Thanks, Angelman! I have a couple of ideas for other sourcebooks too. Those that have been mentioned so far, are focused around certain career paths: the marines, the colonists, the explorers, and the truckers. It’s easy to get why - we see them in the movies. They are all more or less in the bottom of the corporate food chain. That’s why they end up in lethal situations.That's an awesome idea! Such a sourcebook would add a lot of new nuance and expand the gaming world a whole lot. I'd absolutely pay top dollar for that, sirI don’t think an underworld supplement has been mentioned so far, but I would certainly love to see one.
However, I think it would be interesting with a sourcebook about the rich. There must be people who have enormous resources and are able to access knowledge that is far beyond reach for common employees. Of course, the super rich in a dystopian capitalist system, usually don’t need to get their hands dirty. That’s their big advantage: they have people who take risks for them. But they are for sure involved.
So what I suggest here is a corporate sourcebook, with a focus on the rich and powerful and their dirty secrets. There are already several corporate factions in the basic rules, but the descriptions aren’t very detailed. In a new sourcebook, I imagine a focus not only on the rich and powerful, but also on the people who work more directly for the rich: mercenaries, spies, researchers, servants, corporate diplomats, heist crews etc. They would probably be able to access things that people like the marines or the truckers usually don’t.
A cruisal part of a corporate sourcebook would be corporate secrets and conspiracies. You should both get a number of interesting examples, and tools to create your own. It’s kind of already in the game, but the focus could be more corporate. How money and corporate secrets matters. You can also add some high security corporate facilities where the secrets can be explored. A couple of examples of sites: hidden labs, experimental android factories, newly discovered Engineer ruins and/or spacestations, hidden corporate archives with bizarre alien specimens etc. I would also love to see descriptions of the dystopian version of gated communities: well protected and luxurious residential areas with a comfort others could only dream of. A bit like Elysium in Blomkamp’s movie (I know that it’s not set in the Alien universe).
And in a a corporate sourcebook, I would also like to see some kind of mechanic to deal with an obvious core theme in this franchise: money. The rich can buy and sell basicly everything. Not just spacestations and corporations, but also secrets, specimens, people and entire planets. Top level capitalism should matter in a setting like this. I think it could be possible to create some kind campaign engine to make money matter also from a game point of view. A huge investment could be a true game changer or a start of a campaign. From a game point of view a fortune or a company could be a kind of ”base”, much like the ark in Mutant Year Zero. You build stuff to expand and get to the next level. And while you expand, there will be more problems to solve. You could go from owning an asteroid mine to running something much bigger - or maybe end up in huge debts...
So, just to wrap it all up: the corporate aspect is already there in the game, but not really from an hands on point of view. It’s more like a couple of Wikipedia articles. I would like a more playable approach on capitalism. Rich people and big money are for sure important in our world, and be even more important in a world of dystopian capitalism. What they do with their money and power is a key thing. And it matters to everyone in this setting.