So I've run into a narrative problem, inevitably over the course of a campaign between two parties using the same base, starships will be "retrieved". The problem is that the alliance is known for having crew shortages so likely they cant man all the ships in the base on their own especially since the retro fit of Dreadnought heavy cruiser into a Assault Frigate mark 1 is about 75% of the way through.

So do I just wave it off and say the alliance transfers the man power needed or do I need to run a mass prison break or some boring properganda effort.

Also do I also say that they transfer some starfighter squadrons with to support these vessels.

49 minutes ago, Samuel Richard said:

So I've run into a narrative problem, inevitably over the course of a campaign between two parties using the same base, starships will be "retrieved". The problem is that the alliance is known for having crew shortages so likely they cant man all the ships in the base on their own especially since the retro fit of Dreadnought heavy cruiser into a Assault Frigate mark 1 is about 75% of the way through.

So do I just wave it off and say the alliance transfers the man power needed or do I need to run a mass prison break or some boring properganda effort.

Also do I also say that they transfer some starfighter squadrons with to support these vessels.

I'd say it depends upon the size and crew requirements for the ship in question. If the crew requirements are small enough, you can retrofit the ship With Droid brain attachments (which don't take up any hard points), as well as astromech droids to take the role of (most of) the crew.

31 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

I'd say it depends upon the size and crew requirements for the ship in question. If the crew requirements are small enough, you can retrofit the ship With Droid brain attachments (which don't take up any hard points), as well as astromech droids to take the role of (most of) the crew.

Therefore they need to get their hands on a bunch of astromech droids.

2 minutes ago, Samuel Richard said:

Therefore they need to get their hands on a bunch of astromech droids.

Not necessarily a "bunch". As I said, it depends upon the crew requirements of a ship. No matter what, you'll need some gunners.

Just now, Tramp Graphics said:

Not necessarily a "bunch". As I said, it depends upon the crew requirements of a ship. No matter what, you'll need some gunners.

Thanks for the Advice

19 hours ago, Samuel Richard said:

So do  I just wave it off and say the alliance transfers the man power needed or do I need to run a  mass prison  break or some boring  properganda effort.  

Options:

The Alliance transferred the crew.

The Alliance sends a skeleton crew, players responsible for filling out full crew.

The Alliance sends a skeleton crew, takes ship to another fleet.

The Alliance sends a shipbreaking team, strips ship of valuable parts.

The Alliance sends a technical detail, they strip the ship of perishables and mothball it in some hidden location.

The Alliance sends a technical detail, orders the players to set up a hidden boneyard for the team to mothball and stash ships the players and others are capturing.

Alright, Thanks for the advice

On 9/23/2018 at 12:43 PM, Samuel Richard said:

or some boring properganda effort.

How is this boring? If you are talking about a session where the PC's try and actually recruit people to help pad out the crew, that could be a lot of fun, especially if you have any social oriented PC's.

8 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

How is this boring? If you are talking about a session where the PC's try and actually recruit people to help pad out the crew, that could be a lot of fun, especially if you have any social oriented PC's.

thats the problem, most are all guns first then question the survivors

Then have a session or two where they have to find some people who aren't gun nuts, and could actually crew the ship, and try and convince them to join the rebellion. If you have to make it be about combat, which I'm guessing you will, have the people in question be "in the employ" of some other group, perhaps against their will. Think of characters like the hacker character in the movie DREDD, who was working for Mama because he was afraid for his life, and the fact that she'd already mutilated him. Or like the slicer in Last Jedi, I forget his name, Bel Torro's character. They met him in a prison, and basically made a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" deal with him.

Set up some scenarios like that, if your players will have a fit if they are told to do anything that doesn't involve shooting things. That way they can still get their bloodlust satisfied, but also fulfill the crew requirements.

Of if you don't think that's enough to appease your murderers, just have some npc contact another npc to send some crew to get the ship running at minimum crew. Perhaps even less, by having a good slicer group certain systems together, allowing less crew to run them. Or perhaps getting their hands on several droids to fill out the slots.

2 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Then have a session or two where they have to find some people who aren't gun nuts, and could actually crew the ship, and try and convince them to join the rebellion. If you have to make it be about combat, which I'm guessing you will, have the people in question be "in the employ" of some other group, perhaps against their will. Think of characters like the hacker character in the movie DREDD, who was working for Mama because he was afraid for his life, and the fact that she'd already mutilated him. Or like the slicer in Last Jedi, I forget his name, Bel Torro's character. They met him in a prison, and basically made a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" deal with him.

Set up some scenarios like that, if your players will have a fit if they are told to do anything that doesn't involve shooting things. That way they can still get their bloodlust satisfied, but also fulfill the crew requirements.

Of if you don't think that's enough to appease your murderers, just have some npc contact another npc to send some crew to get the ship running at minimum crew. Perhaps even less, by having a good slicer group certain systems together, allowing less crew to run them. Or perhaps getting their hands on several droids to fill out the slots.

thanks for the advice

You could also have them run below minimum crew with penalties. Say blacks, upgraded and increased difficulties, inability to perform certain actions, etc. All depends on how short on crew you are, and what you want to do. If you don't need to fight, and are just trying to fly from 1 place to another, a very small crew could do it, with some penalties.

if you want to go the droid crew route, you could easily have them hear about a stockpile of droids on some world (or in transit on some big cargo ship), and set up a whole adventure around them stealing said droids. the droids in question could be anything from astromechs (if you are nice) to old B1 Battledroids (if you want to be funny).

A couple of thoughts because your crew sounds a lot like mine.

One of the assumptions that I have is that the rebel alliance has recruiters scattered across the galaxy and it's their job to find new recruits, so the PC's don't have to do that.

However, these recruiters will regularly send out a missive that they have a batch of eligible recruits that need to be extracted from a world with a heavy Imperial presence. The PC's job is to go in, quietly make contact with the recruiter and then smuggle the new recruits off world.

There are always complications.

The first mission that I sent the team on they were given the name of their contact but had to approach the rebel operative via a local doctor. The Players (and their characters) were unaware that the doctor in question, definitely knew the operative, but didn't know that their associate was a rebel spy. And the Doc was VERY pro Empire.

Things wen't poorly . . .

On the second opp, the PC's were told that one of the five recruits might be a spy, and that they would need to interview/research each recruit to suss out the spy. They found him! The only problem was that none of the recruits were actually pro Empire.

I've also been using these types of missions to help the players explore the galaxy at large and see more of the universe.

23 hours ago, mithril2098 said:

if you want to go the droid crew route, you could easily have them hear about a stockpile of droids on some world (or in transit on some big cargo ship), and set up a whole adventure around them stealing said droids. the droids in question could be anything from astromechs (if you are nice) to old B1 Battledroids (if you want to be funny).

Old Separatist bases and wrecks could provide fertile grounds for adventures based around this objective. Maybe finding and boarding a wrecked Lucrehulk to salvage dormant droids.

I had an adventure in one of my old campaigns where the players had to recruit for a fleet by bringing some pirates to heel and drafting them as crew. It ended up with some thrilling duels, intimidating swagger and some treachery.

Go the treasure planet route and have the players hire a crew only to have them steal the ship from under them. That'd be a great opportunity for a pirate.

Just don't do it more than a few times unless the pirates are a reacurring theme.