Ok, not the bomb , but I need a bomb, of the narrative kind.

The three PCs are pilots in a large rebel cell (more like a fleet actually), large enough to have a half-dozen or so smaller capital ships, the largest three being roughly equivalent to a Nebulon-B frigate (particularly the one which is an actual Nebulon-B). They are rookie-ish pilot who were first sent on some ground missions to procure ships and munitions (y-wings and proton torpedoes) and just went on their first actual flying mission. The mission was a fairly simple affair; a strike on a communications hub above Saleucami (which all the players can now pronounce, just not the same way) as a part of series of coordinated attacks to create a temporary vulnerability in the imperial network, allowing the rebels an opportunity slice in.

The PCs did their job well, vaporizing the hub with proton torpedoes, while the veteran NPCs held off the TIEs, and it was a nice little space combat to ease them into the space combat rules. Mission acheived, the rebels fell back and prepared to retreat when one of the rebel fighters was disabled by a lucky hit before it could jump to hyperspace, and one of NPC aces peeled of towards the planet surface drawing off a particularly irksome quartet of TIEs. The squad commander sent most of the squad ahead and stayed back with her wingman to give the rescue shuttle a chance to make sure the disabled fighter's navcomputer was destroyed, and if possible, it's pilot rescued. As one one of the PCs is pantoran, which happens to be the most numerous species on Saleucami volunteered her to aid the ace pilot heading towards the pilot, and if needed, clear a path for the rescue shuttle. Naturally, the other PCs volunteered and off they went.

They manage to locate the now downed ace after dealing with the two remaining TIEs, but not before one of their Y-wings got it's hyperdrive shot to pieces and the rescue shuttle reporting that it had to bug out as the battle in space got a little too hot

The current situation is now that they've retrieved the ace and hidden their ships in a cave system in the Saleucamian outback. They have two hyperspace capable (single-seat) fighters left, where I've made the judgement call that while you could squeeze two people in the cockpit with some effort, their movement would be hampered to such a degree that neither of them would be able to pilot the ship effectively, and they've decided against running the imperial gauntlet crammed like sardines in ships piloted by astromechs. It would also mean leaving a valuable Y-wing behind, which they are unwilling to do (having themselves gone through the effort of stealing it from pirates earlier in the campaign). Their current plan is to head out on foot to some nearby farms and "aquire" transportation to somewhere where they can find a ship and/or spare parts, like a city with a space port. On an imperial controlled planet. That's where we ended the session.

Now, I need an unexpected dramatic revelation for them stumble across when poking around in the city or imperial space port. Something that they will feel they need to deal with, despite their meager resources, but not significant enough to derail the entire campaign. The Empire is quite fond of their secret projects, but I have one of those lined up already, and it's to soon for it them to stumble across it again without it seeming too contrived. The campaign is set at an intentionally vague point in time before Yavin, before the rebels came together. Say, roughly 5BBY.

This is some of the setpieces and loose threads established, plus some spitballing:

* The 3 PCs are: Saru Molokai, a Pantoran smuggler honest space trucker who has relatives (flipped a destiny point) on Saleucami , but isn't familiar with the planet. Aisha Orissa, a defected imperial pilot with lingering doubts whether the Empire really is that bad as a whole, and whether the stuff that made her defect was only local corruption, and Leonie Roi, a correllian pirate radio show host who of course also is a hotshot pilot, because Corellia. They have basic survival gear, blaster pistols and one astromech (the other two are watching the ships) with them, as well as a friendly NPC Ace pilot (rival).

* Leonie, being a trivia geek, remembered (when rolling a triumph on a knowledge check) having seen something about a museum exhibit where one of the planets ancient (possibly old republic era) meteor defense cannons was fired as a tourist attraction, and therefore should at least be partially operational. Having thusly set up Chekov's giant space defense cannon, it must now be fired. At what, I don't know, but if nothing else springs to mind I can always have a Star Destroyer show up and hang around menacingly while blocking their escape vector.

* Aisha might be due to witness some kind of imperial injustice or atrocity to strengthen her resolve in the rebel cause. Maybe something serious enough that the PCs feel obligated to deal with it. Something less than a concentration camp, but still pretty bad.

* Saru has (somewhat distant) family here. Maybe victims of human prejudice`? Or are the perhaps prejudiced against humans (two other PCs)? Or are they loyal imperial citizens/collaborators?

* This used to be a Techno union controlled planet. Maybe some kind a mad scientist project left behind? If so what?

* They're fighter jocks, so if there's a particularly cool ship around, I'm guessing they'd feel obliged to steal it. What's a cool, preferably imperial, ship with a hyperdrive? Stats not necessary.

* I need ideas on how to get hold of a new hyperdrive (or the parts to repair one) while on a shoestring budget. NOT POD RACING!

* I'd like to reinforce the theme that rebels are not exactly saints, but I'm short on local resistance ideas that don't just rip off the Jedha ambush in Rogue One. There's probably a local resistance.

