So my players have done a good job of taking over an abandoned asteroid base, fixing it up and hiring some crew. They also made contacts to be the middlemen for a spice operation and have a source to buy guns from (thanks to long arm of the hutt).

I've got two minor quest ideas but need a major adventure to play around for the next few sessions.

For obligation, they owe Jabba the hutt for blowing up part of Teemo's base in Long Arm of the Hutt (Jabba is happy that they exposed Teemo's treachery, not happy that it will take weeks or months to start making money there again) and they pissed off a cartel that runs a casino on a nearby planet. They also made connections with the black sun to sell their spice on the station.

I was thinking that their base is undefended and maybe the casino people find them and are already aboard and holding their station crew captive when they arrive, but I'm not sure where to go after that.

And my only other idea is to have them do some escort missions where they fly the spice back and forth, maybe they get intercepted...

But I'm missing a 'big' idea.

Edit: Also if there are some fun day to day things to do around the base or to set up their operation, like dead drops, contacts, etc. I'd appreciate some suggestions!

If the casino is a local operation run by a local group, it's probably not worth the resources to go chasing smugglers with their own people. Have them hire bounty hunters instead.

Wow, there's a lot to use there, and I'm sure that's just the rough summary....

I'd say at first worry less about each episode and try and figure out where you want the season to go. Flesh out the campaign. Who's the ongoing villains, who's the "good" guys? About where are the chips supposed to land a dozen adventures from now? Work out the player's underlings, make some unique NPCs to help them out, and come to them with trouble.

Consider making the smuggling more of a background story, something that the players are successfully doing "off camera" this will free them up to take care of more interesting business. Do things like take an NPC that works for the players. Have him do some cool stuff for them over the course of a couple adventures, then one day he shows up. The gang that runs the casino nabbed his daughter, and in three days he's gotta either report the location of the smuggling base to the sector rangers, or the gang kills his kid.

You can still do the occasional run-gone-bad adventure, but the players don't have to cover every uneventful run personally.

There is something that I thought of that will be a little more different then the casino taking over the station though... Keep that casino stuff a little lower key, more gang-banger type stuff limited mostly to the planet in question, there's plenty to do without getting the station involved..

Now here's why: The Rebellion. They need guns, money, and secret bases. And guess what your criminal, drug running, players are sitting on. this is a brilliant chance to make the rebels out as the "bad guys" who are maneuvering to steal the players house out form under them. A nice change to more typical campaigns where the Rebels tend to be... nicer.

Down the road one of the NPC's gets picked up by the Empire. The guy is going to prison, they got him. What can your players to to keep him from also testifying against the whole smuggling ring and bringing the whole operation down? Pay off his family? Kill him?

Industrial Automation unveils a new customs scanning droid that's picking up all your spice runs. It's a prototype model, but it's record is setting the stage for dozens of major contracts across the sector. The players need to discredit the droid program and sabotage the contracts before the droid goes into production.

...wow just too much good stuff to work with here...

Ghostofman those are some fantastic ideas, thanks! I especially like the one where one of the NPCs working for their base has a family member kidnapped and is being forced to tell them where the base is. Great opportunity for a heroic rescue, bringing the gang members up on the PC's radar and giving them a chance to deal with some obligation.

I do enjoy the idea that the rebellion would want their gun contacts - it turns out (though the PC's don't know it) that their base used to be a rebel stronghold and they were chased off, so it's actually known by the empire. I wanted to have the empire show up at some point and have a corrupt governor or moff extort them for a piece of the pie.

My plan once age of rebellion hits (and once they get nice and wealthy and comfortable with their smuggling base) is to have the empire turn on them and blow the hell out of their base, forcing them to run and leave everything they've worked for behind. My group holds a grudge like no one's business, and this will be a great push into helping pay the empire back, pushing them into the rebellion.

In the meantime, I love the kidnap angle and might just use it for Sunday's session (they arrive back and with 2 days before their first shipment arriving, there's a kidnapping they have to deal with!). I also think that the customs scanning droid gives a non-combat (ish) adventure for them to go off on.

Yeah there's a LOT of ideas that can basically start with "Teeg and Kev walk in with black eyes, bloody noses, and bad news."

I don't know how old you are, but if you are old enough to handle some swearing, drinking, nudity, and a litttle of the old ultra-violence, you may want to look into the tv show "Sons of Anarchy" I see some parallels so that might help get you in the mood.

In response to the issue of the base getting discovered....

I wonder exactly how one would go about moving an asteroid.... I bet pirates would know... of course they'll want a favor in return...

Here are a couple of ideas that may or may not work for you...

