/swg/ - Graphs and the Command Edition

>but I was also kind of expecting to get a pair of U-Wings with this like the Chimera and it's Gauntlets.

The Chimera comes with loads of upgrades and squadrons because it's a repaint package. It includes 3 sets of the 2 new ship cards for your existing ISD collection, so the huge number of upgrades and squadrons are how they make it worth purchasing multiples (correspondingly, littering the market with cheap spares of the new ISD cards).

Yes, but is arguably the most overpriced ship in Armada. I think it'll be right around 100 points.

Reposting my questions from last thread:

How do you guys prepare sessions?

I never really know what or how much to plan, but I keep running out of session early and not knowing how to react to certain things my players do. Also, my fights keep being extreme one-sided, either to the party or the NPCs. Also2, I don't really know how to design fights that aren't just trading shots from behind cover. (Maybe this is the cause of the previous?) If doesn't help that the book gives no guidance on designing encounters...

I think part of the problem is that we're new and still in a video game mentality rather than a "can do anything" mentality. How do we get out of that?

Final question: how do you design social encounters, specifically? I never know when to ask for a roll and when not to (especially after a previous success/failure), and my party tends to not inquire down the things I thought about but rather ask questions or do random things I didn't anticipate. So I never know what to say and neither do they, and the social encounter tends to end in like five minutes. I can't write out an entire conversation tree in advance, either, so all my aliens just talk short and to the point like the improved information depots they are.

I already got some good advice from:

fantasyflightgames.es/juegos/articulo/star_wars_armada/profundidad

>Interdictor
>speed 3

What sector are you from? The 'Dictor is speed 2 and can equip engine techs, which is different from being native speed 3. Sub optimal defense tokens are not going to put something with this much base hull, shielding, and battery dice in the AF/Vic/Dictor price range. Neither will speed 2.

For god's sake you finally getting the Ackbar/gunnery team large people have wanted forever, and you're figuring it's going to be 30 points less the HO or an ISD?

Dream on.

>For god's sake you finally getting the Ackbar/gunnery team large people have wanted forever,

It's only got one extra blue die in the sides versus the assault frigate - obviously it's got a strong front and more hull, but basically the same shields with worse speed and tokens.

So it's not like some sort of Ackbar wet dream, not anymore so than the assault frigate is, anyways.

Counter point, you con't conga line block this thing the way you can with an AF - the heavy close range frontal arc guarantees it. Plus you can run a DCO to get full use of those contains, which are not range dependent like an evade is. Finally, if it has an ion slot (and with blue in every arc it almost certainly will) it will be able to equip leading shots for dice modification, and the AF can't do that either.

the trick is to not focus so much on "what happens" and "what the players do", but "what is there to interact with".
when you write down a scenario, don't think in terms of "next the players go there and do this and that", but "there is a control tower in the middle with several laser cannon emplacements, the technicians in the tower are the only ones who can operate the adjacent turbolift" etc etc.
Don't think so much in terms of what options the players have to succeed, but simply focus on modeling a detailed world and cross sections of it. that is what gives the players the most freedom to act and find solutions themselves and makes it easy for you to go with whatever your players want to do.

much in the same vein, when designing social encounters, don't write a "script", simply create an NPC and write down their opinions on politics, their general attitude towards [insert player race], unique personality traits, their susceptibility to being bribed etc etc.
from there it is simply a matter of playing that character as you would a PC in this given situation. again, improvising becomes easy, since you already have a lot of information as to how this NPC would react with minimal prep.

a pretty common trick with combat encounters is to start them off a little more on the easy side and making them harder as needed. the players being overwhelmed (when that is not the intention) is a worse scenario than them having too easy a time, because it's harder for you to adjust.
Let's say six TIE-Fighters Attack the Players' ship. You know, this should be a fair challenge for them. However, should they have too easy a time with that, you always have the option of having a TIE Defender jump from hyperspace to back up the Fighters.

that Lucrehulk is way too big.

Yeah, it's definitely more powerful than an Assault Frigate.

