We play a EotE campaign in which we are about to take on what we suspect is a group of smugglers. Not a big crime syndicate, but still an organization with access to a couple of space ships used for smuggling runs.

Lets say that these ships visit certain planets on a fairly regular basis and use a fairly predicable routes between them. Lets also say that our mechanic/slicer/astrogator is able to gain access to their ship to tamper with their sensors, hyperdrive and/or navicomputer.

Now, what we want to achieve is to drop the smugglers ship out of hyperspace at a place of our choosing. The way I figure it, there are a number of different things that would drop the ship out of hyperspace.

• Close proximity to a gravitational shadow
• A pre-programmed exit from hyperspace in the navicomputer
• A system failure to the hyperspace drive

Now, with access to the ship I recon a skilled slicer could mess with the navicomputer to insert a hidden program or virus of some sort that drop the ship form hyperspace at a pre-programmed place provided the route is known.

Or mess with the sensors so that the ship will be dropped from hyperspace due to the sensors detecting a gravitational shadow where there is none.

Or just mess with the hyperspace drive so that it will malfunction after a certain amount of time, or since it’s linked to the navicomputer and the rest of the ship, at a certain point along its route.

And so, like by magic, the smugglers ship will be dropped from hyperspace in the middle of nowhere, where we will be waiting in ambush.

I agree that it’s a plan where everything depends on the slicer getting his job done, played right it can involve a lot of nice little scenes.

Spaceport officials and landing dock workers must be bribed, astrogation charts must be studied and one might need to masquerade as a hyperdrive technician or some other variant of the good old “we are here to read the gas meter” ploy. Lots of opportunities for good roleplaying.

Any thoughts on this?

My day job is nautical cartographer. One of the things that nautical cartographers do is create a weekly "notice to mariners" that warns mariners of dangers to navigation. For large ships with electronic charts these updates are sent as digital updates. I suspect in a far future setting with astrogation charts there will be something similar. So, a clever slicer could hack the "notice to spacers" and insert some code that would cause a nav error that could precipitate the ship from hyperspace.

So this actually happens in one of the X-Wing books from Legacy. The way they manage it is not to do any direct or major changes to the navicomputer or routes. That **** gets checked a million times a second for the jumps. So, they go into the maps themselves and make miniscule course adjustments to nudge the ship just close enough to a star to pull it out of hyperspace. Which sounds like more or less what jbmacek is suggesting.

Another way it's done is with a space mine. Either an EMP style thing or one that creates a gravity pocket. Toss it up into a well traveled route and collect whatever wanders in. If your party knows the rough route their prey will take they could manage something like that. Though it would be expensive to get the parts maybe.

One more idea is that if he has access to the prey's ship beforehand, maybe he finds a maintenance droid of some sort and reprograms it to just go bash the hyperdrive motivator at some point.

The important thing is that he shouldn't be able to directly attack the navicomputer and should come up with an indirect approach. The more obscure and off the wall, the better because it's less likely to have fail-safes set up against it.

A few thoughts:
How long do you need the ship to stay out of hyperspace? I minor tweak to the navigation charts could drop them out of hyperspace while they figure out the problem. Or if you need something more permanent, just crash the navicomputer. Bringing down the navicomputer would involve all kinds of difficulty checks, as one would assume that the information inside one is checked, double checked, and constantly updated before, during, and after a jump. Difficult, but not impossible.
A second thought is to take down the hyperdrives, themselves. Insert a virus into the engine systems that cuts power/fuel after a certain time in hyperspace. That would be a little more random on where the ship exits hyperspace, though. Don't expect the ship to drop out of hyperspace right next to you.

Another indirect route is to sneak an instruction into the ship's computer that will cause the ship to come out of hyperspace if a certain condition occurs (or seems to occur). For example, a fire or explosion, or decompression of an area of the hull. Then you rig a device that will simulate the trigger condition (or actually cause it, depending on the condition), and when your target vessel emerges from hyperspace, you can swoop in to intercept.

A second thought is to take down the hyperdrives, themselves. Insert a virus into the engine systems that cuts power/fuel after a certain time in hyperspace. That would be a little more random on where the ship exits hyperspace, though. Don't expect the ship to drop out of hyperspace right next to you.

