/swg/ Inquisitorius Edition

Post characters. Minds a Hutt Executioner named Zerudo. Badass Hutt who wants to go back to the Hutt's warrior ways. Is seen as an outcast and nut job by the rest of his species but his mom who is a wealthy leader of a cartel loves him dearly and supports his endeavors any way she can monetarily.

Fuck off RLM autist

Trandoshan bounty hunter. Enjoys watching the faces of smugglers as she scuttles their ships.

She's a nemesis character in my EotE game.

>Muh RLM
Prequels were regarded as garbage by everyone except for fanboy millenials long before RLM even existed.

I've pretty much chalked up Prequel defense as yet more Veeky Forums (and especially /tv/) contrarianism. Only way to be cool is to have different opinions from normies, right?

Prequel apologists are not the majority on Veeky Forums, they're simply very loud. If you want to see a place where prequels are actually actively defended, take a look at reddit

What would be the minimum crew requirement for a corvette or light cruiser? Something like the CR90, or pic related.

I know there's at least one episode of the Clone Wars where a Republic cruiser was piloted by two people, and the wiki lists the minimum crew of the blockade runner a about 7.

Also by minimum crew I mean, enough people to fly the ship properly and fire the weapons.

This tends to vary a lot based on a given ship. "And fire the weapons" will put your crew numbers up, generally, since gunners tend to be actual crew.

What said.

Minimum crew to fly a ship can be as little as one or two people, you might get away with just a pilot and a co-pilot or navigator to hit the right buttons. But there's very little automation in SW unless you go installing expensive and non-standard droid brains. So like "with guns" is gonna be a number directly proportional to your weapon systems.

That is fucking blatantly false. Reddit Letter Media hates the prequels and I fucking bet you are a falseflagging Reddit piece of shit.

stop shitting up the thread. Nobody cares.
Talk about a fucking game for once.

So maybe to get back in a game topic, last thread I threw out this as kind of advice, but as much me working through an idea, and I'd like to if anybody has any thoughts about it, is it actually a good direction to think about fighter-focused games like this.

The last 2 FFG games I've played have fallen apart after the first 2 sessions. Same formula. Everything is great first game, great the second game, until a player and the GM disagree on something. Player leaves and the GM deletes the group or the GM just deletes the group.

I just want to play my own Star Wars story.
I don't understand why people can't put aside differences or personal vendettas for the sake of a good game.
Side topic, anyone want need a new player?

Friends Like these has a statblock for the Raider II. It gives a complement of 15 officers + 77 enlisted, with room for 30 troopers. It also has...8 distinct weapon emplacements. Going off of that, I'd put minimum skeleton + guns crew at 12. 8 gunners, a pilot, a sensor operator, and a couple dudes in the engine room to keep power flowing. Might need more bridge crew, but Star Wars has never been that specific about bridge requirements.

My overall figure for minimum "keep it flying, if not necessary very well" number would be all told about 1/3 the listed full crew number, plus however many gunners are needed. If you were just trying to operate it for one shift a day rather than full time skeleton, I'd go as low as 15% of the optimum crew plus gunners

What was the disagreement?

First was GM made a call with the context of how a player felt because of a failed roll.
Player thought his character would not feel that

Second was over a player losing an arm.

Other user from that discussion. There's a few things to keep in mind.

First off, rebel and imperial pilots don't talk in the air. They're on separate frequencies the other doesn't know. They never talk in the films or TV shows and only very rarely in the books with a prior reason to. Squadmates can talk to each other, but unless rebels specifically hack into imperial channels they wouldn't know what was going on. Hacking in the middle of a dogfight is also retarded in that you and your astro droid are more busy keeping shields up and not getting shot.

I'm using d6 and personally lock weapon systems to one shot and one target a round. That makes multiple linked guns more valuable and cuts down on wacky shit like all four of an X-Wings guns targeting fighters flying in different directions. Realistically unless you can do something similarly wacky in your system and won't houserule it you get one round of solid fire before those TIE's will try to juke, swerve off in different directions to evade, and shoot back if they have line of sight. You can get one TIE fighter in the initial exchange, and maybe a second one in the following round if you're smart, but by then any fighters who broke off in the other direction will have looped around and began firing on you, so you'll have to consider how offensively you want to play and if you want to break off yourself.

I've run a number of scenarios and nobody has ever actually made ace in a day. I don't think anyone has even made ace in two. The highest anyone's ever got is three fighters. It's a consistent three since you have minmaxed characters, force users who will freely abuse every point and power they get, and people who've just been playing so long their characters are super good at what they do, but enemy pilots who don't want to die will maneuver pretty damn well with their life on the line.