But it's not THAT much more powerful. Twenty points stronger? Sure. Fourty points stronger? I don't see it.

>Plus you can run a DCO to get full use of those contains, which are not range dependent like an evade is.

That denies you Walex, who you probably want. DCO is not... great; unless you are in a meta where everything is Demolisher and Admonition and Norra and Sato. Besides, the Ackbar AssFrig WANTS to stay at long range, so the evade token suits it just fine.

It's not like "gets good value out of DCO" makes up for the same token suite on the Interdictor, after all.

Remember that FFG seems to charge opportunity costs for things - that's how the Interdictor got boned in the first place. Even if it is only a raw 20 points stronger than an AF, having more options from it's upgrades will almost certainly inflate the price.

>if this thing doesn't have a defensive retrofit slot
Well, look at the second upgrade card from the left. I really doubt they release a defensive retrofit with it if it doesn't have the slot for it, on at least one of the versions.

Interdictor has an extra Redirect token in place of the second Contain token that an MC75 has.

The MC75 will almost certainly be in the same price range as a Liberty-type.

No, it does not in fact have a second redirect.

>Paying 93 points for THAT

Jesus fucking christ. What kind of crazy premium did FFG put on the Grav-Well slot? This thing isn't even as good as the Assault Frigate except in the front arcs A LITTLE BIT and thats a full 20 points cheaper and with defence tokens that are actually useful (because of TRC).

What the fucking christ were FFG thinking when they costed this thing. It doesn't even have speed 3.

3 points more gets a rebel player the Liberty Star Cruiser.

I have questions about Imperial patrols in-universe.

If in some backwater/outer rim planet, would a lone gozanti with 4 attached TIE fighters be used as a patrol ship?

If they are attacked/see pirates, what would it take them to call for backup? I'm thinking that they would call for backup reflexively.

What would it take for the Gozanti to jump to hyperspace?

How long would it take for backup to arrive? Be it a Decimator, hyperspace-capable fighter, Raider, or Frigate.

What would it look like to those in the area when the other ships come out of Hyperspace? Would it be detectable?

Man, they really must've overvalued the gravity well generation. Shame, as it is an interesting ship with an unique ability, but the ability simply isn't useful enough to justify paying so much for a mediocre ship.

Isn't it a titanic waste of energy to explode a planet when it would take much less to just kill the planet's whole biosphere?

Wouldn't it take AT LEAST several hours for any backup to feasibly be able to arrive?
In any case, a ship coming out of hyperspace is detectable even before it drops out of it.

Armada's pricing is all over the place when it comes to points. Tarkin is probably overpriced compared to what he does (by about 6 or so points, not a huge amount) Dominator Title shouldn't be 12 points, the Interdictor is at least 10, probably 20 points overcosted. Leia Commander is overcosted and the Kuat Yards version should get a discount for losing two whole squadron points. Instead it's an ISD1 that swaps an Off Retro for a Def, and trades a Turbolaser for a Missile upgrade slot.
The Arquitens feels like it's more than it should be as well. Engine Techs ARE fairly priced, but only until the ability to double ram with them is errattad out, since it's pretty questionable that being able to do that was the intended spirit of the card.

...then again, it DOES allow you to make Project Rams Head.

to the guy from last thread, who was having trouble running a game, i got last reply in before the new thread kicked off, so i wont repost.

Yes. For practical reasons there's nothing you'd really need a Death Star for that you couldn't accomplish by sending a fleet of star destroyer to bombard the planet from orbit for several weeks untill every population center is reduced to slag.
It was always supposed to be a terror weapon, keeping anybody from rebelling by being a symbol of the Empire's military and economic power (you have to be an extremely powerful empire to afford the ridiculous amount of resources needed to build such a thing), and showing everybody that if you rebel, the Empire can just completely obliterate your planet and there's nothing you can do about it (aside from that one thermal exhaustion port, but they obviously weren't going to tell anybody).

