2 hours ago, Shaheed the Gand said:

So would anyone here disagree on my PC's being able to pick up Imperial communications from their ship's standard equipment? The example being trying to monitor an Imperial ship's whereabouts while trying to remain hidden at the same time. I was going to let them intercept and listen to their ship-to-ground party's conversation if they had enough left over success and/or advantage. Is this kosher or a no no?

Per Legends: " It should also be noted that information transmitted via the HoloNet was nearly impossible to infiltrate or corrupt, thanks to the s-thread's incredibly narrow hyperspace dimensions. The only way to do so was to attach a listening device to the sender's equipment, the relay station, or at the destination itself."

Per your table: whatever works best for y'all. It sounds like you're having fun and it serves the story, and that's what's most important.

On ‎6‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 6:41 PM, Lukey84 said:

adding in some player feedback- I'm getting your point more, and I think the wireless widgets thing was a good middle ground.

However, I just can't ignore the fact that the databases are wireless. For example, how do Star Destroyers talk to each other? Holonet. How does Imp data get instantly updated? Holonet. How did Agent Fulcrum send messages from inside Imperial installations to the rebel base on another planet? Holonet. And how did Cad Bane/Chopper/Mako hack the systems of the Republic/Empire? Holonet. While I get your point, how do we throw all that away?q

Of course you can do whatever you want, but I notice that there is this trend of making the Empire/First Order kind of incompetent and stupid in how they do things. The smaller the adversary the smaller the hero, and from Comedy Relief Battle Droids to Capital Ships with civilian quality transceiver gear what you are doin is setting the enemy up as somewhat un-serious. If this fits the mood/tone of your campaign then it's not a problem, but I think you get a mood issue when you have bad guys who are fundamentally bumblers.

As for the characters in the cartoons, they did stuff I think most people would not allow. Hera blew up a cruiser with the press of a button by hacking it! A lot of the writer's don't see the HoloNet as anything other than an internet, and so it's a constant annoyance for me.

So the question is: In your game are the Empire a serious enemy, or just the white couch for the characters to wipe their muddy boots on?

1 hour ago, Archlyte said:

Of course you can do whatever you want, but I notice that there is this trend of making the Empire/First Order kind of incompetent and stupid in how they do things. The smaller the adversary the smaller the hero, and from Comedy Relief Battle Droids to Capital Ships with civilian quality transceiver gear what you are doin is setting the enemy up as somewhat un-serious. If this fits the mood/tone of your campaign then it's not a problem, but I think you get a mood issue when you have bad guys who are fundamentally bumblers.

As for the characters in the cartoons, they did stuff I think most people would not allow. Hera blew up a cruiser with the press of a button by hacking it! A lot of the writer's don't see the HoloNet as anything other than an internet, and so it's a constant annoyance for me.

So the question is: In your game are the Empire a serious enemy, or just the white couch for the characters to wipe their muddy boots on?

Yeah, not sure they need to be cartoonishly comedic, but if the overwhelmingly powerful enemy isn't a bit careless or stupid or overconfident or all three, they win.

6 minutes ago, Darzil said:

Yeah, not sure they need to be cartoonishly comedic, but if the overwhelmingly powerful enemy isn't a bit careless or stupid or overconfident or all three, they win.

I think that it's hard to gauge and a friend and I were discussing the other day how the underdog always wins in stories so people don't recognize the advantage of a larger force in real fights where the dice aren't present in the way they are in games.

So maybe this means your players can't defeat 3 Star Destroyers with a YT-1300, and that because they have to live in the Galaxy instead of being movie characters they have to live with the reality that the Empire didn't conquer the galaxy by accident. I'm the farthest thing from a Sith/Empire fanboy, but I believe that a serious tone for the Empire was what made them so great as the bad guys in Ep IV, V. There's always room for levity or some sort of an oversight (such as not knowing about Galen Erso's sabotage) but to me when you make the empire incompetent beyond Palpatine's evil policies you run the risk of making the players gods.

If the players want to be able to intercept and inveigle their way into the Imperial Defense Net via their comms, then the players need to get a hold of a bulky and super illegal Transmit Pod. I would also make that Slicer hinging their very life on this slice, as if they mess up it is most certainly doom to some degree.

My usual approach is to come up with good design, but perhaps a bit generic, and staff with the occasional bored or corrupt personnel. There is always something weak, but not always obvious.

So, on Gand, an Imperial base had a standard design, but with Gand's thick mists, this meant the perimeter towers were too far apart, and with care an attacker could sneak in, as an example from our campaign.

4 minutes ago, Darzil said:

My usual approach is to come up with good design, but perhaps a bit generic, and staff with the occasional bored or corrupt personnel. There is always something weak, but not always obvious.

So, on Gand, an Imperial base had a standard design, but with Gand's thick mists, this meant the perimeter towers were too far apart, and with care an attacker could sneak in, as an example from our campaign.

I totally agree and that idea you had is really awesome.

My unsolicited opinion: No, I would not allow this for the very simple reason that every single Star Wars story features main characters who are risking physical harm .