One of the fighter anons here. If you're willing to do D6 I just had an opening.

>Second was over a player losing an arm.
Yeah, my players are always clamoring for opportunities to lose arms. I'd be fine with letting them but one of them started without an arm already, so I've been hesitant because I don't want them treading over her flavor.

I have never played, definitely willing to learn it though.
Discord? I can make an email to drop if you dont want a public link

I... I have not heard of players competing to lose limbs. This player was very upset he lost an arm in the second game, despite the fact we had money for a replacement.

Email is ok. I'll drop you a line ASAP.

It's a text only game on roll20 right now.

And losing limbs gives an appeal to characters. It's become a substitute for development.

[email protected]

And that sad. I get the desire to develop fast, but its a slow burn to make a good character

>Second was over a player losing an arm.
Just play a Trandoshan. That way you can just grow it back.

Easiest way to do it is to have whatever you need of your actual PCs to fulfill important positions on the ship, and have the rest of the astromech and gunnery grunt work populated by droids. Just treat them like part of the ship.

Smart race choice.
But in FFGSW, limb replacement isn't crazy hard or ridiculous. Its not super cheap, but if your party aren't assholes you can afford it pretty quick.

Or just run like Accept it as part of your flavor and use it to develop your character

>limb replacement isn't crazy hard or ridiculous. Its not super cheap, but if your party aren't assholes you can afford it pretty quick.
I play a loner Trandoshan who spends every credit as fast as he gets it and would, if offered, refuse to take party money he didn't earn.
I want to get him a Heavy Blaster Rifle, if only he could save up for one...

Invite sent.

Well, "imps and rebs don't talk" is kind of a dumb, arbitrary decision, isn't it? I mean, it defies the nature and the basic advice nearly every RPG has about antagonists, to give them characterization. You can totally just hop on an open channel and yell to everyone with radios if you need to taunt - and in several points in the X-Wing novels do pilots take that moment to figure out which imperial frequency the enemy is running and engage in discourse with other pilots - though I agree that's something you have to take a moment for that to work, not something necessarily you do in a pitched battle. But I'll stand by advice I and several people gave, if you don't want it to get dull you can't have every situation turned to 11 ADRENALINE HIGH, HEAVEN OR HELL all the time. You should encourage the opportunity to interact with the scenario and roleplay and not cut if off at the knees because it's not military-appropriate. There's a lot of fudge room in a setting as pulpy as SW.

FFG, my currently preferred system basically has the restrictions you're talking about baked in - weapon systems are locked to their facing and linked according to their frame, so you only get one attack per system - though if you roll well enough with a fire-linked system you can have multiples hit.

I don't think I've ever had a player make ace in a day either, at least not a character do the equivalent when they were already a highly experienced ace level player, but I also accept it's theoretically possible. I've seen dice do some weird things, and if the roll was good enough, a player could crush multiple minion TIEs in a single sweep. As a GM I kind of advise against such bunching up, I tend to make minions wingman pairs or half-flight threesomes, but the appeal of big blocks of 4-5 TIEs all in a tight formation for their fire to hit much harder comes at the risk a bunch of them might eat a torpedo or something. But y'know, it could happen.

>Player leaves and the GM deletes the group or the GM just deletes the group.

Such is the scourge of online games. Low player investment = low reward.

Real life helps mitigate these disputes. People tend to behave themselves in groups. It's a social thing - there are too many pairs of eyes on you to get into random dick-measuring contests.

The main this is... take your time. Help work the dispute out. Don't pick sides. Watch some Day[9] to adjust your attitude towards loss and conflict.

If you want a conversation, do it when you aren't going five times the speed of sound and being shot at. The X-Wing novels do that exactly once, really late in, and basically never else. It was a big occasion between two people who had supposedly already met out of fighters multiple times, who was a fake and was being paid to talk more than fly. It doesn't happen beyond then. If you want to communicate what an enemy is doing, either use pirates who don't play it tight or do it nonverbally. If you want to introduce an antagonist, do it on the ground or by reputation. If your enemy TIE ace is sending out seventh grade taunts it doesn't actually do all that much.

>Well, "imps and rebs don't talk" is kind of a dumb, arbitrary decision, isn't it? I mean, it defies the nature and the basic advice nearly every RPG has about antagonists, to give them characterization.

Precisely.

They never talked in the movies and shows because Space Opera did not require them to talk.