* Maybe pod racing?

* Other rebel pilots may have been shot down and taken captive. The PCs have friends in that attack force.

* The PCs has twice crossed path with the Star Destroyer Furor , narrowly escaping both times. Furor seems to have access to some kind experimental cyborg or power armored storm troopers. I'm not sure about having it show up a third time already unless there's some reason for the coincidence. The PCs do not have tracking devices on their ships.

* Are the rebels planning to covertly exfiltrate them? The PCs have not hade contact with friendly forces since they went down to the planet surface.

Ok, so I'm not really out of ideas as such, but I cant for the life of me think of anything inspiring, or inspired for that matter. Feel free to chime in with your ideas or throw some feedback on mine.

Imperial prototype shipyard testing new forms of various vessels, iirc there is a smaller transport which is designed to carry a bunch of TIE fighters. Maybe with some time and ingenuity this type of ship could be modified to carry what they currently have OR gives them a new toy to bring back to the good guys.

Your local resistance idea can be that the Imps are paying the local farmers VERY well for their services to supply the base. Taking out an entire base worth of people would put the formerly strained community in dire straights unless the base were to be requisitioned and used in a short period of time.

The other thing is that star fighters probably shouldn't get too attached to their space craft, they get shot down on an alarmingly regular basis, thus their main priority would probably end up being an evac.

That being said, finding a back door off planet is the start of many a good adventure.

5 hours ago, penpenpen said:

* This used to be a Techno union controlled planet. Maybe some kind a mad scientist project left behind? If so what?

Reminds me of Clone Wars, season 1, episodes 17+18, the Blue Shadow Virus and Mystery of a Thousand Moons. Might be worth watching to get some ideas.

A real bomb would be if it is revealed that Saru's identity has been revealed to the empire. And the empire is known to go after relatives to make resistance undesirable. But you need a good reason to why Saru has been revealed, so a more elegant way is: Saru became a wanted rebel, because his relatives on the planet are the rebels. It's still a bomb and you need to think about it first, because it is still very inconvenient for the player's if their character is wanted by the empire, but it is most certainly a narrative bomb. A bomb which allows for a more natural way to contact the local rebel cell.

For the hyperdrive: Stealing a whole replacement might be difficult, the empire only uses hyperdrives in larger ships ... well outside of their special assets like the Defender and StarWing. And repairing the thing might be easier anyway and just a matter of getting the tools ready, doing a mechanic check to assert the damage and just buying some parts at the local space port to fix it up. No pod racing needed, because imperial credits are good everywhere a star destroyer can go.
Another way would be getting help from the local cell for the same thing. They may or may not have their own workshop to repair ships, but to be honest this is the more unlikely scenario, because bigger cells should usually get invited into the alliance. Now naturally nothing speaks against having an actual alliance cell on the planet. The pilots and PCs would know nothing about that as the cell structure is maintained to prevent vital informations to revealed to the empire, but it sometimes can be hinder the alliance as well … like in this case when the players have no knowledge about the local cell and no way to directly contact them. Though the locals should be familiar with the area and most likely faster to find the PCs than any imperial search. But maybe they don't and the players first find empty houses and imperial propaganda at the house of Saru's relatives. Not everything needs to be big to be interesting. Or even over dramatic.
If you go this less dramatic way after dropping the bomb that Saru is not the only rebel in his family, we may proceed to help the local cell to capture a radio station in town. The station is sending planet wide, maybe even system wide and as you may have guessed is the perfect opportunity for Leonie Roi to shine. The mission goal here is to spread counter propaganda against the imperial propaganda about the attack on the communication hub. As it is the nature with propaganda, the rebels most likely will be lying themselves. A classic would be for example that they gave the imperial's enough time to evacuate before blowing up the hub or even downright stating that the hub was evacuated first. A little more doubt Aisha.
Lastly, we can't have Aisha without some display of imperial cruelty. Though to be honest, I can't come up with something not seen in Rebels already. Maybe you just use something from there. You may want to put this segment in town before they capture the radio station to spread rebel propaganda. Or you plan to place this segment after if your players actually come up with a spin for the propaganda which is true and still pro-terrorists. In that case imperials actually helping civilians would work too.

Speaking of helping civilians. A communication hub consists mostly have rather heat resistance metal-compounds. There might be civilian casualties once debris from the communication hub goes down. And the imperials might be doing their best to prevent this ... or the rebel cells might be doing this, while the imperials hoping to use this for their advantage and propaganda. The rebels are easily to blame for this, so why not just let it hit "the town"*.

After all this rambling text , I think I know how I would write the next few sessions, I hope you could extract something useful out of it as well. Sorry for the inconsistency, I was just throwing ideas and thoughts onto the wall and went with the stuff that sticked the most, and I don't have right now the time to restructure it into something more linear and clear. I still hope it gave you some ideas.

*star wars planets tend to have only ONE town on the whole planet, at least only one which is relevant for the narrative and it is always the one closest to the players.

