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There's always faking your own death as a way to convince people in certain other situations. Since this is such a cool thing to do, as a player your first reaction when faced with any tricky situation should be: "Will faking my own death provide any benefit to this situation?"
Try it. The answer will turn out to be "yes" surprisingly often.
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
Ahhahaha! And thus begins Finn's descent into a (mostly) lone soldier of fortune! I mean really, Finn doesn't like the Resistance and definitely wants to kill one of them for the death of Gil. And now, Finn's essentially giving everyone in the First Order a reason to try and kill him! Even if Hux and Kylo come clean about the deceptions, I can't see Finn ever going back to his previous life as a trooper after this without constantly having to watch his back.
Poe is definitely right on both accounts though. Dying in an escape would really put a crimp in getting to the Resistance to exfiltrate information. And when the general alert gets broadcast out from the ship about the damage these two caused, the Resistance is going to have an easy time confirming the event. If I was on the Resistance's side, I think this would fool me pretty well.
And wow, look at the size differences in those shots! The troopers' blaster shots look to be roughly as long as a trooper is high. Stack four copy pasted troopers on top of each other in MSPaint, and that's about the length of the blasts still emitting from the PIE! then there's the damage per shot to consider as well. Little red shots, small Boom! Big green shots, big Kaboom! That really shows how getting the X-wing into the air would have made a difference in the opening fight.
Commentary by Keybounce (who has not seen the movie)
Finn was told to bust Poe out, and the two of them would defect to the Republic/Resistance. (Yea, the last remnants of the old Republic are now the Resistance. Where have we heard that before?). And, in the process of faking defection to the Resistance, we have live fire and "That ship is unauthorized"?
Well, as DMM reminded me, Poe was the one who came up with this idea. So Finn isn't following his superior's orders, he's going with Poe's on-the-spot plan of the moment. This sounds like it will be spectacular. And sure enough, it's convincing enough to result in the death of several unnamed generic soldiers and significant damage to the flight deck.
Now, the idea of players being given one set of orders, but following some other set of orders, perhaps ignoring what they were told to do, but still going in the general direction? Been there, seen that. Heck, I've GMed where some real... interesting players managed to shred all my plans, and still complete the mission, while I'm doing ad-lib after ad-lib to try to give them some opposition. (This was at a gaming convention back in Los Angeles a couple of decades ago. My most interesting sessions were definitely pickup games where I would know one or two of the players and get surprised by the group.)
And... that ship is still tied down, right? The tether is still attached? It should have horrible maneuvering penalties, only able to fire straight ahead, all you need to do as soldiers is do some flanking maneuvers, get underneath it and shoot up (the PIE only shoots forward, right?), etc. There is no way that a hangar full of competent marksmen won't be able to take it down - if hand-held guns are able to take it down.
So, one of the following is true:
- Just like in IV, they were ordered to fail to stop it. (And die.)
- Hand guns cannot take it down. (So why are they trying?)
- They are not competent. (Hmm, this isn't the Empire any more, it's just one PC's organization of henchmen, and we know about henchmen, right?)
... I like number 3.
Meanwhile, the PIE's laser beams have been color-coded for being the other side, for your convenience.
Transcript
GM: Troopers open fire on the PIE.
[SFX]: Pow! Pow! Pow!
Poe: Shoot back!
Finn: Against our own troops?
Poe: Have to make this escape look convincing!
Finn: But—
Poe: And the best way to make it look convincing is to not die in the process!
[SFX]: Pow! Pow! Boom! Pow! {the PIE is hit}
Finn: You may have a point.
[SFX]: Pow! Pow! Pow! {Finn opens fire}
[SFX]: Kaboom! {Troopers are thrown by the explosion}
Poe: See? Those troopers weren’t very convincing at all.