But if your Space Opera game requires it, you bet your left tit they'll be able to talk. It's genre-appropriate. It's convenient. It makes a ton of sense for the type of game you want tor run.

And making Ace in a day can happen in this genre. It's the sort of thing that leads to great stories (about failure, loss, hopelessness, isolation, redemption, overconfidence, the weight of responsibility, and the triumph of good over evil, young over old, and hope over despair).

You're the GM, it's your rules. But unless someone rolls amazingly and plays smart ace in a day won't happen unless you basically hand it to your players and they're cool with enemies just failing to evade or fire back in a meaningful way, or else completely abandoning tactics. But at that point it's not a "great story", it's you patronizing everyone else.

>But unless someone rolls amazingly and plays smart ace in a day won't happen

Not disagreeing. It's possible, but it shouldn't be likely, easy, or trivial. It should be the sort of thing that makes everyone go "oh shit, is he the Chosen One or something"? And then maybe it turns out it was a fluke, and he slips back into mediocrity. Or maybe he keeps going, with more and more responsibility and more dangerous missions because his superiors know 'he can take it'?

All sorts of good story arcs.

The first one I tried to mediate. Play the middle, keep the group. I was having a blast and wanted to keep playing. Second one I just sat out. Figured if the group fell it fell.
I understand the attitude a little. In person, you will probably see these people again plus reputation in the area is smaller and more important. Like you said, its a little more difficult to do this shit in person.
Online is just so disposable. Its a good and a bad thing.

I hear that. Not the original guy, but part of what sucks with online is that since you don't actually know the other people, there's a greatly lessened "obligation" to continue to show up. When it's in person, it feels like more of a responsibility, whereas online it's easier to just drop.

I love the shape of that ship. I don't know that changing the angle of the front plates does much, but it looks pretty star wars-y, and has a wonderful lopsided shape.

Is that a statted ship? I know there's a twin-tail something, but I think it's tails are wider set than this one.

No idea, but probably not.

Doubt it would be difficult to stat though.

You people talk like every game is Rebels vs. Imperials and every game the Imperials are the antagonists.

I mean, that is how the game is designed.
Any imperial campaign is essentially a homebrew.

Edge of the Empire has a motivation designed for supporting the Empire, and one for stopping the Rebellion.

Too bad they're talking about Age of Rebellion

Actually, it happened a couple of times. Hell, I think even in the bacta war it happened multiple times in one book, though you are right that it's a climax moment, but still. Oh and in the original Wraith, Dinner Squadron and Silly Squadron. Don't you dare discount a classic moment. But it's not like I arbitrarily threw it out there either, my example was, y'know, the dramatic comeback moment.

Oh yeah, I agree it'd be hard, and mechanically the best way to do it would be HELLA dangerous rocket tag sort of shit, so it's not an easy task.

But it's dramatic as fuck. It's the kind of thing people here about, and it's a move that should come back into the narrative more than once. I was just brainstorming about a situation where a player burns through most of a flight of TIEs - that kind of exploit comes back, and in mecha anime it usually comes back in that the one guy you didn't kill became a broken shell of a man who devotes his life for REVENGE. Or maybe your team killed a whole flight, and they have a subordinate or a superior who is offended, or a loved one, or whatever. Just, y'know, have that dramatic arc come back around.

Well, specifically, I'm the one quoted at the top of the chain and I'm talking about AoR at least. A merc fighters game in EotE could be okay, but even hunting rebs for the bounties that can't mean a lot of conflicts with rebel forces.

And anyway, the original reference point is how TIE fighters are build kind of as that ideal, mass production ship. The kind of thing A solid protagonist can blow through a few of in the first episode, maybe more - even in his dad's old Z-95 beater. And if doesn't matter for narrative convenience, you never have to ask "where does the empire get more TIEs?". You can do different things, but that changes the narrative dynamic.

Though, with the way Rebels is, I suppose TIE pilots could cut their teeth on gen 1 A-Wings these days...

Are FF TIE's that fucked up? In d6 and d20 a Z-95 has a really hard time against them due to worse speed and lackluster weapons. You can take them on with missiles, but since those are a PC resource your players do have to keep track of them and buy more.

Those helicopter sabers are literally the dumbest thing in NuCanon so far.

They have an advantage on mobility, but are held back by the fact that the standard Imp Pilot has shit skills.

No?
ROTS was and is looked at as a good movie by your metric.
Not defending critic taste, but you appealed to "everyone", so hey.

This is the only time that particular ship looked cool. I wish they could have translated this design better into the game.

