How would you GM a scene wherein the pc's, on a ship, have to run a planetary blockade to get through to the surface of a world. The sort of thing that happens in Rebels all the time.

I'd say a situation where they can't win with brute force would be best. So they could be outnumbered or outgunned, and that would help push a blockade run idea. Then it either sneaking past in some way, or doing a chase type scenario. I'd say the star destroyers remain stationary as a sort of finishing line for the ship. When they pass that they've broken the blockade and maybe only have to worry about pursing fighters etc. It usually helps to have other ships as a distraction, or they're all going to focus their fire and the players'll need a really good ship to get past alive.

A HWK-1000 with upgraded ion-engines. Speed 6 let's you blow right by the Tie's and aim for a spot out of range of any tractor beam.

It is crazy hard to blockade a planet due to the sheer vastness of the area you have to coverhow many ships do you need to cover about 3*10^14 m^2. Now assuming that each ship can cover a spherical cap with a radius of 2000km,that's about 3*4*10^12 m^2 per ship. So 25 cap ships (round up to 30, because they won't be spherical caps, and because ships have to be constantly changing positions relative to each other because they're in different orbits) with extreme range sensors and weapons, just to be able to take a passing shot at anything approaching the planet, and in general at the point farthest from the 3 nearest ships all 3 should be able to take potshots at you. Now if you add a fighters screen to support that, say 36 fighter per cap ship, distributed in 9 flights of 4, you probably will be able to get 12 to 24 fighters to intercept any 1 ship coming in, at least any ship they saw coming. If that's the situation then being in a slow stealthy ship (that can also run hot if it's discovered is your best bet.

8 hours ago, Rabobankrider said:

I'd say a situation where they can't win with brute force would be best. So they could be outnumbered or outgunned, and that would help push a blockade run idea. Then it either sneaking past in some way, or doing a chase type scenario. I'd say the star destroyers remain stationary as a sort of finishing line for the ship. When they pass that they've broken the blockade and maybe only have to worry about pursing fighters etc. It usually helps to have other ships as a distraction, or they're all going to focus their fire and the players'll need a really good ship to get past alive.

Right, but how do you resolve this knowing that they can't fight. What happens if you have them roll for using covert methods/persuastion etc ("it's an older code, but it checks out") and they fail? Inevitably they'd get shot down by a squadron of TIES.

That's the question: is it worth roleplaying such a scene given that the consequence of them failing is getting shot down.

Well something like this would always be risky, especially if it's the only ship trying. Hopefully if they're in a freighter and see two star destroyers they'll know that attacking directly is not a good idea. If they fail to stealth or bluff through, maybe they get a chance to realize they've been rumbled and make a dash past them. It could take a turn or two for the blockade to fully assemble, giving them a fighting chance? To be fair if the ship is fast it would only take a few turns to get past them.

Whisper thrust engines and a pseudo cloaking device were the method we chose

On 5/30/2018 at 1:41 AM, signoftheserpent said:

Right, but how do you resolve this knowing that they can't fight. What happens if you have them roll for using covert methods/persuastion etc ("it's an older code, but it checks out") and they fail? Inevitably they'd get shot down by a squadron of TIES.

That's the question: is it worth roleplaying such a scene given that the consequence of them failing is getting shot down.

You might have to fudge things from a rules perspective, but if they fail, I'd suggest making it where they aren't completely destroyed, and now getting their ship back in working order is one of their objectives while on the planet (and maybe an Imperial patrol is coming to find where they crashed, putting a new timer on things).