In the past few games, my group has been burning bridges. They started off working out of Vorzyd V, where they angered the local Imperial Governor (they acquired some blackmail of him having certain. .. "relations" with aliens). As they already have a few Criminals in the group, the Empire is always something to be avoided, and this is making their reputation in the sector one that they have to tread lightly with, especially with what follows.
They then went on the wrong side of a crime lord (that gave them the first job) when they betrayed his Hutt boss. they were tasked with reacquiring the Hutt's "gem" from a crash site. Said gem was a Twi'lek slave. The party decided to keep her on the crew and only turned in the tracking beacon that was on the girl. Their contact believes that they really only found the beacon, but knows that they may want to lay low as it can be misconstrued that they helped the slave escape (the one party member has a. . .reputation for being against slavery, and another is a twi'lek himself). The local crime lord told them they may want to lay low and stay out of Hutt Space for a while until this blows over.
During this mission, they ended up attacking and destroying large portions of a Zann Consortium outpost. This has not endeared them to this group, and they are attempting to avoid running into what they believe is a well-equipped mercenary crew.
Now, they are taking a job on Enarc that involves killing or capturing a Neimoidian. Depending on how they handle it, they can be dealing with major hunting by the Imperials or just stirring things up and making it too "hot" to do work.
Thing is, while trying to acquire some contraband, their contact (a member of Imperial Intelligence, working for a superior officer trying to remove this Neimoidian without the Empire knowing it) rolled a Despair (note: the PARTY rolled the Despair, as I let them roll the dice for this); the Imperials know that they have this military gear, and they know who supplied it.
So we are adding a new planet to not revisit and possibly increasing Obligation after this job. Huzzah!
But now I feel as though they are burning a lot of bridges, and really will need to either lie low for a while or will need to be somewhere that they won't be as targeted or can make some new contacts to lower their obligation (party of five with 80 Obligation). As they may have a job to get their contact and supplier offworld, I'm leaning towards one or more of the following:
1) Go to the edges of the Outer Rim and stay at some backwater planet to do some odd jobs. (I'd rather give them something to do on a world instead of just sitting for months and waiting for things to go away like they could do at Port Haven).
2) Get to a Shadowport and make that "home" for a while. Options include Starforge Station, Smuggler's Run, and if the Human wants to take a risk, Omze's Incredible Starport.
3) Head off to an area that is Imperial Affiliated but still independent. This could be Hapes (stupid, but ballsy), the Corporate Sector (very stupid, not sure on the ballsy anymore), and the Tapani Sector.
If you've run into a problem like this, where did you party go and how did they deal with it?