Also, the transforming forward armor or whatever is stupid.

It's kind of a debatable situation. The TIE has a little less armor and health, and the Z has a single point of forward shields, but the TIE has the better handling, top speed and slightly better guns - and they both have the same system strain (so resistance to ion or system damage or stress as opposed to hull integrity). They also cost about the same and have the same rarity. They should be comparable for most purposes.

But the point isn't necessarily that they're comparable, but rather that a solid player should be able to push the limit a little if they're playing the role of "pilot" (explicitly "THE ACE" in Age of Rebellion) and your GM isn't hard-balling you, the skill level for a couple of "minions" (y'know, TV extras) in TIEs should be below enough to make the difference. Your GM can play harder, but that should be something to agree to do dependant on the tone of your campaign and the skill/challenge level of the players and their characters. Like if everybody is fighter pilots, feel free to give them a bit of run for their money.

I guess that's consistent. Imp pilots have always been kind of shit in base fighters.

Basically, a TIE/LN in FFG will almost assuredly pop in one hit against anybody who can roll worth a damn, unless the enemy is REALLY undergunned (coughKihraxzcough). But they're nimble and fast as fuck in a chase or maneuver situation.

A Z-95 might not pop in one shot, or might be the difference between a kill that can't be guaranteed with guns requiring a missile or torp shot.

But yes the real divide is that a solo TIE pilot is just some guy who is only a threat with like 1-3 friends and a player is typically a slight cut above that.

The Z also has the advantage that it's got a couple of hardpoints for modifications - so if you had the time and money, you can make some improvements, like hide a chaff launcher in the back or slap a battering ram on the front. Or just bolt more armor or better shields in the back.

Or all terrain legs.

No more shit than average pilot NPCs.

If you as the GM play them intelligently, TIEs are deadly. They outmaneuver and outrun everything and their twin-linked cannon is nothing to laugh at.

Imperial campaigns with TIE pilots have them chopping up X-Wings just as X-Wings chop up TIEs in Rebel campaigns.

I think there's a bit of a difference in what we're going for.

The way I see it, if you're playing on a map with pilot tokens, then every pilot can usually try something and a lot of the time basic maneuvers aren't hard to roll for. It's not a question of if they can just flat dodge something or hit a target by itself, but where on the map each fighter is. If it's flat rolls vs rolls, then yes, one heroic character can fuck up a whole squadron of TIE fighters all damn day.

But if you have a decent number of TIE's, then even if they never do anything particularly fancy you can always have it so one or two will be flanking a PC until you've taken a few down.

Here's one random example. Lets assume that our blue pilot runs straight at three TIE fighters in red. In the first round he blasts one without issue and the other two break off in opposing directions. He maneuvers to go after the second TIE, and blasts it. But when he pulls back to take on the third, the third is also swinging around to take him on and it effectively becomes a game of quick draw. Even if you blow up the initial fighter the other two will shoot at you, and while you're clear on the second round on the third it's technically anyone's game. So you have to dodge the fighter attacks three times.

It's a bit of an extreme imbalance at 1 v 3, but it illustrates the point. Even mediocre pilots can use basic maneuvers to flank and get a couple of shots off. Though I'm not sure how big the gap plays out in gameplay during an FF game.

Let's see that's a D+ from the critics and an F from users. Ya, some real high quality film right there.

Yeah, in the grand scheme those numbers don't inspire a lot of confidence. They show that the audience thought it was mostly just ok and critics were divided but thought it was slightly above average.

It's not a bad movie and wasn't judged as such. But to say it was great kind of isn't realistic in an era where anything lower than a 70% is seen as total garbage.

Well, that's the thing though, in FFG you don't necessarily need to bust out the tokens. There's no hard distances, facing matters but there's no rule that you can't just turn to any facing. The distances are much squishier to step away from grid basis, and in running several types of games, I've never had players feel the need for a tac map, they've always been able to operate just on describing a situation and saying "Oh, he's down a long hallway, so he's a medium distance away", or something.

So while you're limited in the amount of actions you can do (and you can do maneuvers and shoot in the same turn, those aren't the same "type" of action) technically nothing stops you from just jousting back and forth with the guy. You can spend an action specifically to "gain the advantage" which means you do your crazy dogfight maneuvers and can choose to be in the rear or to the side or whatever - but you lose the opportunity to attack. And so the other guy has an opportunity to take it back next turn - though GtA gets harder and harder each time.