The thing to remember about the Empire is that it's Alpha Complex in space. Everything is just barely held together by the will of a malicious autocrat who skirts the border between genius and madness, everyone is terrified of their immediate superiors and bogged down by red tape, and there's an extreme chilling effect on any and all complaint and criticism, paired with a strong incentive to lie on reports to avoid punishment. So anything could happen and probably does. A Gozanti and four TIEs would be extremely light for a patrol even in an unimportant area, as TIEs are designed to work from volume and are worth about one-quarter of a more expensive fighter, but in the official paperwork that patrol is probably 24 TIEs housed in a proper Imperial-made battleship. Calling for backup is a sign of failure, and signs of failure are how you get demoted/cashiered/choked, so I imagine they'd be rather reluctant to call for backup if there's any hope they can pretend this whole thing never happened.

Hyperspace travel is always at the speed of plot. Sometimes they handwave it in-story to say that hyperspace has ever-changing changing non-Euclidean geometry, which is also the reason why you have to calculate each jump right before it happens instead of just saving a map of all the important gravity wells in the area and avoiding those automatically. So the short answer is maybe an hour, maybe a day, probably not more than two or three days.

Coming in and out of hyperspace looks like a momentary streak of light, and in the films they seem to be able to detect when someone arrives from hyperspace nearby, even when scanning from a planet's surface to see if anyone has arrived in orbit.

>If in some backwater/outer rim planet, would a lone gozanti with 4 attached TIE fighters be used as a patrol ship?

Only in the farthest of backwaters. Patrols are almost never a single ship.

>If they are attacked/see pirates, what would it take them to call for backup? I'm thinking that they would call for backup reflexively.

Depends on the number of pirates. A single ship they might not call for backup on, more than two they probably would.

>What would it take for the Gozanti to jump to hyperspace?

Depends on its commanding officer. Some might stay even if the fight is futile, some might leave once all four TIEs are destroyed, some might leave if half the TIEs are destroyed.

>How long would it take for backup to arrive? Be it a Decimator, hyperspace-capable fighter, Raider, or Frigate.

Depends on their situation and the nearest backup. Assume that no less than an hour, but probably no more than a day.

>What would it look like to those in the area when the other ships come out of Hyperspace? Would it be detectable?

Ships coming out of hyperspace are nearly always detectable assuming you're running a sensor sweep. Doesn't matter how large or how small, as long as they're not hiding in an asteroid field.

I have no idea- i'm not the most experienced with Star Wars lore. How long does entering and exiting Hyperspace take? How fast is it?

After I start my EotE campaign soon, I planned on having the party get access to a ship(s) and figured there would be a gozanti or similar patrolling a minor shipping lane in my description. I wanted to know how combat would likely go down (not RaW, i'm using alternative space combat rules) if they decide to attack the gozanti or go full pirate.

not nessesarily. in system jumps can be a matter of seconds, since hyperspace is usually good deal faster than light. if the main base has a victory and some rinkydink frigates and gonzatis playing AWAC to a CAP of TIEs which comes under fire, they light off the hyperwave tranciever as beacon, and the reinforcments jump in after doing the quick calculations, 5 minutes at most, assuming they are in proper orbital position (planet isnt in the way) and suddenly backup has arrived. the question should be how big is the QRF and can it be split? you get two squadrons of fighters, split each into two flights, and send one against a gonzatti to draw off the cruiser cover while the other squadron runs rampant in the backfield.