The PC's have obligation to Jabba the Hutt. One of Jabba's starships runs afoul of an Imperial customs ship and shows up at the PC's asteroid for repairs. Unfortunately, their run in with the Imp's has damaged their cargo hold, and shortly after landing, some big beasty gets loose in the base (maybe use the rancor as a base and scale it up or down as needed) - something slimy with lots of teeth. Anyway, the PC's could learn a lot about how their new digs work by trying to capture and contain this thing without harming it, and if they do harm it - well, pile on some more obligation.

The PC's return to their base from a smuggling run to find power failures across the base. The hired crew has holed up in the crew quarters and can only transmit locally, telling the players that they started having power fluctuations shortly after they left. When the maintenance techs tried to investigate a power relay on the station surface, "something" attacked themand they had to retreat back into the station. Since then, power has been failing all over the station and they've been surviving by rerouting what backup systems still worked to the crew quarters life support. With power out, the PC's ship can't land and they have to do an EVA to the station and maybe some zero-gee inside as they have to clear out a whole bunch of - you guessed it - mynocks! The mynocks had been underground while the asteroid was in a long sun exposure, but as it passed into a dark phase, the mynocks ventured out onto the surface. If the PC's got their crew elsewhere, you can play it like "Alien" - relatively few mynocks, but they don't know where they are or what they are dealing with initially. If the crew came with the station, it's something the crew had experience with but it's never been this bad. In this case, play it more like "Pitch Black" with hordes of minion mynock groups all over the place and make it a race to salvage what they can of their stronghold - the mynocks are not a real threat to the PC's health, but everything they destroy is going to cost credits to fix. This also opens some potential store ideas as the PC's may need to go hunting for critical replacement parts - some of which may be illegal, some of which may only be available from scrappers and some may need to be cobbled together by the techie PC. Maybe, to borrow Ghostofman's idea, the PC's decide that the only way to ensure the mynocks don't cause more problems down the road they need to keep the asteroid (or at least the part their base is on) facing the sun. This is going to require getting a really big sublight engine. It may not be enough to move the asteroid, but it would let them keep it turned correctly. This would also let them build up to the idea that if one engine lets them turn the asteroid, several might get it to move when the time comes...

Some of the players gang gets their ship (and its load of spice/guns/bootleg dirty holos/whatever) impounded at a refueling station on some relatively minor violation. When the players go to try and pull the ship out of hock, theres no records of the impound. In the end it turns out station customs is dirty. They "impound" ships that look shady enough that crews will just disappear rather then pay the fine, then transfer the ship to a chop shop. By the time the players track down the ship its already too far disassembled to fly. They'll need to recover the load, and get it on to another ship and to the delivery.

Replicators!

or the Starwars Equivalent...Mynocks. Maybe a beat up freighter comes into port bringing a huge unknown infestation. Maybe a Queen or Monarch Mynock that drains the stations main power generator.

or better yet a Space Slug infestation.

Or space herpes!

Perhaps one of the smuggling runs is a setup in which the contact tips off the local Imperial authorities. Maybe the Empire has some leverage on that contact. Whatever the case, the PCs find themselves in hot water and with a newly declared enemy.

-Nate

Once you have the corrupt Moff you mentioned come in for a piece of the action, you can later on have one of their best underling smuggler captains be a Rebel sympathizer. He gets caught red handed carrying Alliance communique packets by Imps in pursuit and the players have a pretty tense social challenge to deal with since the smuggler still has their merchandise on board his ship. So even if they're willing to hang him out to dry, they still need to find a way to get their stuff back or else miss a delivery with a very powerful and influential buyer who just might hold a grudge over a failure to deliver on time.

A band of pirates rolls into system and initially just use the base as a layover but then seeing how weakly defended the place is decide they want to take it for themselves and hold the station personnel as hostages after they fail to capture the PCs. The players then get to play Die Hard, Under Siege, what have you as they try to retake the station and saving the lives of the people who work for them.

A spice shipment shows up at the station but upon inspection instead of spice the ship's hold is filled with... slaves. All the fun complications of trying to track down what happened to what they were supposed to get while dealing with all the hassles of what they actually got. Unless your players are sociopaths, you should be able to find a type of slave sob story that will make it hard for at least some of the group to just dispense with the unexpected load.

One of their weapons shipments is crates of Imperial munitions... with hidden trackers on them that the ISB is using in an ongoing investigation of stolen Imperial weapons. How are they going to explain this one? What happens if they try and call upon the corrupt Moff for help... or try to blackmail him to help them deal with the ISB investigation. All kinds of Boardwalk Empire style criminal social coercion ensues.

Or as a variant, the players discover the trackers in the crates, but the ISB actually WANTS the weapons to get to Rebel hands in an attempt to locate Rebel cell locations in the local sectors.