Hi guys,

New to the forum.

I am playing with the idea of a heist game where the PCs must get onto a ship which i traveling in Hyperspace. Now with Han's planetary landing and all, this may be possible.

If you think it can be done, what kinds of problems, skill checks and difficulties would i use?

Thanks in advance!!

Michael

I'd imagine Pilot, Maybe Astrogation, and/or some kinda Computers check. The Difficulty should all be pretty high or everyone'd do it. The problem I'd imagine is horrific death...... ?

Welcome to the forum!

If my PC's wanted to do pull a Solo, I would make it possible but very risky. Daunting to Impossible checks, I would imagine. Mechanics and computers check to mess with the safeties on the navcomp and hyperdrive systems that bring the ship out of hyperspace when too close to a mass shadow or gravity well. Very difficult astrogation and piloting checks to come out of hyperspace at just the right point. Etc, etc. I want my players do bend/break the rules of physics/Star Wars, but I also need to make sure that the challenge and stakes are high enough that it feels very heroic, and does not become a routine.

Boarding a ship in hyperspace would be very tricky, and the risk of failure could easily be death. It would be made much easier with some intelligence gathering: The hyperspace route they are using; where they entered hyperspace from; the class of hyperdrive on the ship; how to breach the special shields that help facilitate hyperspace travel; etc.

It's also possible to generate a strong enough gravity well or mass shadow in realspace that intercepts their hyperspace route and brings them back into realspace. This can be accomplished with large asteroids, capital class sized ships, or devices that generate mass shadows and gravity wells for just such a purpose. This often catches pilots unaware enough that it is easy to disable and board a ship before they can react or get far away enough to reenter hyperspace.

I recommend the Legends entry for Hyperdrives in Wookieepedia. It goes into some good detail about the safeties and systems:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperdrive/Legends

You'd need a better hyperdrive (i.e. heavily modded) than the target ship just so you can catch up

Very fast, very dangerous.... yep even the slightest miscalculation would result in both ship's wreckage spread across several systems - and there's a plot hook in itself (which I've already used!)

I think this would be so difficult that Han's planet landing would be seen as rookie stuff in comparison.

1. You need to know before hand what the exact hyperspace route the target ship is taking. Not just point A to point B, but the exact twisting route.

2. You need to be able to calculate to an extreme fraction of a nanosecond when your ship's docking tube would line up against the target's docking ring.

3. You need to know the exact hyperspace speed of the target ship so you can match it during the heist.

4. Both #2 and #3 (exact path, exact speed) need to be kept during the entire time of the heist.

5. You need to have multiple packages of dice and pull out all of the reds you can get.

I think it would be more conceivable to somehow pull someone out of hyperspace. You need to raid an Imperial research facility and get away with a massive gravity well projector. Or, you need to know the target's path before hand and move an asteroid in it's way to force the ship out of hyperspace. Or, you need to sneak on board and use computer skills to insert a program to later drop the ship out of hyperspace at an exact place and time.

I made up some hyperspace tricks based on what we see in the movies. See page 14 here .

How I'd do it:

In the material we see ships in hyperspace together. Presumably they linked hyperdrives and jumped together. This was intentional, so you need a way to do it without the target knowing.

So...

You'll need to get aboard while it's on the ground. Install this subnet relay transponder anywhere into the navcomputer, or the hyperdrive itself if they use an astromech or manually plot their course.

When the target ship jumps, it'll start feeding you the hyper navigation data, allowing you to catch up and sync with the target.

You then execute a kind of Chase, but using Astrogation instead of piloting.

When you get close enough board the target while in hyperspace,and catch them unawares!

Suggest you capture engine room or the cockpit asap (depending on the ship size and if they even have an engine room) to prevent them from escaping by dropping out of hyperspace.

.... or just pursue them until they run out of fuel

I think it should be impossible to match course and speed with another craft in hyperspace, but it would be completely possible to latch onto the ship covertly in real space (e.g. Han on the back of the Star Destroyer) and wait for them to go to light speed before beginning the hull breach.

The people on the target ship might be under the mistaken impression that somebody caught up to them IN hyperspace, but that would be misdirection.

In my opinion you shouldn't do this if you can think of another way to make a boarding action interesting. Some plot to get the Navicomputer to steer the ship into a hyperspace disruption that slows the ship down enough to allow another ship to intercept it for a short period of time and thus has a ticking clock element. So it would be part inside job, part train robbery before the tunnel.

If you follow in the unfortunate footsteps of some of the new movies then you will soon have to shut down people wanting to use light freighters as hyperspace doomsday devices and you will substantially weaken the nick of time escape as a classic Star Wars trope.