>If in some backwater/outer rim planet, would a lone gozanti with 4 attached TIE fighters be used as a patrol ship?
For a small patrol route in a much larger network of in-system patrols, I'd say yes. Space is a big place and I tend to be a bit conservative when it comes to matters of scale, so I can't really see a single Gozanti as being sufficient to handle all the duties of defending a single solar system, even a sparsely inhabited one.
>If they are attacked/see pirates, what would it take them to call for backup? I'm thinking that they would call for backup reflexively.
The TIEs will likely serve as the equivalent of canaries in a mine. If they can't easily destroy or severely damage the threat, it's time for the carrier to run and call for backup.
>What would it take for the Gozanti to jump to hyperspace?
See above.
>How long would it take for backup to arrive? Be it a Decimator, hyperspace-capable fighter, Raider, or Frigate.
Hyperspace travel times are highly inconsistent due to the sheer number of variables (writer, hyperdrive rating, distance, etc.). If it's from a nearby adjacent star system, I'd say anywhere from minutes to hours, depending on whether that backup is already sitting at an appropriate jump point in its origin system.
>What would it look like to those in the area when the other ships come out of Hyperspace? Would it be detectable?
The sensors on anything Gozanti-sized and up are probably sufficient to detect any conventional, common starship on the market. The only exceptions to that would probably be TIE Phantoms and StealthXs.

FFG RPG question:
How does fighting with three+ weapons work, for the folks with extra arms or weapons they don't have to hold?

I don't think that is ever explicitly addressed. I would just work it like two weapon fighting already does and just scale up the penalties.

>I have no idea- i'm not the most experienced with Star Wars lore. How long does entering and exiting Hyperspace take? How fast is it?

It's around 1.0 SRbP (Speed Required by Plot) in the movies and books, I guess it can be just as fast in an RPG.

So according to the advice I got in the last thread, a force of 4 Gozanti, 2 Raider, 1 Decimator, 1 Imperial Frigate and attached TIEs would make sense to be assigned to keep out pirates in an area of 6 systems, with say 7 inhabitable planets?

I figured it would make sense for the Frigate to stay in the system with 2 livable planets, the Gozantis and 1 raider in some rotating patrol on the other 5, with the second raider staying on-call and ready to jump if any of the others request backup.

Am I wrong?

Navy ships are also responsible for hunting down smugglers and maintaining control of space lanes, ports, customs, etc. How many ships are in a system will vary based on the amount of traffic in that system and the overall threat level, a moderately busy system may require all those ships and then some while some tiny backwater mining post may be able to get away with a single Gozanti.

So what would be the outer rim area where the largest imperial shipin command would be the Imperial Frigate(a 400M ship?)

If it is the 6-system area, would more ships be assigned? What types of ships? VT-49 Decimators?

>If it is the 6-system area, would more ships be assigned? What types of ships? VT-49 Decimators?

I would assign at least three ships, two Decimators and a Gozanti. The important thing to remember when assigning ships to a system is that a ship cannot be in two places at once. This isn't much of a problem when the only thing in the system is a single mining camp a lone Gozanti can park itself above. You need more ships for more inhabited systems, especially if there are other points of interest throughout the system like research outposts, asteroid mines, manufacturing stations, etc. All these things need to be monitored and controlled in an efficient manner and that means more ships.

Ideally, a system has enough ships to have one decently-sized ship parked at everything you care about, even if that ship is only there to yell for help before it dies, with the bulk of the actual heavy duty stuff patrolling between the things you care about, ready to ride in if help is called for.

You'd probably also have at least one customs ship in each system, maybe 4-6 in the largest.
Also, the point of patrols is that *all* of those ships are jumping system to system in a pattern theoretically known only to the empire, not spread out in penny packets that render them incapable of actually dealing with any meaningful threat
In-system detail patrols only happen if something pings the sensor nets strung around basically everything of importance in systems where anything other than the main world matters, or if there's specific Intel that there's something there

So for these six systems, the Frigate, 2 Raiders, 5 Gozantis and 5 Decis makes sense?

Park frigate in the system with 2 habitable planets, a gozanti over the other 5. Decimators patrol around, 1 raider patrols the 2-planet system, 1 on standby?

That makes sense, right?

The planets will be expys of major SW locations.

sounds good, that should be enough to keep most criminal elements in check and keep things running smoothly.

>The planets will be expys of major SW locations.
Are any of them strategically important?

A not-coruscant that is the capital of the 6 systems, a not-bespin with gas mines, a not-tatooine with gangs, spice and a hutt, a not-jakku/endor hybrid that is a clone-wars graveyard, a not-naboo agriworld, a not-mustafar with metal mines, and a not-kamino with a research lab.

