Quote:I think you get the same kind of ennui, game wise, that we got in the end stage stuff in Russia during SnS, an overwhelming sense of 'We're just fucked, aren't we?'.
That's a good description and I definitely don't want that. The "wanted" bounty thing was an idea to keep you guys on your toes, to stress the importance of not getting tied down and it's done exactly the opposite - stuck on a backwoods planet where otherwise you'd just be there for a meeting. If you've read "Consider Phlebas", you'll know what I mean if I say it was an "Easy in, easy out" plan. We can finally HAVE the meeting after multiple car chases, gunfights, stalking through forests, and ambushes- let's just say Aikoro was a clusterfuck.
Quote:Besides, as I believe Punkey mentioned at some point, all those criminals and rebels need to move, too - how do they do it? I refuse to believe that they're there just because the Imperium hasn't gotten around to killing them yet. Maybe they can hack the files, maybe they use camera-jamming equipment, I don't know, but clearly there's something we haven't seen yet and this is a good moment to bring it into play.
The Imperium's day-to-day surveillance, the drones, all that shit, that electronic haze of ID codes and personnel records hangs like an astral plane over its cities. Or think of it like Shadowrun's deckers. Hiding from the Imperium requires network stealth as much as physical stealth. Max used his Toughbook and has listened in on some communications, or hacked some log files or whatever, and to date that's helped you evade the Imperium's physical pursuit, but you have not tried stopping/spoofing their surveillance before it even GETS to physical pursuit. The few times it might have come up, I believe I've said something like "you can try to jam them but if you fail they'll know something's up". Well, you roll the dice and takes your chances - the same way EVERYTHING in this campaign works. Angel can evade the Khiraba because he has the rolls to back up his actions. Luis can fly a goddamn alien starship because he's got the stats for it. You don't want to chance jamming them, don't cry to me when their drones spot your face on Imperium's Most Wanted.
That said, why not bring up this subject while you're talking with Onas and the resistance? They'll be understandably impressed and appalled that you've gotten this far with basically no ECM support and they'll offer what they know and what they do. I'll think of something relatively simple to use but vital in its importance - and that can be how we reduce the "Big Emperor Is Watching You" Imperial surveillance problem that's stonewalling the game's progress.
My original idea of how you might have handled the surveillance was simply to do it as Jason Bourne does it - you move fast, all the time, never stop, always be somewhere else by the time the Needleship gets sent through the Gate or the manta ships show up.
Or fuck it - pull a Jeff Goldblum technobabble virus right out of Independence Day. Screw up a planetary cortex for a few hours or days while they try to get the Vi@gra ads off their systems. I'm not giving it to you for free - you still have to beat their systems and their programmers the same way you'd have to beat a Khiraba to sneak up and slit the guy's throat.