You'd have to have one hell of an Education check to even fathom a guess on that one. You'd be calculating fuel consumption and velocity of a ship along a hyperspace route. Missing something by fractions of a second could put you off by a hundred lightyears. If I were a PC interested in doing this I would go for an EMP mine and an Outer Rim/Core World check for placement. Then it's just a matter of time. On a failed roll I'd have them set the mine properly, but it ends up grabbing a Sector Ranger's cruiser instead of the smugglers.

A second thought is to take down the hyperdrives, themselves. Insert a virus into the engine systems that cuts power/fuel after a certain time in hyperspace. That would be a little more random on where the ship exits hyperspace, though. Don't expect the ship to drop out of hyperspace right next to you.

You'd have to have one hell of an Education check to even fathom a guess on that one. You'd be calculating fuel consumption and velocity of a ship along a hyperspace route. Missing something by fractions of a second could put you off by a hundred lightyears. If I were a PC interested in doing this I would go for an EMP mine and an Outer Rim/Core World check for placement. Then it's just a matter of time. On a failed roll I'd have them set the mine properly, but it ends up grabbing a Sector Ranger's cruiser instead of the smugglers.

If you could pull the location from the navicomputer I guess a virus could activate and disable the hyperdrive when the ship is at the right place.

If your slicer likes to live dangerously, they could stowaway and hack the system mid flight, with setting off a bomb to disable the drive as a back-up plan.

You could just blow up the ship/nav/engines/etc. with a timmed explosive, then have it send out a signal to let you know where they are.

Kill the crew and take the ship before they take off. If you can get onboard, poison everything, set a gas bomb, blow a hole in the side, put land mines in their pillows, etc.

Cheap droids outfitted with fusion cutters and rigged with explosives and dead-man switches could probabably do the job. Even have them play out a message for the pirates to stop at X point or die.

Set the computer to start dumping fuel once in hyperspace forcing them to drop out. Override warning protocols.

You could tow an asteroid or other massive object along the route.

Replace their nav computer/guts of their astrodroid with your own device. This way it is mechanics, computers, and host of other skills.

Hey wait a minute! How are the PCs in-game going to end up with this large think-tank of great ideas to pick from?! You could end up with the equivalent of a PC Ewok having some great ideas on how to disable a thrust-drive because his player works at NASA.

Pirates just tow a large asteroid into a hyperspace lane. jump anyone pulled out by it.

Hey wait a minute! How are the PCs in-game going to end up with this large think-tank of great ideas to pick from?! You could end up with the equivalent of a PC Ewok having some great ideas on how to disable a thrust-drive because his player works at NASA.

I would not worry about that.

The group owns a small space ship "garage" with a connected landing pad, and the mechanic has enough skill in astrogation, computers and mechanic to know how all that stuff works.

Pirates just tow a large asteroid into a hyperspace lane. jump anyone pulled out by it.

Ha! if they have that kind of tech then what the **** do these pirates have that the PCs need?

The group might as well build a gravity gun and point it at a space lane. It's pretty simple. First we just need to raid Kaut and ****** the gravity well projectors off an Interdictor build. We then weld that ***** onto the hood of our YT-1300, with a bit of cabling and some Computers this puppy is ready to go. We head out to the general area of space we want and start randomly firing this thing into space and see what drops out.

Pirates just tow a large asteroid into a hyperspace lane. jump anyone pulled out by it.

Ha! if they have that kind of tech then what the **** do these pirates have that the PCs need?

The group might as well build a gravity gun and point it at a space lane. It's pretty simple. First we just need to raid Kaut and ****** the gravity well projectors off an Interdictor build. We then weld that ***** onto the hood of our YT-1300, with a bit of cabling and some Computers this puppy is ready to go. We head out to the general area of space we want and start randomly firing this thing into space and see what drops out.

Partly because I imagine the energy requirements would be intense to run a tractor beam that long. Pulling an astroid is simplier, much akin to fishing! XD

Another idea is to gain info on where they are going; not every hyperspace route is A to be, but A to B to C to D sort of deal. Waiting at any of those points can be a decent bet.