I'm going to be going full sandbox/off-the-cuff, so i want to do logical worldbuilding up front and then go make it up from there.

Hold the fucking phone, then
Half of those sound like they'd be in the top five most important worlds in a given *sector*
They'd be defended by more along the lines of a half dozen ISDs, about thirty cruisers and frigates, fifty or more corvettes, and a couple hundred gunships, especially the motherfucking city planet, which might even rate a Praetor and a dozen ISDs on it's own, because those are fucking high-value worlds

No official rules yet, but we houseruled it to be the same as 2 weapon fighting, but requiring 2 extra advantages to trigger the third weapon

I figured that each world would be downscaled in terms of usefulness. It's not as big of a city as coruscant, but it ends being -urban adventure world' for the PC's, etc. Would there really be that much of a presence to defend a single planet with a mine?

And thinking about it, I could probably swap not-kamino to Bumfuck-4- a planet with fuckall. (And maybe put a shrodinger's research base on later)

These would be the only 7 habitible planets in the system cluster.

Most planets have approximately fuck all resources that are used outside of that planet and tiny populations, nothing even a tenth as important as any of the places you're talking about. five or six of THOSE are what the suggested patrol is right for
The imperial navy tends to concentrate most of a sector fleet on the important worlds and trouble spots, and those make up ~10% of the worlds in most given sectors
So even if none of them are *that* important to the empire, there'd still be an actual Star Destroyer and cruiser/frigate squadrons around, plus enough smaller craft to actually screen those planets fairly tightly

If the average human has a characteristic of 2, how far above/below average is a 1 or a 3?

Take the US, for example. How many Intellect 3 people are there out of 330m?

A single 3 would probably be one in 50 or so, with multiple threes one in a couple hundred to a couple thousand, depending on how many of their stats are threes

That's not born out by the mechanics. Even if you halve the exp budget for a NPC, you'd still expect around one-in-six.

I personally wonder the implications of that since animals have an Int of 1, what does that mean for a few races, such as Weequay and Aqualish, that default to 1Int?

I was wondering a similar thing. Humans *physical cannot* go below two in a stay at character creation.

Does that mean your bog standard neckbeard has a 2 in presence and brawn? In which case the range covered by a two has to be absolutely massive.

But in THAT case, a 5 in intellect represents a genius of anime-level keikaku values.

>Humans *physical cannot* go below two in a stay at character creation

This is what I get for phone posting

Anyways I realize it's just a game and none of this matters, but it's interesting to think about

Really depends on the stat.
Like, basically anyone who's job or hobby involves lifting heavy stuff on a regular basis would have a 3 brawn, but 3 int would probably be more like one in ten or so.

Anyone got any ideas for sidequests for Imperial players on a topical ocean world (Sesid)

There are multiple tourist attractions.
An aquatic rebellion-loving native species
Imperial pharmaceutical compounds
and an imperial garrison

...

>Humans *physical cannot* go below two in a stay at character creation. A one probably would be equivalent to some sort of disability or just being a really dumb motherfucker
Humans *suitable for adventuring* can't.
Plenty of humans with a one in presence exist, as this site demonstrates time and again, but they wouldn't make it in the adventuring life

So if I change not-coruscant to a mega-slum, does that make sense?

I would think that Star Wars tends to lend itself to theme-park style setting, so I figured I would embrace it fully.

Really, what I wanted was the following-
"urban adventure world"
"Old war scrap world"
"Gangster world"
"'Normal' planet"
"Schrodinger's plot planet"
"Mines and monsters world"
And not-bespin, because bespin was cool and I can't figure out what element I want from it.

What would the imperial presence above these types of worlds look like?

Why not combine some of them?

Urban adventure and gangster world could easily be different parts of the same place.

Mines and monsters and old war scrap also make sense side by side.

The ships main role is to stop ships from leaving the system, or pulling them from hyperspace. It wasn't supposed to be fight alone.

>t. rebel

Yeah, that is a good point for combining those 2. Say 5 worlds in 4 systems with people on them? Should i make the planet/system ratio higher?

