- the outcry would be to great and synth corp or somebudy would step in providing vaccine and scoring a PR coup and recovering realestate, labor force, a market for future sales. Its not too expensive to pay for a vaccine its too expensive to not pay for the vaccine.

check you AD map for Alpha; its not there in the original Zebs map it was Alpha, Beta, Gamma, & Delta that turned up on the map as the plague systems with no prior name in the AD source; However the new digitally remastered zebs has no greek letter designations thus clouding the issue as effectively as a nebulae

Again I dont see it playing that way but rather the enemy of my enemy is my friend and the comment in the material about Snowboll's jump route being a military secret probably stems from the fact that it was introduce in a 3 module series and they didn't want the inconsistency of players trying to take their ships their before the events of the modules transpire. So initially it would be a secret but that would not last. The new race would be brought more fully into the Frontier and UPF's sway and since they're starting form such a steep disadvantage, having been recently occupied by the sathar, the push will be on to get them to conform to UPF doctrine for a higher level of coordination, the mega corps will be knocking at their door to open up the new market

From 1984 to 1990 when I was playing SF reguarly I never did use the Zeb timeline, as a matter of fact I only used Zebs' Guide as a resource book and never really liked it. I am starting to warm up to it now but still dont care for the feel it gave the game and all the table shifting was way too cumbersome. Mostly we played by largely house rules after mastering the AD and SFKH sets.