I'm a little blank at the moment.

My players are on a treasure hunt that will take them to an uninhabited system, where they will find the treasure of Celis Mott (an old D6 adventure I converted). However, (as expected), they ruined the showdown so I came up with the idea of letting them find an old heavily damaged Clone Wars CIS frigate to explore (shot down at a battle, fled into hyperspace and then the hyperdrive exploded and they ended up with no drive in said system). Now, there won't be any life or energy left on the ship, so they will encounter a ton of inactive B1/B2 battle droids, probably a tactical droid, and some corpses. I want to have some "wow" element, but as they all will wear EVA suits, combat is not really an option as it would be pretty deadly when a shot hits the suit.

Do you guys have any good ideas on what they could find or experience in such an old ship?

Thanks for any nudge!

Ditch the EVA suits. Go with a more classical Star Wars approach to deep space survival.

crab droids, droidekas... etc any of the droids from eps 2 & 3 Magna droids....

The "expected" thing to do is to fight CIS droids. The "UNexpected" thing to do is throw them a curveball by having the real threat be something else. You can only line up so many battledroids before the trope becomes uninteresting.

The Frigate could be carrying a stash of payables (i.e. a treasure ship). It could be infected with Mynock or other creatures who took up home there.

You could have the ship be wrecked at an angle. The gathered inactive droids could be packed behind things and be an avalanche. Stockpiles of armaments could be precariously tipped over and ready to blow. Deactivate the bombs or else, using Cool, Fear checks, Mechanics, Computers. Skill-wise, you could dungeon crawl a derelict ship and use Skulduggery, Mechanics, and Computers to get places.

I like the idea of simple masks like the one Han is wearing ... but my players prefer a little more realism (if this is even possible in a space opera game ...)

So still, combat is out of the question. But deactivating something, a race against time probably ... I think I can work with that!

Thanks!

One word: "Rakghouls"

7 hours ago, PzVIE said:

I like the idea of simple masks like the one Han is wearing ... but my players prefer a little more realism (if this is even possible in a space opera game ...)

So still, combat is out of the question. But deactivating something, a race against time probably ... I think I can work with that!

Thanks!

Combat doesnt have to be insta-lethal in environment suits. Just rule that they are somewhat self sealing, and that energy effects and piercing effects don't expose you to hard vacuum. Maybe more of a skinsuit, rather than the giant airbags we use today. There are plenty of hard (and soft) sci-fi that use a skin tight suit with heating elements. The only time it is extra lethal is if a slashing attack opens it up. Even those aren't lethal with a skintight spacesuit though.

On 11/3/2019 at 4:23 AM, micheldebruyn said:

Ditch the EVA suits. Go with a more classical Star Wars approach to deep space survival.

9 hours ago, PzVIE said:

I like the idea of simple masks like the one Han is wearing ... but my players prefer a little more realism (if this is even possible in a space opera game ...)

So still, combat is out of the question. But deactivating something, a race against time probably ... I think I can work with that!

Thanks!

It should also be noted that Han and group could get away with only masks because the interior of the space slug was pressurized . It had an atmosphere . It wasn't a vacuum.

2 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

It should also be noted that Han and group could get away with only masks because the interior of the space slug was pressurized . It had an atmosphere . It wasn't a vacuum.

If a big slug that lives in teh vaccuum of space has an atmosphere and pressure, then so has an old CIS Frigate that is supposed to have those things in the first place.

20 hours ago, micheldebruyn said:

If a big slug that lives in teh vaccuum of space has an atmosphere and pressure, then so has an old CIS Frigate that is supposed to have those things in the first place.

Exactly, just have certain areas be exposed to vacuum and have most of the ship had its emergency systems sealed itself off from exposed areas.

Oh! And in the various corpses the crew finds they see that they aren't the first salvage crew to arrive.... "do you hear something?"

If your players are INSISTENT on vaccuum combat (since I agree with everyone else that worm-space gas mask is the better alternative) ... upgrade the EVA suits to be more like the old Republic Commando suits. If you remember that game, they had a sequence where they actually lept from one ship to another in their suits.

Heck, you could even have the crew find some of those suits laying around that they could use.

Big advantage is that those are more like armor, so you could run combat without having to deal with fatalities.

Other twist? crash the wreckage onto a habitable planet. Suddenly everyone's at low health and there's a fight break out against other characters at low health.

On 11/4/2019 at 7:06 PM, micheldebruyn said:

If a big slug that lives in teh vaccuum of space has an atmosphere and pressure, then so has an old CIS Frigate that is supposed to have those things in the first place.