Would the scale of imperial presence that I am suggesting make sense then?

>Would the scale of imperial presence that I am suggesting make sense then?
Not really, no
Basically any place that matters adventure-wise for reasons other than 'secret stash of X' or 'secret hideout' is important enough for a larger imperial presence

>Calling for backup is a sign of failure, and signs of failure are how you get demoted/cashiered/choked, so I imagine they'd be rather reluctant to call for backup if there's any hope they can pretend this whole thing never happened.
I'm not a fan of this interpretation. Even in the films, Vader doesn't simply execute people willy-nilly. He executes people because they've seriously, visibly fucked up and caused unnecessary, avoidable loss of Imperial lives, materiel, resources, and time. Losing incredibly expensive Imperial Navy property should warrant a much harsher punishment than simply calling for reinforcements. And given the nature of the Tarkin doctrine, it's likely that backup requests would, in fact, be taken very seriously and receive an overwhelming response. The Empire may have its moments of stupidity, but it is perfectly capable of being a competent, well-oiled machine when Team Skywalker and Team Ghost aren't around.

I guess I'm just trying to keep the overall scale and scope of the campaign down- It would be difficult to do much if there is any force with the level of power as even a smaller SD out there.

I was going to make up some bullshit about gravity bubbles to keep the visit-able world small, but if even these 5 planets would be enough of a reason to have an ISD floating around saying "I dare you motherfuckers, fuck with me" to every single other faction, I'm not sure a sandbox campaign will work.

Would would make sense to keep the imperial presence low in the outer rim, but not helpless? Sort of a "don't fuck with this thing, it can't kill you, but it can call for help that will fuck you" deal.

Party will likely be flying around in 2 fighters and a light freighter, dogfighting quite a bit. They likely won't be directly opposed to the imperials, since it is a sandbox campaign. Probably messing with local criminals/political groups more.

Knowing their personality, their first thing when set loose will be trying to attack a spice runner to steal the spice to sell for themselves.

If the Imps have any sort of SD variety on hand, then it sort of overhangs the entire campaign. "You might have caused the Bumfucks to overthrow the hicks, but it doesn't matter because the Imps can fuck them both at once without breaking a sweat" kind of deal.

Is my gravity bubble excuse good enough?

Also I'll be using models for the game for space combat, and I can't get any ships bigger than a Imperial Frigate on hand

Just have some of that not being Imperial, but a "neutral" allied planet.

One system(b) has planet(1) that was fought over in the clone wars for minerals, but got polluted to the extent that up keeping a mining operation wouldn't be cost efficient and now only scavengers and gangster live there. The gangsters are the "upper class" and force slaves/scavengers to work in the mines which mean almost certain death because mutants and radiation. They sell some of the minerals to the imperials so they leave them be. Crashed ships could have important stuff or it could be taken from the people. The miner quantity is about enough to supply the main world.

In another system(x) there is a pre clone wars era research station(x) that had to be evacuated because of the battle in the nearby system, but had been forgotten ever since.

Main system(a) has an Imperial controlled urban industrial world(1), where most of the fleet is and an agricultural world(2) allied to the imperials, that sells food to them. The industry is not that big but enough to supply the systems around it.

You can have one(c) or two(d) another system with recently colonized worlds(1,1), with only town on them.

The imperials patrol the main System and the smaller systems, the gangsters "patrol" their own system, and maybe abandoned deactivated CIS units could be in the research stations system. Obvious that system has nothing of importance and not on any trade routes so no one ever goes there. Maybe discover a starmap in one of the crashed ships.

>some guy with photoshop modelling skills can pull off better models than Disney
>a bunch of ships that appeared in comic books have better design than the best Disney can come up with

It's mostly the low distance between your planets that's causing the defense fleet 'wait what'. If there's that much important stuff reasonably close together, hell yeah they're gonna plonk a fleet in because it's cost effective. Spread that shit out far enough out that they can't share a fleet, and you end up with your backwater ideal of a handful of rinkydink ships.