7 hours ago, ASCI Blue said:

Your local resistance idea can be that the Imps are paying the local farmers VERY well for their services to supply the base. Taking out an entire base worth of people would put the formerly strained community in dire straights unless the base were to be requisitioned and used in a short period of time.

This is pure gold! I can use this to tie together a bunch of disparate ideas I already had!

7 hours ago, LordBritish said:

The other thing is that star fighters probably shouldn't get too attached to their space craft, they get shot down on an alarmingly regular basis, thus their main priority would probably end up being an evac.

I agree that this is normally the case, but we've established earlier that at least this rebel group essentially has more pilots than fighters, and the ones they have aren't that great. There's a tier system in place where the best pilots get the best fighters available, and the rest are stuck flying fleet defense in the low tier fighters without hyperdrives, hoping that the carrier ships will be used offensively. So it's a matter of personal pride, as well as vanity, involved in getting their precious Y-wings back if possible.

5 hours ago, whafrog said:

Reminds me of Clone Wars, season 1, episodes 17+18, the Blue Shadow Virus and Mystery of a Thousand Moons. Might be worth watching to get some ideas.

You know, the mere presence of a reactivated chemical/biological weapons plant might be enough to spur the PCs into action. Good call!

25 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Speaking of helping civilians. A communication hub consists mostly have rather heat resistance metal-compounds. There might be civilian casualties once debris from the communication hub goes down. And the imperials might be doing their best to prevent this ... or the rebel cells might be doing this, while the imperials hoping to use this for their advantage and propaganda. The rebels are easily to blame for this, so why not just let it hit "the town"*.

They were so happy about rolling that 151+ crit when blowing it up, I almost have to have a piece of it crash into an orphanage or something...

Or you know, maybe the PCs, having seen the whole thing from space, realize it couldn't have, and yet there's a burning orphanage. The empire couldn't be so callous as to fabricate some civilian collateral damage to make the rebels look bad, now could they?

25 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

After all this rambling text , I think I know how I would write the next few sessions, I hope you could extract something useful out of it as well. Sorry for the inconsistency, I was just throwing ideas and thoughts onto the wall and went with the stuff that sticked the most, and I don't have right now the time to restructure it into something more linear and clear. I still hope it gave you some ideas.

After my initial post I can't really fault anyone for rambling, can I? Your post was extremely helpful and full of awesome stuff to chuck in. I might end up turning this whole side quest into a propaganda war over the hearts and minds of Saleucami. You're a mad genius and you know it!

21 minutes ago, penpenpen said:

They were so happy about rolling that 151+ crit when blowing it up, I almost have to have a piece of it crash into an orphanage or something...

Imho a good GM is using the highs of a group to create new lows in the story, while the lows are meant as opportunities for new highs to reach. The real tricky part imho is to achieve the classic form.

And when I think about that, the debris hitting or not hitting the town might be the perfect climax, especially as it would be a fantastic resolution for your planned propaganda war as well*. Alliance fighters in the sky, riding into a tjost with falling meteors which aim for the town**.
After this the rebel fighters jump into hyperspace and this story is over.

* Depending on the realism your group is aiming for you may or may not live stream this event to the whole planet, because technical falling debris would be coming down too fast to make the event a spectacle for the naked eye from the ground. Alas star wars usually slows down this kind of stuff, so having it visible for the population by just looking up would be fine too.
** Now depending how the rest of the adventure went, we might see rebels and imperials together hitting the debris or imperial fighters trying to stop the rebels from intercepting the debris. It's an RPG after all, no ending should be certain.

The answer is clearly a Chadra-fan sponsored pod-race that is being rigged by the corrupt imperial governor. The grand price for winning us enough to save the relatives of the pilot from having their space truck impounded and maybe get the parts needed to repair the hyperdrive. But with a bit of trickery, the purate radio show host can become the announcer of the race.

Hmm, what more clichés can we cram into this? Right, there is also a precious orphaned kid there who us sick in unnamed space sickness caused by a chemical spill from a nearby imperial research base. And their dying wish is to see one of the PCs win the race, and the price money might just be enough to save the kid. But it's not enough to save the truck, the kid and get the parts. They're going to have to chose the one that matters the most.

Oh yeah, and the chemical plant isn't just there to research weapons. They're also researching a new type of fertilizer that will radically increase crop yields and have a lesser ecological impact. But also make for better explosives or something.

Additional idea. The local rebel cell is willing to help them out for a bit of quid-pro-quo, if they steal a bunch of that space fertilizer for a bomb. Which they then load up onto a speedertruck and park in front of the imperial garrison. Because the galaxy is a horrible place filled with horrible people.

1 hour ago, SEApocalypse said:

Imho a good GM is using the highs of a group to create new lows in the story, while the lows are meant as opportunities for new highs to reach. The real tricky part imho is to achieve the classic form.

