Fantasy Flight outdid themselves with this fantastic re imagining of Merchant of Venus.

I noticed that the Shuttle racial technology allows you to pick up and drop off passengers during your set speed movement. This is crucial since you can be at a system that has a passenger appear in it before you move. Normally you'd need to stay there to pick them up, but with the shuttle you can set speed, assign a die to the shuttle, pick up the passenger, and then move away.

Similar situation with the level 3 pilot upgrade. If you discover your home culture with a level 2 pilot, you don't find them til first contact phase, so you can't upgrade to level 3. But you upgrade during your move phase, so at the start of your next turn you can set your speed, then upgrade your pilot, and fly away.

Variable lasers and Variable shields always fail on a dice roll of 6 vs hazards on board spaces. I guess this means that using variables on pirates or special abilities means you can auto succeed?

According to the rules I think that when you offload unwanted cargo at another culture to make room, that cargo returns to the supply area.

Does anyone think it would be worth making it so that when you unload unwanted cargo, it puts it for sale at the same planet?

* When you offload cargo on another planet that does not buy it, the cargo stays on that planet until someone buys it at its production cost:

Standard Rules, page 25: " Offloading
At any time during a player’s Transaction phase, if he is
located on a surface city or spaceport, he may offload any
number of goods, racial technologies, or passengers.

To do so, he simply removes the desired tokens from
his cargo holds and places them in the market of his
current system. The offloaded goods, racial technology,
or passenger tokens immediately become available for
purchase or pickup at that system.

Normally, a market’s available goods, technologies, and
passenger tokens would be those originating from that
system’s culture. However, offloading (and some card
effects) make it possible for markets to contain goods,
technologies, and passengers that originated in other systems.
Offloading does not count as an action, and players do not
receive credits for offloading tokens."

* SHUTTLE: The shuttle allows you to transport unlimited passengers to and from your ship, but only at the start or end of your movement- not during the trip. P32 , standard rules: The current player can use the Shuttle only during the Set Speed and End Movement steps of his Movement phase.

LordZoma said:

Yes - you can use it at the start OR the end of movement…. I did well with the shuttle and status chamber combo and was able to drop off/pick up most of the passengers in our game..