I'm not sure how I got that wrong. I even looked at the Interdictor card before posting.

Those look like hot shit though

The Empire would really function better as a more cohesive and centralized entity that kept law and order to a 100% maximum if... it decreased its territory. It would need to dump a lot of excess, but for its overstretched manpower I think it does fairly well especially in comparison to the Old Republic.

>the supremacy
I wonder what the Deathstar 2 2 will be called.

If you want a sandbox, don't set it at the height of the empire, then
Set it during the Imperial Civil War, when that's all the local warlord can spare to keep an eye on things, or during the late Old Republic and it's shit-tier navy

Make it space florida

You could always send them to Hologram Fun World for maximum Dark Greetings

You can keep the concept, the planets just have to be really shit examples of their type, of absolutely no concern to the wider galaxy or even the rest of the sector
Like if those six worlds totaled under a million people, that level

Space Florida should have a stand-in for a certain work-in-progress theme park. Maybe call it "Stellar Conflict: Edge of the Empire."

The fairly mediocre Black Fleet Crisis trilogy has an AnCap planet with a bar called "Jabba's Throne Room" which is exactly what you'd think a Jabba's Palace/Planet Hollywood/Medieval Times crossup would be.

starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jabba's_Throne_Room

God damn that's funny.

Thanks.

WhT I was going for was that fighting with the Empire was going to be a "You might be able to hold them off or hold your own for a bit, but when backup arrives, you better GTFO".

Having them all travel in groups of SD's would prevent that from being a thing.

Basically the problem with your planned arrangement is that most common corvettes and literally every frigate could murder the entire local fleet aside from the frigate with the greatest of ease, and if, God Forbid, pirates or rebels with TWO corvettes showed up, they'd have the entire region by the balls, and that is a very common threat level

Downsizing wouldn't solve a lot of the systemic problems with the Empire's organizational structure. The strict hierarchy, stovepiping, moral hazard, and excessive punishments mean that information mostly flows down the chain of command, seldom up or sideways.

In the case of that Outer Rim patrol, maybe some regional manager lies about starship production to meet a quota and avoid a choking. As a result, a patrol has a quarter of the ships it needs to do its job, and everyone is looking for someone lower than them to blame for it even though the problem originated above them, because your one contact point above you in the hierarchy is also the one in charge of punishing you. Whatever lieutenant finds himself with nothing but enlisted men below him in the chain of blame must embezzle more ships somehow or lie about the exploits of nonexistent ships, which will create more shortages that more people will have to lie about, thus spreading the problem around.

Not to invoke Godwin's Law, but remember that scene in Downfall, the one everyone dubs over, where Hitler is moving around troops that don't exist because everyone's been lying about them? It's exactly like that. It's one of many things that Lucas borrowed from old WWII serials for Star Wars.

So I'm planning my campaign for 4 Imperial characters on Sesid. The time will be around 2 BBY so the players can interact with the overall OT and Star Wars Rebels if they'd like/if they survive long enough to pass that amount of time.

One play will be an Imperial technician, who is acting as a fulcrum for the Republic.

One will play as *not*Admiral Thrawn. Basically a monotone, calculating human, using the Commander class. He is most likely to find out about the rebel spy.

One will play as an EX-D Infiltrator Droid from SW Rebels (youtube.com/watch?v=_D3EUQgJ0v8) probably gone without a data wipe long enough to retain some sort of personality.

The 4th character wants to play as his old Wookie engineer PC from a past game, which obviously wouldn't work. So he'll probably be something similar, some sort of Tanky Stormtrooper Engineer type character. Any ideas on an Imperial counterpart to that trope?

Basically the players will have been brought to Sesid as a task force in order to look into increased attacks by the local Draedan's. These attacks are causing a detriment to the Imperial pharmaceutical installation, as well as scaring away potential tourism. The players will be given command of a Guardian Class Light Cruiser named the Relentless, and be allowed to make requisitions for equipment and vehicles up to a certain amount per game.