And when I think about that, the debris hitting or not hitting the town might be the perfect climax, especially as it would be a fantastic resolution for your planned propaganda war as well. Alliance fighters in the sky, riding into a tjost with falling meteors which aim for the town*.
After this the rebel fighters jump into hyperspace and this story is over.

* Now depending how the rest of the adventure went, we might see rebels and imperials together hitting the debris or imperial fighters trying to stop the rebels from intercepting the debris. It's an RPG after all, no ending should be certain.

This post has chart, therefore everything in it must be true.

I am loving these ideas, but it's starting to sound like a lot more debris than a minor Sil6 space station would produce. Maybe having space station debris hitting (or just barely missing) a population center to establish the possible consequences and then revisit it in the climax with something more substantial, and involving chekov's giant space cannon to either cause or prevent a second, larger impact. A random meteor shower is a bit... random, so I might have to use something else. Maybe someone actually throws an asteroid at the city as a deniable strike, as the early warning system went down with the comms hub. Are the rebels that bad? Is the empire?

1. The materials of a space station are much denser than a plain rocky asteroid. Durasteel seems to be more resistance than iron and should have no trouble with managing re-entry. A 100m solid-iron fragment of 450m space station (sil 6) would create a nearly 10km creator when based on iron and entry angle of 30° and with a projectile speed of "just" 3km/s. A geostationary orbital speed is about 3km/s. Several smaller debris parts than 100m pieces are likely, easier to deal with blaster fire from X-Wings anyway. 30° is a worst case entry vector, still, the metal core is the main issue here, even just small pieces are too dense to just burn up on entry into the atmosphere and on top those pieces might have gotten accelerated into the planet from the blast wave.
   
2. Just coming down on the town per accident seems like a rather big coincidence indeed. But tractor beams at the other hand … perfect imperial propaganda and who could proof that the imperials tempered with the trajectory to get something out of their loss in terms of propaganda?
3. The chekov's giant space cannon might be used to first break up an incoming larger piece and clear smaller remaining pieces with the fighters. Or just as you said, first hit the planet in general with smaller pieces and make the imperials throw some large piece down, ready to be blasted by the chekhov' cannon. Having such a large gun seems actually rather practical to vaporize a larger space debris junk. Might as well part of the propaganda plot, because that gun could have been used against smaller pieces as well, so why did the empire not protect that small shanty town on the outskirts of city.
   

Edit:
Oh and don't get me wrong, debris from the destroyed base is most certainly not the only way to handle things, it's just for sure a plausible one, especially as a sil 6 structure is already rather large, even a 200m Marauder-Class is still sil 5. The 255m Vigil class is still sil 5 as well. The smallest Sil 6 I can think of is a 450m nebulon-b , the MC30-C is sil 6 and already 580m long.

2 hours ago, Darth Revenant said:

The answer is clearly a Chadra-fan sponsored pod-race that is being rigged by the corrupt imperial governor. The grand price for winning us enough to save the relatives of the pilot from having their space truck impounded and maybe get the parts needed to repair the hyperdrive. But with a bit of trickery, the purate radio show host can become the announcer of the race.

Hmm, what more clichés can we cram into this? Right, there is also a precious orphaned kid there who us sick in unnamed space sickness caused by a chemical spill from a nearby imperial research base. And their dying wish is to see one of the PCs win the race, and the price money might just be enough to save the kid. But it's not enough to save the truck, the kid and get the parts. They're going to have to chose the one that matters the most.

Oh yeah, and the chemical plant isn't just there to research weapons. They're also researching a new type of fertilizer that will radically increase crop yields and have a lesser ecological impact. But also make for better explosives or something.

Additional idea. The local rebel cell is willing to help them out for a bit of quid-pro-quo, if they steal a bunch of that space fertilizer for a bomb. Which they then load up onto a speedertruck and park in front of the imperial garrison. Because the galaxy is a horrible place filled with horrible people.

I like these dilemmas.

I might have to get a cow to produce enough cheese to pull some of these off, but it might edamer well be worth it.

10 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

1. The materials of a space station are much denser than a plain rocky asteroid. Durasteel seems to be more resistance than iron and should have no trouble with managing re-entry. A 100m solid-iron fragment of 450m space station (sil 6) would create a nearly 10km creator when based on iron and entry angle of 30° and with a projectile speed of "just" 3km/s. A geostationary orbital speed is about 3km/s. Several smaller debris parts than 100m pieces are likely, easier to deal with blaster fire from X-Wings anyway. 30° is a worst case entry vector, still, the metal core is the main issue here, even just small pieces are too dense to just burn up on entry into the atmosphere and on top those pieces might have gotten accelerated into the planet from the blast wave.
   
2. Just coming down on the town per accident seems like a rather big coincidence indeed. But tractor beams at the other hand … perfect imperial propaganda and who could proof that the imperials tempered with the trajectory to get something out of their loss in terms of propaganda?
3. The chekov's giant space cannon might be used to first break up an incoming larger piece and clear smaller remaining pieces with the fighters. Or just as you said, first hit the planet in general with smaller pieces and make the imperials throw some large piece down, ready to be blasted by the chekhov' cannon. Having such a large gun seems actually rather practical to vaporize a larger space debris junk. Might as well part of the propaganda plot, because that gun could have been used against smaller pieces as well, so why did the empire not protect that small shanty town on the outskirts of city.
   

