The setup:

The players are flying from a prison ship in a stolen shuttle, the ship’s fighter detail of several flights have already been deployed, the surface garrison has been alerted, reinforcements from a neighbouring system have been summoned.

The main fighter body are supposed to delay the shuttle and deny her a jump to hyperspace. Therefore, they’re deployed in a wide spaceward screen, just within sensor range, doing erratic manoeuvres, to increase the risk of collision for a hyperspace jump beyond reasonable. Single or pairs of flight groups are going to be send in to attack, and try and damage the shuttle’s hyperdrive. All the while the capital ship is barraging with her turbolasers to further impede possible jump vectors.

How would you handle this situation rulewise? I do have a few inchoate ideas, but would like to read yours first, if nobody minds.

Follow-ups:

Will the hyperdrive register masses without sensor range and alert the astrogator?

If so, can that be exploited to improvise a rudimentary mass detector to surpass sensor range?

If not, how can the hyperdrive eject a ship in near proximity of a mass without colliding?

Simple astrogation check. Hard cool check to have the nerves to pull the lever in the right moment. The millisecond you have a clear path you can jump already as jumping into hyperspace means faster than light travel, a screen light this is inadequate to block a jump.

Furthermore edge of maximum sensor range means that you need numbers way beyond reason to create an interception screen. Lastly the hyperdrive will detect the mass shadow of the fighters right before the collision, after jumping into hyperspace …boom.

Simplest solution against such a pseudo-blockage: Micro Jumping a quarter light second to the galactic up and do the normal jump from there to the lane. Easy peasy astrogation check.

If you want an effective blockage, bring an interdictor as reinforcement into the interstellar space and force the group out of hyperspace midway between systems. Welcome to an imperial trap, follow up ships from the prison and garnison might be on their way as well and the interdictor as his fighters already launched. Time for a chase …

Plan B would be that the jump point is beyond an stellar phenomena which the PCs need to pass first before they can enter hyperspace and enemy fighters wait at that chokepoint already for them.

In No Disintegrations, mines that create gravity wells are provided. They can be deployed in combat, and even a modified Lambda shuttle makes for a decent minelayer.

Awesome!

And very fitting.

IIRC Fly Casual (and in general star wars lore) mentions as well that Pirates usually just drag via tractor beam some larger asteroids into a hyperplane, this is enough to pull out on regular base ships, but usually does not block the whole lane. Not really helpful in this situation, but helpful for other scenes for sure. The gravity mines still sound super, super awesome. Again, blocking a chokepoint is king.

To echo what has already been stated, the ships themselves don't have sufficient mass to interrupt the jump to hyperspace.

Having a fighter sit in front of your jump path does force a collision though.

Without an Interdictor on station, the only options available are to damage the ship (Drive, Hyperdrive, or Powerplant should suffice). And if this is a stock imperial design that was stolen, then the garrison fighters will know where these bits are located.

The Cap ship should have ion cannons, and those will do well (if they hit) to disable the shuttle without destroying it outright.

I think that the more appropriate meta-gaming response would be to expect the PC's to escape this system while the Imperial Capital ship runs a trace on their most likely destination.

The gravity mines throw in an interesting wrench into the mix. Having a TIE Bomber (or other appropriate deployment platform) would throw the target ship off course enough to force the navigator to either pilot back onto the original course (Pilot check) or start plotting a new jump. And if timed right, the gravity mines could pull the ship back out of hyperspace, if it creates its gravity well close enough to the shuttle just after it starts its jump. Very tricky shot.

Do not forget that one form of space combat is Slicing the enemy ship. You do not have to necessarily block the jump, just disable the ability to do it.

In theory, a good slicer or computer expert could slice into the ship and actually shut down the hyperdrive (maybe put it into diagnostic mode) or scramble the Navicomp as an action. While both of these could then be fixed by the crew of the ship, it takes time and delays the jump.

Think outside the box

They have the ship's codes they jam the hyperdrive since they need to activate that before they can even jump but given the shuttle is stolen they need to take out any TIEs that focused on jamming their attempts to escape so the TIE that isn't firing on them is the one they need to take out before they can jump out of the system?

23 hours ago, Ferretfur said:

Do not forget that one form of space combat is Slicing the enemy ship. You do not have to necessarily block the jump, just disable the ability to do it.

In theory, a good slicer or computer expert could slice into the ship and actually shut down the hyperdrive (maybe put it into diagnostic mode) or scramble the Navicomp as an action. While both of these could then be fixed by the crew of the ship, it takes time and delays the jump.

Think outside the box

"Error 404: Hyperlane not found."

A few things are needed to jump IMHO and the way I work Hyperspace in my game universe

1. Free of gravity wells. Arbitrarily 6 rounds of a travel from leaving atmosphere, which can be modified a few rounds by a good/bad astrogation roll. Micro jumping only works in Deep space FREE of a gravity well.. so you still need the rounds to escape the planets gravity.

2. 1-2 turns of non-evasive fly/drive maneuvers to set up the jump for the Navicomp.. basically on autopilot as the Navicomp aligns the ship to the desired course which is free of any potential collisions

Larger ships like Star Destroyers just set up a blockade in this area to deny escape from the planet (Example is the aftermath of the Battle of Hoth in ESB, Escaping from Naboo in TPM) Smaller ships can intercept, but will not be able to deny a jump That is why you use Interdictors, Gravity mines, or even slicing attempts. to prevent travel.

Or some crafty criminals can attempt to disable the ships hyperdrive when they are landed.

When faced with an interdictor, my pcs got holo-clippy: "It looks like you're trying to jump to hyperspace. Would you like help with that?"

On February 10, 2017 at 3:59 PM, downlobot said:

When faced with an interdictor, my pcs got holo-clippy: "It looks like you're trying to jump to hyperspace. Would you like help with that?"