So I'm going to be transitioning my players from EotE to Force and Destiny (with a separate AoR campaign in the middle with different characters to pad out the time until the core book is released), and I'm going to have to shoot them out of the sky to leave them on a cliffhanger after a few days surviving in the wilds and discovering the Macguffin. I'm thinking of pulling some GM fiat out of nowhere to hit them, but I'd rather give them time to have a bit of a fight so it doesn't feel so railroaded when I get them (ambush deep into the gravity well and all that). Has anyone got any good stats for the classic Hoth-esque ion cannon I can use or an alternative idea? I want them to feel as if they could have got out of there, they just got unlucky

Well the the Ion cannon in ESB is typically statted as a super nasty surface to orbit ion cannon. So to get the results from the film you're talking about something that can either kick out 60+damage, or that has an uber-nasty Vicious rating.

Probably something like:

Sil 5

Defenses 2/2/2/2

Armor: 5ish

HT 30ish

SST 20ish

Sensors: Long

1 Super-Heavy Ion turret

Damage: 20 Range Extreme* Crit 3, Ion Vicious 2** Breach 4ish, Slow Firing 3-5ish

*Low orbit is 99-1200 miles up, so proabably not a stretch to make that extreme, though you could say that's long if you want, I won't judge.

**I'm thinking at least Vicious 2, as that would allow a hot roll to give you the "Major system Failure:Bridge disabled" effect which would allow for the results you see in the film. You could of course go higher if you wanted to get a "Destroyed" result instead....

If you want something a little less devastating I also made some "towed" anti aircraft platforms for my last adventure. IIRC they were something like Sil 3, HT 6, SST 4, sensors close, armor 0, and mounted an auto blaster, or a quad laser, or a pair of medium laser cannons. No reason you couldn't make a pair of light ion cannons an option too.

i think it would rely on planetary shields and armor instead of having shields itself.

Being able to caused 60 system strain seems WAY out of line... so it makes me thing there is a special "Disabling shot" that disables a ship for a few rounds (basically how ever long it takes to reset all the circuit breakers and reset the systems) instead of causing strain

Give them a chance to detect an energy spike on the sensors or threat computer, if they go evasive, the first shot might miss. Then the second shot, or a "rapid fire" using auto-fire to quickly disable them.

you can fudge it anyway you want. But give them warning, and a chance (however slim) of avoiding it and they won't mind as much.

So, “Fly Casual” has the Golan I Space Defense Platform (see http://swrpg.viluppo.net/transportation/starships/1845/ ), which is Sil 8 and has 39 weapons, plus four hard points. You could take the Ion Cannon (Battleship) from AoR (page 240) that does 9 damage, Breach 3 (among other things), and it wouldn’t take too many hits from that thing to take them out.

Or, you could create a Planetary Defense Ion Cannon that does 10 or 11 points of damage and Breach 4, and give it Extreme range, and then make them try to escape through a planetary defense shield. The Planetary Defense Ion Cannon plus the planetary defense shield should be a very hard combination to beat for any ship.

You could spice that up with some TIE/Interceptors and TIE/Hunters that they are highly unlikely to be able to outrun, and they would not be likely to last very long. Follow up with DP20 gunships, which are the fastest Sil 5 ships I know of.

Give them a number of opponents that would be challenging in their own right, but when combined wind up being pretty unbeatable.

Why not give the Ion Cannon something like Concussive X and/or Ensnare X on a ship's scale? That would paralyze the ship for a few rounds, just as the Star Destroyers were over Hoth.

In that case, you need neither Vicious nor ridiculous damage. You can keep on pounding them until they go down.

Together with maybe a Superior and a modded Targeting Array attachment and a capable gunner you should be able to activate the quality with every hit.

Or an array of tractor beams that work in conjunction with the primary ion cannon.

Or an array of tractor beams that work in conjunction with the primary ion cannon.

This is a cool idea, but I'm worried about too much GM bull**** since I've mostly just been letting them do what they want and saying the first thing that came into my head to deal with that. Might keep it in mind for AoR, though