Not necessarily. A living, healthy space slug can produce gasses within its body as a result of metabolic processes , and is pretty much vacuum sealed to begin with. That, in addition to the gravity of the asteroid/ planetoid it resides in/is feeding on, would be more than sufficient to allow a space slug to maintain a pressurized atmosphere of some type within its body cavity. By contrast, a derelict CIS frigate is likely to have several breeches in its hull throughout the ship which would have vented most, if not all , of its atmosphere.

Having gasses inside you is not something you want when your natural habitat is a vaccuum. And I saw it's mouth. That thing isn't vaccuum-sealed. The Falcon flies into the slug, thinking it is a cave. That's not vaccuum-sealed, that is not pressurised. You can just fly from the "atmospheric, pressurised" slug stomach all the way back out without passing a kind of airlock.

12 minutes ago, micheldebruyn said:

Having gasses inside you is not something you want when your natural habitat is a vaccuum. And I saw it's mouth. That thing isn't vaccuum-sealed. The Falcon flies into the slug, thinking it is a cave. That's not vaccuum-sealed, that is not pressurised. You can just fly from the "atmospheric, pressurised" slug stomach all the way back out without passing a kind of airlock.

Any metabolic process produces gasses. Secondly, canonically the largest Exogorths can house entire ecosystems within their bodies. So, yes, they can and do maintain an internal pressurized atmosphere within their digestive tracts.

1 minute ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Any metabolic process produces gasses. Secondly, canonically the largest Exogorths can house entire ecosystems within their bodies. So, yes, they can and do maintain an internal pressurized atmosphere within their digestive tracts.

That does not alter the very clear, unambiguous fact that the specific part the Falcon landed in and Han Solo is walking around in is directly exposed to space. They hadn't even noticed they weren't in a natural cave!

20 minutes ago, micheldebruyn said:

That does not alter the very clear, unambiguous fact that the specific part the Falcon landed in and Han Solo is walking around in is directly exposed to space. They hadn't even noticed they weren't in a natural cave!

Canonically, no it wasn't. This has been brought up in a number of ancillary materials.

12 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Canonically, no it wasn't. This has been brought up in a number of ancillary materials.

But the real point is, none of this matters to this post.

If the GM thinks it's narratively convenient to the adventure they want to run, then the ship can have atmosphere.

That is all that matters.

29 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Canonically, no it wasn't. This has been brought up in a number of ancillary materials.

The Empire Strikes Back clearly contradicts those " ancillary materials".

I have a similar session planned, but in my game the players find an abandoned asteroid base. Hazards include rooms, that are still pressurized (see if they get the idea why the door to this room is so hard to be opened.. make sure to place an opening into space in their backs when they try to open the door, for some extra destiny / despair fun), a nest full of mynocks protecting their offspring, a meteor shower damaging sections of the base (probably those sections contain player characters at that moment), booby traps placed by space pirates that already visited that place, a room full of dead floating bodies (a good starter encounter to make them think about what happened here), and overcharged consoles that zap players trying to use them.

Follow up question for specialists:

A sealed off section in the ship with non-functional life support - the atmosphere in there would be 20 years old and no organic life forms, just droids. Is that atmosphere still breathable?

With nothing there reducing the oxygen level, I would say yes. But this is science fantasy, make it work so that it fits the story you want to tell

On 11/5/2019 at 9:05 PM, micheldebruyn said:

The Empire Strikes Back clearly contradicts those " ancillary materials".

No, it doesn't. Just the opposite in fact . The very fact that they could go out in just a breath-mask shows that that area was pressurized . They were deep enough within the slug's digestive tract that it could sustain an atmosphere.

30 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

No, it doesn't. Just the opposite in fact . The very fact that they could go out in just a breath-mask shows that that area was pressurized . They were deep enough within the slug's digestive tract that it could sustain an atmosphere.

What barrier is keeping all of that atmosphere from just flowing out of the slug's mouth? What is keeping the area pressurised? Keep in mind that this is the kind of barrier you can just fly a spaceship through.

And why wouldn't Han Solo, who didn't know he was inside a giant slug, put on a spacesuit? Or think it stange that there was an atmosphere?

Just now, micheldebruyn said:

What barrier is keeping all of that atmosphere from just flowing out of the slug's mouth? What is keeping the area pressurised? Keep in mind that this is the kind of barrier you can just fly a spaceship through.

And why wouldn't Han Solo, who didn't know he was inside a giant slug, put on a spacesuit? Or think it stange that there was an atmosphere?

For the first question that's easy, a sphincter . It's a common muscle in a digestive tract.

As for why Han would know that he didn't need a space suit, that too is relatively easy. The Falcon's sensors told him that it had an atmosphere, just one that wasn't breathable to humans. Any pilot would check his ship's sensors before debarking in order to know if it was safe to go outside or not. That's standard procedure .