Edit:
Oh and don't get me wrong, debris from the destroyed base is most certainly not the only way to handle things, it's just for sure a plausible one, especially as a sil 6 structure is already rather large, even a 200m Marauder-Class is still sil 5. The 255m Vigil class is still sil 5 as well. The smallest Sil 6 I can think of is a 450m nebulon-b , the MC30-C is sil 6 and already 580m long.

Heh, well the stats used for the hub was essentially a refluffed, stationary Nebulon-B. Probably a little bit bigger as it didn't need to be as cramped as a dedicated warship. While it should make it big enough, it might leave me with not long enough of a window before the pieces start raining from the sky in a climax. However, I was pretty vague exactly how far the station was from the planet, just mentioning something a bout a lagrange point, so it could technically be a decent part of the way to the local sun. Either way, having imperials tractor debris down onto or close to civilian targets to paint the rebels in a bad light is a brilliant idea, and explosive stuff if they can prove and expose it.

As for the space defense cannon, I described it as remnant from a bygone era, maybe even thousands of years old, and essentially reduced to a museum piece and a bit of tourist trap. I figured it something akin to the eiffel tower, but it also shoots lasers.

Of course, nowadays it's not nearly powered to full strength (it probably wouldn't survive it, and only a madman or PC would even try it) and only fired to make what amounts to pretty fireworks displays once a decade or so. The targeting systems may be intact, but may be so old no one knows how to work them anymore and no one has bothered to try because it would be impossible to aim it because the ancient repulsorservos are surely seized after all this time.

Of course, there's that crazy old museum janitor who's been there forever and always bothers people with obscure trivia about the "old girl" and stays after hours polishing the ancient components...

I bet if some kind of lunatic hooked up the entire city's power grid to the old thing it could probably deal with all kinds of space debris, including star destroyers. Of course, hitting a star destroyer might cause more debris rather than less.

Maybe there's a (now imperial) base on a moon (it is in fact a moon, not a space station), with huge tractor beams to push debris away that replaced it. Surely, if someone misused those tractor beams for nefarious purposes, there wouldn't be any way to hurt them from way down on the planet surface...

Maybe it's called the Vokech cannon, just to see if the players catch on.

Even a normal star destroyer would have strong enough tractor beams to give a debris a notch. They are strong enough to haul in whole corvettes into those giant hangar bays those star destroyers have. No need to invent some imperial stations and large, long-range tractor beams.

If the "station" has been in geostationary orbit around a earth-like planet then it can take iirc without problem days or even years until the debris finally fall from the sky. The speed of them is in general in those cases below 11km/s and in most cases below 3km/s.

If system is sol like and we are talking about a lagrange point between the star and planet, the L1 and L2 are from earth is 1.5 Million km away and 3 Million km away from each other. At speeds below 11km/s it would be possible on top to enter orbit and not all orbits all stable. So the whole thing would take maybe a week until it hits the planet if it will be a direct hit and an unknown amount of time if not. The other 3 lagrange points are even further out and basically out of question for station near the planet.

If you mean the lagrange points between the one of moons and the planet it gets a lot more complicated. From that point you are basically in a "anything goes" situation unless one of your guys is really, really into rocket science.
The interferences from 2 moons, the sun and planet make things hard to predict and orbits can get a little unstable. Still the L1 of a moon-planet system would be between the moon and the planet and quite useful position for a communication relay. The L2 would have the moon between the planet and station, which is useful if the station should operate mostly in secret or just to avoid any interferences from the planet as in this case the moon acts as shield.
The L1 earth moon is 344,000 km from earth, while the moon is 384,000 km from earth. Saleucami moons might be even smaller, so the distance should be proportional even closer to the moon.

Most importantly: It's Star Wars, don't sweat the details of physics, we are playing space fantasy after all. Story goes before science in this setting. It is still cool if the science checks out.

And now to something totally different.

" Overtime, the Saleucamians had developed defense systems which prevented meteor impact by blasting incoming space debris to dust before it entered the atmosphere.", might be actually your giant cannon.
So maybe there is a giant long-range tractor beam on that moon, just to keep further meteors away. The only trouble here is, that the locals should have experience with dealing with debris AND should observe the sky ... well or the empire took over that job from them and decided not to warn anybody until "too late".

Cut Lawquane might be actually a rebel leader. He said he did not want to fight for the republic just because his programming said so, but fighting for his family is different. Fighting the empire would be different. And his daughter would be a grown up woman by the time of the battle of Yavin.

I have now managed to delete my 90% finished post twice and I am sorely tempted to test the limits of the profanity filter.