Of course, to keep things more balanced I and a lot of people tend to make checks like that opposed, skill vs skill modified by relative difference and ships (rather than the default of entirely dependant on ships) - and the crux of the issue that unless you are actively trying to seriously murder a PC (as opposed to just, invoke a reasonable challenge which may or may not kill a PC) those three TIE pilots are minions. They can be very dangerous bunched up, but that means they have to act in concert. If you scrub one in the first pass, the two can try and maneuver around behind you but they have to both do it. If they break and go on their own, they can trade for being seperate targets with seperate actions, but In my experience with FFG's rolling mechanics that will make them so shitty they won't be able to do anything that matters. Though I've gotten lucky with minions rolling 2-3 green dice before.

If you mean a Jedi who occasionally disagrees with the Council in the vein of Qui-Gon or the entire Corellian sect, sure.
If you mean retarded kreia-wanking "balance between light and dark" bullshit, get the fuck out of my house.

Now, you could pit a single player in a single fighter vs 2 or 3 "rival" caliber enemies, who mostly approach the same competence as starting PCs. But that is basically straight up 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 odds. Unless you're deliberately building a very challenging, lethal narrative or a player is choosing at risk of his own life to dive into a situation where his skills will be met with 2-3 more times the skill that's not the way to go. That ends up with PCs as stains in space, and players wondering "Hey, GM, is this encounter balanced properly?". That's, y'know, stuff you work out beforehand and with people who have experience with the game. That's the sort of situation where you want to put players on a roughly even footing, and then with a Nemesis you should have the entire party go at them, or them plus some elite, cool-looking minions.

I mean, this is kind of how I started spitballing with the idea of pulling inspiration for a fighter game from mecha anime. If you're a headline protagonist, you can start scratching a couple of faceless no-names an episode, maybe more. You might even fine some enemies in better fighters or with decent skills who can keep up one on one. But you might also build up to an enemy ace (a Nemesis-class encounter) who has amazing skills and a unique machine which pushes you to your limit to solo, or requires multiple quality pilots working together to fell. Y'know, it's not necessarily about rational, sensible or even an externally logical path, but a story path that requires consistent internal logic and verisimilitude, which feels right for the moment and what you've built before.

As long as mechanics keep finding ways to improve this baby, the Headhunter will never be outdated.

That sounds kind of weak to be honest. It means that your players know that they'll be more or less invulnerable despite being seriously outnumbered consistently. In d6 and d20 the odds of a TIE pilot actually getting you may be low, but you can split them up and force the players to maneuver and make the dogfight much more involved than an abstract.

AT-ZT

It really only becomes an issue if the GM is only sending bog standard TIEs in small groups. TIE pilots have essentially the same stat block as storm troopers: complete with the "the more of them there are, the more yellow die they have" rule.

Throw in an advanced or a defender or back them up with a Gozanti or something bigger, and watch the players make for hyperspace

I mean, individual TIEs can chip damage and really grind you down, but on their own they won't do really great - and really shouldn't. They aren't great, they're just extras.

They're much scarier if you stack them together, but then for that to make sense and work, they have to all be working as a unit. When they shoot at you, all of them are firing a big screen at you. If a flight drops in behind you they all position to try and get in your blank spot. That's really scary - but again, that makes players dead exceptionally fast. You have to learn to feel out and find a sweet spot between "And the squadron of 12 TIEs each in 3 man groups just eats you alive" and "four local yokel TIE pilots each break off individually and try and gun you down by themselves".

I say the charm and involvement comes from the wider situation. Like, okay, sometimes you send a wave of TIEs at them to remind them how close they flirt with death, but other times they have other stuff to worry about - like killing a wave of bombers+escorts before they reach the rebel base.

Or probably my best and most tense space encounter, one PC is literally the last man out in the party's hot-rodded freighter, he's not even the designated pilot but they were all in actual fighters for the mission, and so he and a couple of repurposed droids as gunners have to flee through the debris field and get out of range of the Interdictor, while a Inquisitor in an advanced with a couple squints flanking is glued to his ass. Was it statistically likely she was actually gonna blow him out of space? Naw. Was it still really dramatic and had some moments where it really was up to the dice because of player's decision making? Aw ye.

It's not a question of making them more difficult as a group, it's a question of them maneuvering around and having the ability to use tactics as a group.

When you abstract that to a certain point I feel the threat is gone. Yes, a group of three or four TIE's can be a danger, but that's because they're all holding on single file and just coming in as a wave.

So, the AT-AP seems like a nod to German and Russian (And to some degree experimental British) Casemate style Tank Destroyers/Assault guns OR the Swedish S-tank, but there's one huge problem with it: Legs don't really work with a casemate style front gun since they need to turn to aim and need to stand to turn.

