A big unpleasant question first:
"How many of these books do you realistically think the game will support?"
Considering as much as we love this game, it's a niche game, sales are going to be limited. While I believe that you and Hunter are doing this out of the goodness of your hearts
something has to pay for all the work put into this, too. I dislike sounding like a naysayer, but if the sales/support potential for the game is limited, I'd rather see one lavishly made book with a few examples of things instead of have the series end with only half or a third of the topics covered. There's nothing I hate more than seeing, "This will be covered in the Big Sourcebook II, watch for it to come out in our action-packed release schedule for 1993!"
As for adventures, I personally think you should follow the guide of Traveller: The New Era's sourcebook
Path of Tears which kicked so more butts than the population of China and India combined. Okay, maybe not that much, but almost. What I liked about it the most is that it gave you a sketch of the world, the situation, along with some broad strokes by the staff of how things are likely to go on the world in the near future. Then they would list adventure seeds. Most GMs are up to the task writing their own adventures, they just need seed ideas - most GMs are less interested in exhaustively fleshed out adventures except as reading material, almost novels - adventure seeds which are specific to the world and the situation at hand.
For a gear book, I'd like to see an emphasis on stuff players are likely to see or use, while leaving more generic examples of stuff they're going to see less. Like the 2300 vehicle guide was horrible for this. We get like one civilian hovercraft, one civilian 4-wheel drive...and two track laying heavy tanks that are only supposed to be commonly seen on Earth, two front-line military grade hovertanks, two obsolete hovertanks, two hover APCs, and a freaking Partridge with a beret in a pear tree. Enough already. Did we really need exhaustive coverage of frontline military vehicles? Yeah, okay, so it's like Viagra for the gearhead crowd who have no intention of playing the game, but I'd rather have had more useful vehicles for players: Different ATVs, obsolete military vehicles players might see as well as the after-market refits of them, unusual vehicles (players tend to love walkers), and so on.
I'd also suggest some careful thought put into the equipment introduced and have fewer "vorpal weapons" on the pages. Anyone remember the Large Lifeform Detector from 2300? Yes, not militarily useful with a 200m range...maybe not for the military, but that thing was the end-all be-all for players. The vast majority RPG violence is urban warfare - it occurs at ranges of 50m or less (often 10m or less) so they could use it as a magic device to avoid ambushes, map out where the Kafers are in a mining complex, etc. It never explained how it worked - perhaps it palpated the luminiferous ether or something - so as a GM I was hard-pressed to defeat this device that basically made combat a cinch in 2300 and when combat is so easy, it becomes very difficult to discourage players from doing certain things.
I'd like better concentration on medical technology in 2300 - like different brands and devices of life preserving devices. Given that everyone and their dog can get a vicious assault rifle firing armor-piercing high explosive bullets and a grenade launcher underneath it, dealing with people getting their limbs blown off and so on is pretty common - the options available for player trauma resolution would be very useful for me.
As for the "generic" locations, I would like it to be sort of a "still life" with detail fleshed out:
Location: Generic Frontier Farm
This is the McGuire frontier farm on Aurore, located in TANSTAFAAL, but can be easily adapted to any world. Arleen and Joseph McGuire live here with their two daughters and a son, along with two ranch hands. The McGuires grow wheat a number of large fields, as well as having a goodly sized vegetable garden as well as livestock...etc etc etc.
This would allow GMs to use the farm "straight" in some cases, while in other cases, the farm could be adapted. What would be especially nice are detailed floorplans and a 3D render of what the farm would look like from a distance (something for the GM to show the players "Okay, your careful movement pays off and none of you believe anything is onto you. You round a bend in the road and from the foilage on the side of the road you see a farmhouse that looks something like this, or would have before something attacked it. This is the source of the smoke you saw earlier, and you notice that several of the windows have been blown out, and it looks like the main house is actually not burning, but a side building or shed of some sort which is off to the side about 15m from the main house. You see no movement...")
EDIT:
More usual farms might also be presented, for instance a sea-ranching operation, a hydroponics garden an hostile or airless world, etc.