12 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Even a normal star destroyer would have strong enough tractor beams to give a debris a notch. They are strong enough to haul in whole corvettes into those giant hangar bays those star destroyers have. No need to invent some imperial stations and large, long-range tractor beams.

Oh, the tractor beams can be regular star destroyer ones, I just figured it would be cheaper to mount them on a moon.

And I wanted an excuse for a giant cannon to be fired from the surface of one planet to another. I might also have been playing a lot of Terraforming Mars lately...

It's probably not a cannon big enough to 'splode a moon though.

Ok, maybe if it's a really small one.

12 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

If the "station" has been in geostationary orbit around a earth-like planet then it can take iirc without problem days or even years until the debris finally fall from the sky. The speed of them is in general in those cases below 11km/s and in most cases below 3km/s.

If system is sol like and we are talking about a lagrange point between the star and planet, the L1 and L2 are from earth is 1.5 Million km away and 3 Million km away from each other. At speeds below 11km/s it would be possible on top to enter orbit and not all orbits all stable. So the whole thing would take maybe a week until it hits the planet if it will be a direct hit and an unknown amount of time if not. The other 3 lagrange points are even further out and basically out of question for station near the planet.

If you mean the lagrange points between the one of moons and the planet it gets a lot more complicated. From that point you are basically in a "anything goes" situation unless one of your guys is really, really into rocket science.
The interferences from 2 moons, the sun and planet make things hard to predict and orbits can get a little unstable. Still the L1 of a moon-planet system would be between the moon and the planet and quite useful position for a communication relay. The L2 would have the moon between the planet and station, which is useful if the station should operate mostly in secret or just to avoid any interferences from the planet as in this case the moon acts as shield.
The L1 earth moon is 344,000 km from earth, while the moon is 384,000 km from earth. Saleucami moons might be even smaller, so the distance should be proportional even closer to the moon.

I intentionally left it vague what type of lagrange point it was on, and only mentioned it in passing, so the players probably won't notice if I decide to retcon it. The reason I decided against simply having it in orbit was that I figured (took a wild guess actually) that an interstellar comms station should probably work better a little further away from big massive objects like planets, which I alluded to in the write-up I did on our internal wiki and posted here . Also, I wanted there to be planet based reinforcements for the Imperials that would need some time to arrive.

12 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Most importantly: It's Star Wars, don't sweat the details of physics, we are playing space fantasy after all. Story goes before science in this setting. It is still cool if the science checks out.

Words to live by! When I was a wee lad on the internet I hung around the fringes of the Star Wars vs. Star Trek sh*tstorm debate and quickly learned that while it's fun to make scientific sense of sci-fi (space opera and space fantasy included), it should definitely not be taken too seriously. Of course, it's the internet, so it inevitably will be, but hey.

12 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

And now to something totally different.

" Overtime, the Saleucamians had developed defense systems which prevented meteor impact by blasting incoming space debris to dust before it entered the atmosphere.", might be actually your giant cannon.
So maybe there is a giant long-range tractor beam on that moon, just to keep further meteors away. The only trouble here is, that the locals should have experience with dealing with debris AND should observe the sky ... well or the empire took over that job from them and decided not to warn anybody until "too late".

The exact quote I had in mind.

From the text though, it seems these systems were in place well before the great galactic war, almost 4000 years earlier. The Vokech cannon isn't necessarily that old, but some it's foundations might be. And for some reason it's no longer in use. When I introduced it, I didn't give much thought to why, just that it would be cool to have an old space defense cannon as museum/monument and the fact that it has been fired recently for celebratory/ceremonial reasons, indicating that it's at least partially operational (pro tip: cherish players who ask for the custom skill Knowledge: Trivia).

I'm not sure how persistant a problem meteor strikes could plausibly be. I'm not really sure how I'd go about looking it up, but it seems to me it wouldn't be too far fetched to assume that the problem might have abated over the millennia. For that reason, the old system might have been downgraded and dismantled over the years, leaving just the Vokech cannon. Or perhaps it's still a problem, and the old system was simply replaced because it was old and inefficient. Or maybe the old system was mostly destroyed in a war, maybe even as recently as the clone wars, and needed replacing.

Regardless, the meteor issue would have shaped the cultural heritage of the planet, and the saleucamians would probably want to have some kind of defense in place, just in case. I guess shields would probably be the reasonable option, but since that's boring, that is obviously not feasible for whatever reason, so tractor beams it is. Since I apparently had decided that the comms station also had a big tractor beam, it too could have been part of the defense system.

****, that turned into a lot of world building.

So, how use this?

Imperial false flag operation: To salvage something from the embarrassing defeat, the local imperial commander orders some of the wreckage of the space station guided towards a civilian target using the tractor beams, to prove that the rebels are endangering civilians. It might not be intended to hit, in fact the, intent might be to deflect or stop it just in time, making the empire look more like saviors, averting disaster at the last moment. And if the happen to screw it up, they can blame the rebels. Win-win.
Additionally, with the early warning system gone, they can plausible repeat these last minute rescues a few times before people get suspicious. If exposed, the imperial commander can take desperate measures and attempt to stamp out any rebellion by openly holding the planet hostage from the moon base, where he is most definitely safe from harm.
Of course, if they do use the Vokech cannon to deal with him and the base, the rest of the debris will be arriving imminently and they might have to take to the skies and deal with it using lasers and their few remaining torpedoes.