How would you fix this while still keeping a SW look?
Pretty sure 79 is a C+, and 65 is juuuuust barely above an F/

Put it on a TIE fighter.

But what about the legs, I hear you ask?

Got that sorted too.

I wonder if that one Oppressor tanktruck in Rogue One built on the real tankette chasis is wide enough to serve as a base? Probably not but scale it up and it may just work.

Oh my

I'm sure this has been posted dozens of times, but I just watched this for the first time today.

youtube.com/watch?v=PN_CP4SuoTU

The goosebumps are strong with this one.

That got made here. That entire thing was literally just one autist from /m/ doing it for free in his spare time.

>If you mean retarded kreia-wanking "balance between light and dark" bullshit, get the fuck out of my house.
That wasn't even what Kreia said. That was some other bullshit Dark Jedi Plot

Hey /swg/ do i need a media fire account to download the Star wars rpg system?

Thanks in advance

No, you shouldn't?

Shouldn't need it, but if you're in the shit I know a mega account which has a lot of stuff in it

mega.nz/#F!blI01Jga!6uL6fLHF2rJFKDN57E14WQ

Agreed, but can we just let it go? That happened in one single Rebels episode and hasn't happened ever since. And that episode had a lot of other cool stuff happening to boot.

Inquisitor Lanius - The Grand Inquisitor before Pau'un fella Kanan kills. Murdered a boat load of Jedi and was finally killed by a Corellian Guardian in 10BBY.

We also have:

Turen Wreathe - a Zabrak maximum Force power user. Also had Cortosis powers to punch the shit out of people. Killed by the Selonian Bounty Hunter during the same battle as the Corellian killed Lanius. Was the "Monk" (see below, only just remembered)

The Herglic and The Givin - A combo team of a "Paladin" and a "Scholar" from FFXIV. Herglic is massive and tanky, Givin is a healer who does Force power magic. Fought them a couple of times, but not yet won or lost.

The Human woman and The Chagrian - This combo is the "Bard" and the "Warrior", and were waiting for the party on the Wild Space world once used by Revan for his war against the extragalactic threat. The Corellian made a VERY grudging truce with them when a huge, ancient war machine started up and began destroying shit. Last seen in a badly damaged ship flying away from the fortress robot as the party flew in.

Rienne - Cathar childhood friend of the Corellian. She turned back to good after they met and battled a couple of times on Nar Shaddaa. She now oversees the couple of young Force Sensitives the party found, training them to grasp the basics and going back over her basics with them to better embrace the Force again. She's by far the strongest in combat, but is extremely gentle and kind. Also was the "Ninja" of the Inquisitor group.

Based on the aforementioned FFXIV love our GM has, I expect there to be a Dragoon, a Black Mage, a Summoner, a White Mage, a Dark Knight (though this could have been Lanius, GM retconned the classes in), Astrologian and Machinist.

No Samurai or Red Mage that I know of, yet.

It was fine, found out i needed an upgraded account if i wanted to download everything in bulk, in a zip.

Now explain this.

Also, ROTJ has a LOWER critic score than ROTS.

I want to start a rebellion campaign by involving the players in the liberation of an Imperial-occupied city (which will also liberate the planet) but have the crowning moment cut off as the Imperial fleet shows up and Dresdens the city as a show of force.

Some big moment like the citizenry are about to take the City Hall or the Garrison or the Moff surrenders magnanimously to spare the lives of her few remaining troops, and offers to accept imprisonment within the walls of the large Imperial City Hall, knowing full well that the fleet is 2 minutes away and the City Hall is the only thing in the city sturdy enough to take the beating.

My problem is I can't figure out how to set things up so that the citizens don't simply go 'but if we attempt to mutiny the Empire will simply turn us to ash' or having the Imps show up early and crushing any resistance while it's still organising

There's also the danger that the players recognise the danger ('we can't liberate this, the fleet will immediately put an end to that') but I can get around that by putting them in a city that is revolting with or without them.

I considered things like the rebels commandering AA guns or the comms of the city but that gets in the way of the fiery finale, and while I think the involvement of spies and turncoats could help there, I feel like if you can wrest so much of your stuff back with a few spies then glassing the planet is unnecessarily messy

So, how do I have my cake and eat it too?

Starcraft did it first

More money to buy critics

Nothing in Starcraft was done by them first.

really made me think

Just wait until you hear how that bomber ace got her scar.