The problem with "fishing" is that you don't know what will bite.

A group of pirates will be in quite a bit of trouble if they pull an Imperial ship out of hyperspace.

The problem with "fishing" is that you don't know what will bite.

A group of pirates will be in quite a bit of trouble if they pull an Imperial ship out of hyperspace.

they would stay out of sensor range until they know what they have on the hook. likely by using a sensor mounted to the asteroid.

The problem with "fishing" is that you don't know what will bite.

A group of pirates will be in quite a bit of trouble if they pull an Imperial ship out of hyperspace.

they would stay out of sensor range until they know what they have on the hook. likely by using a sensor mounted to the asteroid.

But would not that mean that you're also so far away that the ship they pulled out would have time to maneuver away from whatever pulled them out from hyperspace, calculate a new route and be on their way again.

Unless you use empion mines, which would shoot up the target with quite a bit of ion cannons and possibly disable the ship.

The problem with "fishing" is that you don't know what will bite.

A group of pirates will be in quite a bit of trouble if they pull an Imperial ship out of hyperspace.

they would stay out of sensor range until they know what they have on the hook. likely by using a sensor mounted to the asteroid.

But would not that mean that you're also so far away that the ship they pulled out would have time to maneuver away from whatever pulled them out from hyperspace, calculate a new route and be on their way again.

Unless you use empion mines, which would shoot up the target with quite a bit of ion cannons and possibly disable the ship.

No it would not. They have lots of time so they can set up a full circle net. Also if they are in fighters they can go fast enough to catch up.

The problem with "fishing" is that you don't know what will bite.

A group of pirates will be in quite a bit of trouble if they pull an Imperial ship out of hyperspace.

they would stay out of sensor range until they know what they have on the hook. likely by using a sensor mounted to the asteroid.

But would not that mean that you're also so far away that the ship they pulled out would have time to maneuver away from whatever pulled them out from hyperspace, calculate a new route and be on their way again.

Unless you use empion mines, which would shoot up the target with quite a bit of ion cannons and possibly disable the ship.

I get the impression that it takes some time to recharge the hyperdrive. Plus anything massive enough to make a ship come out of hyperspace will also mandate a not insignificant amount of time to get far enough away to rejump due to its gravity well. Its not like you're talking only a few minutes here, an hour or so at minimum. Plenty of time to get the drop on your prey while also being able to see what you actually snagged.

The problem with "fishing" is that you don't know what will bite.

A group of pirates will be in quite a bit of trouble if they pull an Imperial ship out of hyperspace.

they would stay out of sensor range until they know what they have on the hook. likely by using a sensor mounted to the asteroid.

But would not that mean that you're also so far away that the ship they pulled out would have time to maneuver away from whatever pulled them out from hyperspace, calculate a new route and be on their way again.

Unless you use empion mines, which would shoot up the target with quite a bit of ion cannons and possibly disable the ship.

I get the impression that it takes some time to recharge the hyperdrive. Plus anything massive enough to make a ship come out of hyperspace will also mandate a not insignificant amount of time to get far enough away to rejump due to its gravity well. Its not like you're talking only a few minutes here, an hour or so at minimum. Plenty of time to get the drop on your prey while also being able to see what you actually snagged.

And the pirates could microjump right on top of the same asteroid to be right in the face of whatever they've pulled out of hyperspace. They'd have hours to plot the jump and just sit there with it programmed in, waiting for a victim.

Is there any mentioning in the rules about time needed to recharge or spin up the hyperdrive?

I can't remember anything but the need to do an astrogation check, and even there I can't find any specified amount of time needed, only that the difficulty increases if you are in a hurry.

So if you are dropped from hyperspace in the middle of nowhere, how soon can the hyperdrive get you bak into hyperspace, and how quick can you plot a new course (make the astrogation check)?

Well step one is get out of mass shadow. Step 2 use a new hope as a reference.

Well step one is get out of mass shadow. Step 2 use a new hope as a reference.

• Fly away from planet (5-15 minutes according to rules)
• Calculate hyperspace course
• Hyperdrive malfunction