Okay, let me get this off my chest: DP9 is my favorite game company, Silhouette is my favorite system for both RP and tactical play, and my favorite game has to be either Heavy Gear or Jovian Chronicles, not sure which. I'm biased, you might say, but it's bias based on logic.
Simply put, if you want planetary action, Heavy Gear is probably your best bet, because Jovian Chronicles is really all about the space stuff.
Jovian Chronicles is the most realistic space game I've ever seen. It has a real 3D vectored thrust system that is simple enough to be playable with a little practice, and will probably take about as much effort to learn as, say, the D&D 3rd Ed. movement/attack of opportunity mechanics (though it's modular, you don't have to use the 3D bits). Anyway, the system is fairly simple and intuitive assuming your brain hasn't been fed too much stupidity by movie physics (see slashdot's article for today).
Let's talk about Silhouette in general for a moment. The mechanics simple dicewise (Rarely will you need more than 3d6 to play a character), and well-conceived. It works on a familiar "if dice+modifiers > target number, then success" premise, and like many systems these days it associates skills with an attribute score, like shooting a gun and dexterity. Damage is done with a wounds system that players of WEG Star Wars or White Wolf will find fairly familiar. Armor behaves as it does in real life by making it more difficult for a given amount of damage to cause a wound. Typically a single attack in Silhouette has two rolls, an Attack and a Dodge. Damage is variable but a factor of how well you hit and the weapon's potentcy.
It has built-in powergaming resistance, probably the best of any system I've seen. It uses a point-buy mechanic that is exponential rather than linear, so if you want to sacrifice your appearance for extra agility you really have to pay dearly for it. Silhouette encouranges well-rounded characters with a lot of interesting skills, because buying a skill at a basic level of competency is so cheap compared to "maxing out" on a given skill.
I remember playing with my friends, who mostly approached the game from the standard powergamer standpoint. They really were better than me at the shooting and piloting parts of combat, but they couldn't do anything else, while my character was a competent sigint/EW officer, a decent swordsman, knew kung fu, knew how to work the military bureaucracy, knew a lot about jazz music, was a pretty decent tapas chef, and was pretty successful with the ladies. The funny thing was, it wasn't like my character
sucked at gear piloting, he was actually pretty good at that too.
The system does have flaws though. It is designed to be simple and fast to play, so as a result sometimes the fine details that we're used to in d20 aren't represented well. For instance, a +1 modifier to a roll in Silhouette is worth about +4 or so to a d20 roll, so most of the time little modifiers are just out of the system's resolution.
Also, combat is too realistic sometimes: It's entirely possible for a single gunshot from a mediocre security guard to kill outright the gentleman thief you've been playing with for months, if you're an idiot and get in a shooting match with him.
Another flaw of the games is that you'll be expected to do most of the work regarding fleshing out the game world on your own. They describe their game world at length, but they're describing vast geopolitical details and social trends, so for very detailed information you'll need to make it up or buy another supplement. Along this vein, usually adventure modules will need some thought by the GM to run well, because the module will describe a situation for the characters to interact with rather than a map of a fortress or dungeon to infiltrate.
Anyway, I hope I wasn't too much of a DP9 fanboy here.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
-S