Rebel colony drop: Destroying the early warning system was always the plan, as these rebels are ruthless enough to take extreme measures. With the system gone, the second part of the plan becomes activated, and a giant asteroid is launched at Saleucami. The rebels will of course take some badwill for blowing up the early warning system, but they're counting on being able to cover their tracks regarding actually launching the asteroid. Ideally, the PCs shouldn't find out until much later, but they might be getting suspicious.

Astronomically bad luck: Of course there was meteors coming when the station went down. Now the PCs need to fix it, or the rebels will take them blame for it. And they might still suspect their superiors for planning it.

13 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Cut Lawquane might be actually a rebel leader. He said he did not want to fight for the republic just because his programming said so, but fighting for his family is different. Fighting the empire would be different. And his daughter would be a grown up woman by the time of the battle of Yavin.

I'm pretty sure only one of the players has actually seen that episode, so the reference would be kind of wasted. Still, the hybrid kids are kind of cool, so I might throw them in regardless.

30 minutes ago, penpenpen said:

I'm not sure how persistant a problem meteor strikes could plausibly be.

Imperial false flag operation: To salvage something from the embarrassing defeat, the local imperial commander orders some of the wreckage of the space station guided towards a civilian target using the tractor beams, to prove that the rebels are endangering civilians. It might not be intended to hit, in fact the, intent might be to deflect or stop it just in time, making the empire look more like saviors, averting disaster at the last moment. And if the happen to screw it up, they can blame the rebels. Win-win.
Additionally, with the early warning system gone, they can plausible repeat these last minute rescues a few times before people get suspicious. If exposed, the imperial commander can take desperate measures and attempt to stamp out any rebellion by openly holding the planet hostage from the moon base, where he is most definitely safe from harm.
Of course, if they do use the Vokech cannon to deal with him and the base, the rest of the debris will be arriving imminently and they might have to take to the skies and deal with it using lasers and their few remaining torpedoes.

Plausible are thousands of years of meteor activity. In young star systems even millions of years, though those are unlikely to develop life while still under heavy meteor impacts.

Personally I would go with the false flag operation, though having some rebel commander actually knowing of incoming meteorites sounds cool as well, but does not seem to fit here, because there I can not think of any valid target for them to hit. Not even invalid targets, because just hitting civilians without the chance to blame the enemy seems useless for the rebels. Now the guy who ordered the strike against the station could have known that this MIGHT happen, because the com relay was as well the observatory for the planet.

For Cut Lawquane: It's even better when your players did not have seen the episode, because the character itself is interesting and most if not all of your players should be familiar with the clone army and old captain Rex from Rebels. Clones age much faster, so cut will be an old man by now as well.

55 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Plausible are thousands of years of meteor activity. In young star systems even millions of years, though those are unlikely to develop life while still under heavy meteor impacts.

Personally I would go with the false flag operation, though having some rebel commander actually knowing of incoming meteorites sounds cool as well, but does not seem to fit here, because there I can not think of any valid target for them to hit. Not even invalid targets, because just hitting civilians without the chance to blame the enemy seems useless for the rebels. Now the guy who ordered the strike against the station could have known that this MIGHT happen, because the com relay was as well the observatory for the planet.

For Cut Lawquane: It's even better when your players did not have seen the episode, because the character itself is interesting and most if not all of your players should be familiar with the clone army and old captain Rex from Rebels. Clones age much faster, so cut will be an old man by now as well.

The false flag option is probably the obvious choice, as it's the easiest to make sense of. Also works well with triggering personal themes for all three PCs.

Sadly, only one of three has watched much of Rebels/Clone Wars and one of them hasn't watched a single episode of either. Even referencing Rex wouldn't do much for 2/3 of them. But hey, I might throw Cut in for my personal amusements. They might show up on his farmstead and try to "appropriate" his speeder.

Gotcha covered, Pen.

"As you press through the throng of people, theres a commotion ahead. Making your way to the front of the crowd, you see several stormtroopers accosting citizens, pulling them from their homes and shops, separating husbands from wives, parents from children. Nearby, an Imperial Governor stands by in full uniform, watching the proceedings. His bodyguards appear to be stormtroopers...albeit somewhat tall and robust stormtroopers.

'Citizens of the Empire,' the governor begins. 'Our communications hub in orbit has recently been destroyed by rebel agents. We believe them to now be hiding among you. These people will be brought in for questioning, as will others, until these vandals and traitors are discovered. Anyone found to be assisting them will be charged with high treason. Anyone confessing will be shown mercy.'

