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Episode 1822: The Best Offence Is A Bad Defence

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Heavy weapons are great against massed troops.

But never forget the important contra-corollary: Massed troops are great against heavy weapons that are pointed the wrong way.

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

Jim must be slipping if his idea is as straightforward as getting airborne and firing at the troopers. It seems though, that we both thought that the stormtroopers' blaster fire wouldn't be able to damage the X-wing, so I can't fault Jim there. Handheld weapons usually aren't at the scale needed to damage vehicles unless they're of the Heavy or BFG variety. Last time I remember ground to air fire like this was Padmé trying to shoot down Count Dookû's ship way back in The Silence of the Clones. Dookû was in the middle of actually flying away though, I think, so he did have that going for himself. Poe and BB don't seem to have gone anywhere yet and their port engine just took a hit. Biggest target indeed.

On the plus side of having the ship get damaged like this, maybe we'll get to see some in-flight repairs by Corey. I had to go back and check, but Artoo never actually did any repairs on the X-wing in Episode IV during the Peace Moon fight. Admittedly, Luke never got shot in the dogfighting, and Pete was busy attempting to convince Corey to try and take over the station by locking Vader out while controlling the clones, but still. That would mean being able to repair from the droid seat would be unique to BB-8 which would be pretty cool and fit the newer ship design. Maybe he could even stick his head out from the underside of the ship when fixing things; a ball shape body would need to be "free-floating" underneath the head and held on by magnets or forcefields and just spinning the head instead of the ball would easily be doable.

That might just be asking for a decapitation though if the GM has a sudden need to throw complications into the mix, so perhaps that's not a good idea. It'd be quite awkward to see your body leave you behind.

Commentary by Keybounce (who has not seen the movie)

As Mulari once said, yes, your ships are wonderful, in the air. But on the ground?

Press button, fire weapon, destroy said ship(s).

Now, the tactic of destroying ships before they can get out of port/into the air is common enough that tactical air patrols, or some sort of active sortie defense, or something like that - just so that things that are "idle" have a chance to get active when an attack comes in - is the norm. So, this encampment, with no air patrol, no scouts, no spotters, nothing to warn anyone...

Clearly this was the decoy camp, where people were sent with no hope of living. Hence the man with the death mark.

So, looking back, this was described as a village. These are just village people, talking to a young man about his future. Why? Maybe Cause A thought of a better life came to the old guy. So lets recap:

  1. A tiny village, with nothing out of the ordinary to draw attention.
  2. The Rebels come here to get information.
  3. They were followed; the Empire did not know where the information was, but knew who wanted it, and let them get away and followed.

Hang on, is this a direct parallel to Episode IV where the Empire let the good guys get away to track them down? Of course it is. So who is ratting out our guys? Who is the mole? What did I say a couple of comics ago about how no one ever inspects the droid's programming?

Transcript

Poe: What’s the biggest weapon we have?
BB-8: Your blast rifle?
Poe: Bigger...
BB-8: Your overconfidence?
Poe: Smaller...
BB-8: The ship!
Poe: A fighter ship! We get airborne and these attackers are toast!
[SFX]: Pow!
[SFX]: Kaboom! {X-wing is hit and the aft section blows up}
[SFX]: Pow!
[SFX]: Kaboom! {X-wing is hit again and the port engine blows up}
BB-8: What’s the biggest target we could have made ourselves into?
Poe: Wait... I know this one...


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Published: Sunday, 05 April, 2020; 03:11:11 PDT.
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