The PC is a main character. If he isn't risking his life and limb he isn't playing a Star Wars game.

Also an unsolicited opinion: the HoloNet isn't the Internet, or at least, not how we think of it in the modern world or how science-fiction thinkers portray it in cyberpunk fiction. It's an instantaneous visual broadcast device, not a system for sending and retrieving stored digital documents. We've seen it used to dial friends, broadcast propaganda, and contact ships. We saw a remote Imperial "early warning"-style spy ship take control of Chopper in an episode of Rebels but that required Chopper physically accessing a restricted terminal which uploaded a bug into his program. And this was the same episode where Hera juiced up Chopper to send back an amplified signal that blew up the spy ship like feedback in an electric guitar amp because that's how tech works in a space fantasy.

Another word for "wireless" is "radio." We do see datapads and I think it's reasonable to assume that two machines within line of sight can send messages over a radio signal, like what we've seen droids do. However, a galactic level and instantaneous Internet-style network with cloud-style computing would mean that droids would turn into machine gods(!) with the sum totality of thousands of cultures' worth of knowledge at their disposal. Great for Iain M. Banks' Culture-style games. Not so great for Star Wars .

People can do what they want. But including the Internet as an option in your space fantasy setting ruins the suspense of having to physically find lost information or obscure lore. And it basically nerfs the utility of Knowledge skills.

I agree with Concise Locket. I think you can certainly mimic our internet and connectivity but just be aware of what you are unleashing and how it will affect the feel of the setting. Luke emailing Ben about lost droids, Han not having a low enough fare and being dropped from the price filter by Luke, etc.

On 6/10/2018 at 10:31 PM, themensch said:

So the novel Han Solo: Last Shot describes a situation in which a slicer would work over a wireless connection as distinctly different than a hardwire connection. I don't want to spoil anything but the time period is Sequels. It's a setting where one might expect hardened network protocols, but hey, who am I to judge?

New canonical example of wireless slicing mentioned here....

But they also implied a Force-sensitive Toydarian in this book, so I suspect there will be further discussions on this novel.

20 minutes ago, themensch said:

New canonical example of wireless slicing mentioned here....

But they also implied a Force-sensitive Toydarian in this book, so I suspect there will be further discussions on this novel.

I sometimes wonder how rigorous the editing process was for those books, and also if I would leave a meeting with the story group with a bloody nose and a black eye

2 hours ago, Archlyte said:

I sometimes wonder how rigorous the editing process was for those books, and also if I would leave a meeting with the story group with a bloody nose and a black eye

Our lovely IP is full of these things, but as a general rule I've found the books to be invaluable for filling in the cracks. For instance, I'd read (well, listened to) the prequel to Rogue One before I saw it, and I feel like that enriched the story in ways I cannot fathom. Being able to pick up on fan service is a gleeful little delight.

My thoughts:

Holonet Communicators :
Bulky, power-hungry equipment, with exclusively point-to-point communication (laser, not radio). Mid-stream interception is effectively impossible for two reasons: it's not broadcast, and it travels through hyperspace. Connecting a rogue node is easy because it was originally a civilian system that was designed for growth; it only became a military tool when the Empire began restricting its use, and they haven't re-engineered the entire system (and replaced all the existing nodes). The difficult part of setting up a rogue node is convincing anyone who notices the new connection to not bother assigning a Star Destroyer to check it out before you can relocate. To flesh the design out a little further: the original design had core nodes with well-publicized "addresses": any new node would initially connect to one of them, and then download an up-to-date list of closer nodes to connect to. Star Destroyers don't actually initiate communication directly with each other via Holonet: they connect back to fixed-location communication stations that have the processing power needed to update the target's location, and records of where the rest of the fleet was last located. Potentially, it's not possible to use the Holonet while moving, whichever you prefer. In either case, it would make sense that you can't initiate a Holonet transmission to a ship unless it hasn't moved since you last received its location.

Wireless networks:
Not normally used for security reasons. With the ubiquity of computing equipment, the shear volume of people in society (if one person in a million is a computer-literate thief, how many are there in a society of hundreds of trillions?), and the phenomenal number of droids, any wireless channels into the typical network will be isolated in the strongest ways possible from anything of real value - with intrusion detection being an even higher priority (I don't have to keep you out of my network. I only have to get you arrested/killed before you get to my data). Pick your preferred explanation for why physical access equates to "slicing is possible". The solution for "the guy in the chair" then is as described above: portable wireless interfaces. Plug one into the target and you get to use your wireless network instead of theirs (bypassing their wireless security) on their physical network. The downside (for the GM to exploit) is that there's now a rogue wireless signal in the area; depending on the security level it might have a chance of being noticed (possible setback dice, and a use for Despair). One upside for the players is they can plug one in and then head in a different direction to keep attention away from the compromised computer.

Yeah I see wireless in the way Concise Locket described, like radio. As for wireless networks if they are not safe enough for their utility to be more of a factor than the trouble they could cause then I could see them being abandoned. Especially as human sensibilities are not the only thing that counts.