"A young Pantoran male, pulled away from his wife and infant child, breaks away from the troopers and runs to his family. The governor quickly draws his pistol and fires. The Pantoran collapses mid stride, a smoking blaster wound in the middle of his back. He does not get up. His wife screams in anguish and rushes to his body, sobbing loudly. The governor turns to a stormtrooper sargent and quickly says, 'Arrest her. Suspicion of aiding and abetting a traitor' and begins walking towards the hover transport nearby. The stormtroopers grab her roughly by the arms and march her towards the transport with the other detainees as well, her young child wailing in her arms."

The governor can be a run-of-the-mill NPC, nothing fancy there. He just a mean sumbitch who really needs to be scotched. His bodyguards, however, are Dark Troopers. If your players haven't run across them, they are in for a rude little shock. The Pantoran PC should realize that his family could be pulled in for 'questioning' at any time, so he will be motivated to keep them from harm. And the Imperial defector should have it cemented for her that she made the right choice. The pirate radio podcaster will realize 'the galaxy has GOT to know about this'.

If you want a good option for an Imperial Hyperdrive fighter, I like the Alpha Class Xg-1 Star Wing.

It gets eclipsed by the TIE Defender, which replaced it, but is an excellent heavy weapons platform. Heavy armor and shields, but slow, with hyperdrive. Lasers, Ion cannon, and missiles or bombs. Could easily be stolen, flown close to a picket ship (using the current codes), then blow a hole in the cordon for everyone to follow.

Oooor... they could stumble across this:

http://fractalsponge.net/?p=329

or perhaps one of these:

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2014/8/11/ruthlessness-and-intimidation/

(I'd use the same stats, either way...)

It seems like it would do a great job dealing with falling debris, and would be absolutely irresistible to any party of PC flight jocks I can imagine...

On 2017-12-20 at 6:28 AM, LugWrench said:

His bodyguards, however, are Dark Troopers. If your players haven't run across them, they are in for a rude little shock. The Pantoran PC should realize that his family could be pulled in for 'questioning' at any time, so he will be motivated to keep them from harm.

That's some inspiring stuff! I'll definitely use some of it but, they have bumped into the Star Destroyer conducting field trials of Phase Zero Darktroopers twice now, so them showing up again will be a bit too much of a contrived coincedence. Well, at least for now.

Right now I'm leaning towards making the pantoran family willing collaborators. Nothing too damning, but they're making good money hauling cargo for the empire or something like that. It'll sting a little extra because Saru got run out of business when the empire consolidated shipping contracts and basically forced her to let her freighter company get absorbed by a bigger company and just stay on as an employee, or face revoked licenses and bankruptcy (she chose to rebel).

On 2017-12-22 at 0:59 AM, Edgookin said:

If you want a good option for an Imperial Hyperdrive fighter, I like the Alpha Class Xg-1 Star Wing.

They are indeed nice and I've used them before, but currently I'm leaning towards something more unique and not strictly imperial; an Aggressor Assault Fighter undergoing preliminary field trials.

With a hotshot in the group, I'm pretty sure the inertial compensators will be switched off at some point.

23 hours ago, Bishop69 said:

It seems like it would do a great job dealing with falling debris, and would be absolutely irresistible to any party of PC flight jocks I can imagine...

That's.... a bit bigger than I had in mind.

While I can see the appeal of all the guns, I think they'd find it too slow and sluggish. They're already looking to get some ion turbines for their Y-wings, so a Speed 3, Handling -3 ship would be like downgrading from a race car to a school bus.

For a cool Imperial ship with a hyperdrive I might use the TIE Advanced/x1 aka Vader's TIE. According to Legends sources while never mass-produced it was not unique. For something more exotic, maybe use the Scurrg H-6 prototype bomber. The Empire could have had Nubian Star Drives reproduce the design for testing for possible mass production.

On ‎12‎/‎22‎/‎2017 at 8:43 PM, penpenpen said:

That's some inspiring stuff! I'll definitely use some of it but, they have bumped into the Star Destroyer conducting field trials of Phase Zero Darktroopers twice now, so them showing up again will be a bit too much of a contrived coincedence. Well, at least for now.

Right now I'm leaning towards making the pantoran family willing collaborators. Nothing too damning, but they're making good money hauling cargo for the empire or something like that. It'll sting a little extra because Saru got run out of business when the empire consolidated shipping contracts and basically forced her to let her freighter company get absorbed by a bigger company and just stay on as an employee, or face revoked licenses and bankruptcy (she chose to rebel).

They are indeed nice and I've used them before, but currently I'm leaning towards something more unique and not strictly imperial; an Aggressor Assault Fighter undergoing preliminary field trials.

With a hotshot in the group, I'm pretty sure the inertial compensators will be switched off at some point.

That's.... a bit bigger than I had in mind.

While I can see the appeal of all the guns, I think they'd find it too slow and sluggish. They're already looking to get some ion turbines for their Y-wings, so a Speed 3, Handling -3 ship would be like downgrading from a race car to a school bus.

nah... that's what upgrades are for...