Essentially the game will lead into a kind of intrigue about the leader of the Draedan, named Aurelant, who becomes a major player in the novel Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure.

Now that I've fleshed out the campaign details a little bit. Any ideas for interesting side stories or plot lines?

The rebel alliance either doesn't exist as a single entity at that point, or at least has never won a major battle. Maybe do what Rebels did and focus on a single strategically important planet. You can have cells of rebellion that are unconnected to the alliance and maybe are a lot more ruthless and brutal. Like terrorists who target officers' families, or fringe Force believers who inhibit their "dark side" emotions with drugs and surgery.

Well with the Draedan, thy're trying to rebel against the Imperials, but they haven't developed any hyperspace drives, so they can't get out of their system without stealing or towing away on other vessels. It's not until 4ABY that Leia is able to get in touch with Aurelant and connect them to the wider Rebellion. So I was thinking of focusing on them harassing local Imperial forces.

There is also the possibility of the regular pirates trying to board starliners, smuggling shenanigans as this is a fairly popular tourist planet.

Okay, idea: there's a terrorist cell who believe the Imperial propaganda that the Jedi tried to conquer the galaxy, and they believe that that would be a good thing. They're Force supremacists. They steal a top secret register of Force-sensitive families originally taken from the Jedi temple after the Clone Wars, and their mission is to clone a race of supermen which will conquer the wooooorld!

So for 4 solar systems wuth 5 inhabitable planets, if I doubled the number of ships and added a Gladiator Star Destroyer, would that make sense?

Eg, a Gladiator SD, 2 Imperial Frigates, 4 Raider corvettes, 10 Decimator patrol boats, 10 Gozanti carriers, each with attached TIEs?

I plan on fleshing out the factions as I solidify the worlds in the cluster and add new factions, you guys have been great so far in making the world make a little more sense.

Imagine how many bombers, tanks, and missiles could've been built with all the resources the Allies and Axis both poured into researching atomic weaponry.

Imagine how many more men and tanks the Germans could've mustered if the V1/V2 projects never happened.

Super weapons of war may be inefficient, but it's the idea that makes them supreme. The idea that the Empire had a space station impervious to any kind of assault with a weapon that could obliterate an entire planet instantly and blast through fleets with ease was enough to give Imperial-loyals pride and security, and Imperial enemies terror and fear.

Star Wars and its tech parallels to WWII emphasize that fact, that inefficient weapons can still work by the idea of them alone. A fleet of Star Destroyers could blow up a planet, sure, but a gigantic moon doing it is way scarier for the other side.

Propaganda victory.

Decimators are actually not good ships for this kind of thing at all, and rare besides; they're basically scoutships/executive transports, not real gunboats. I'd replace them with basically any of the old patrol ships from WEG Pirates and Privateers, let's say Guardian-classes or IPV-4s (literally just an IPV-1 with a hyperdrive)
Also, since this is a backwater sector, I'd swap two of the Raiders for CR-90s, and maybe use a Dreadnaught or possibly Victory over the Gladiator

They're not exactly comparable. Not only did those research projects use much fewer resources than a ridiculously huge-scale engineering project, but once the technology is developed it can be replicated relatively easily. The Death Star is more like the Maginot Line - a titanic engineering project that ends up being a complete waste because it was hoped that its psychological effect would make up for its obvious structural shortcomings.

>"The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.
>The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.
A propaganda tool and fearmongering tool too

To be fair, the Death Stars appeared to be in-universe rather defensible.

Also, if something is going down elsewhere in the sector, the capital ship and probably a few of the escorts would probably be gathered up as part of the effort to deal with it, so taking advantage of that to so something something while it's away is a good adventure hook

It's further abstracted by the fact that just about everyone would be statted as minions and not heroes/nemeses, and the system just isn't meant to represent granularity on the scale of the average joe.

PIRATES.

They're on a luxury pleasure cruise for [reason], maybe to make an illicit deal or gather information from a wealthy patron WHEN BAM NOW THERE'S SPACE SEA PIRATES