My players' next job is going to be hijacking a cargo ship full of Imperial military hardware. The Empire has just crushed an uprising on a planet, shortly after Yavin, and now forces and equipment are being pulled out and redeployed elsewhere. In the middle of all of this, a certain Imperial supply officer is taken advantage of the large movements of materiel to feather his own nest by tagging perfectly good equipment as 'damaged, for disposal' and then re-routing the disposal shipment to a contact in the black market. My players have acquired a cache of spaceport records recently and will find evidence of this buried in it, giving them a chance to hijack a ship full of 'damaged' hardware before it reaches the black market. I'm trying to think of things that could be on board that a supply officer could 'disappear' relatively easily and which would be useful to the Alliance. So far, I have:

- Small arms (rifles, pistols)

- Infantry heavy weapons (E-Webs, missile tubes, flame projectors, light repeaters)

- Munitions (missiles, grenades, blaster gas)

- Medical supplies (med kits, stimpacs, bacta)

- Probe droids

- Security droids

Any suggestions for other things that could be on board?

Uniforms, armor, coms... useful for future infiltration.

Schedules and logs of what is going where in the Empire to who.

Passwords into inventory systems.

Information on what the Empire seems to be most critically short of the most times to give ideas of where to strike.

Intelligence.

Someone will always sell you guns, bombs, and supplies on the black market in any legitimate war. Information on an enemy's logistical situation is far more valuable.

Restricted gear - especially ship mods and heavy weaponry.

Encrypted coms.

Actual vehicles (Walkers, tanks, bikes, etc.)

Like the pirate said, the value here probably isn't the materiel itself, but the soft benefits attached to the materials. The coms aren't a big deal, but coms that can decrypt imperial coms are valuable. Laminate armor isn't terribly special, but armor that lets people dress like stormtroopers is. And so on. Think about episode 6 - that Lambda shuttle and the [old but still checks out] code were what made the plan work.

Foodstuffs - so far no army can run without food...
Spare Parts to various vehicles - get enough spare parts and you can just assemble them into a working piece... maybe...
Water Supplies/Water Supplying Technology

I used to be in the US Army logistics and we only shipped three things.

Beans, Band-aids, and Bullets.

However an army re deploying will also ship housing (tents, pre-fab shelters, construction materials) and furnishings (desks, chairs, tables, cabinets, beds, bedding, and office supplies.

And there are great examples already listed by everyone else already.

IT would be amusing to me to see your crew open up a very valuable crate of . . . staplers.

One could use this as an opportunity to introduce levity. Portable refresher units, lightly used. Entertainment holo-tables loaded with the kinds of things soldiers might watch to relieve the stress of battle. Fifteen gonk droids that tend to get loose and wander the ship.

Or any of the equipment others have suggested, but infested with Felucian bedbugs.

3 hours ago, O the Owl said:

One could use this as an opportunity to introduce levity. Portable refresher units, lightly used. Entertainment holo-tables loaded with the kinds of things soldiers might watch to relieve the stress of battle. Fifteen gonk droids that tend to get loose and wander the ship.

Or any of the equipment others have suggested, but infested with Felucian bedbugs.

Ooh, and you could introduce some moral issues as well when delivering unexpected stuff.

Crates full of care packages being sent by family members. Little stuffed animals and notes from children, candy, holos from girlfriends, hygiene kits from school kids, etc.

Worse, corpses of troopers being sent to homeplanets for burial.

Keep? Destroy? Return? Use for some bizarre plot? Whatever they do you could have some fun. Imagine giving them a newsie type nemesis who is looking for the story of the villains who prevented dead war heroes from getting their peaceful rest. Or the trouble involved in returning the stuff without getting caught.

[edit][Another idea] If you want a turn to the absurd, let them accidentally kidnap a group of USO type entertainers.

19 hours ago, Oden Gebhac said:

Foodstuffs - so far no army can run without food...
Spare Parts to various vehicles - get enough spare parts and you can just assemble them into a working piece... maybe...
Water Supplies/Water Supplying Technology

I like this. Throw in the basic medical supplies, and the entire shipment could be sent off to some backwater colony or outpost that is hurtng for supplies, as is. Then the group could still be the 'good' guys.

46 minutes ago, Genuine said:

Crates full of care packages being sent by family members. Little stuffed animals and notes from children, candy, holos from girlfriends, hygiene kits from school kids, etc.

Worse, corpses of troopers being sent to homeplanets for burial.

Keep? Destroy? Return? Use for some bizarre plot? Whatever they do you could have some fun. Imagine giving them a newsie type nemesis who is looking for the story of the villains who prevented dead war heroes from getting their peaceful rest.

I love it.

This is exactly the kind of thing that would rock my group's world. It is so much fun to create those memorable moments that players still bring up years later.

critical medical supplies... always a boon for the rebellion.

There's a great episode of Firefly (The Train Job, if I remember right...) that handles this perfectly.

Droids could get interesting, one or more accidentally get reactivated during transport and don't take kindly to being stolen from the Empire.

Military losses in reality are an odd thing at times, like Humvees that go missing or other things of that size. We've gone from heavy arms to speeders at this point and you have to think the empire is larger. A good officer could probably disappear nearly anything they wanted to up to a small APC and no one will notice.

Thanks for the input, everyone. I started running this scenario at the weekend, and it's been modified a bit. Rather than a corrupt quartermaster feathering their own nest, this has morphed into an under-the-table payoff to a gang of pirates and slavers who are supplying slaves and equipment from a Hutt cartel to a covert Imperial project. I've gone with a Gozanti freighter loaded with small arms, grenades, light and heavy repeaters, a couple of bacta tanks and a dozen or so probe droids - things that pirates would want and will also be very handy for a Rebel sector force. Hopefully, the PCs will also be adding the Gozanti, the slave transport and a pirate shuttle to the sector fleet as well.

Worse than the stolen stuff, is the stuff that disappears because it physically shows up on an inventory, but shouldn't. A guy I knew was a lieutenant in Vietnam, and upon inspection of his base, foolishly signed the manifest, without physically counting everything. A couple days later, he performs a physical inventory, and came up with 1 extra main battle tank. Since he would be punished for not having the correct inventory, he had the platoon bury the tank, so it wouldn't hurt his performance report. Its amazing how wasteful a bureaucratic army can be.