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These are all great ideas. I'm going to throw my two cents worth in here for a couple of extra wrinkles. A number of people have said they think the point to point travel system should be nerfed. I agree with that idea. I think you should have to launch you ship and use hyperspace to get to where you want to go. That means a rebel trying to leave an imperial held system would have to fight his way out.

Now before you gripe, there's ways that could deal with this that could open a new market for smugglers, particularly smugglers who own multi passenger ships. Have NPC ships run inspections on ships entering or leaving a system and give smugglers some kind of bonus that allows them to fool those scans, just like they do in troop scans on the ground. This way, rebels could hitch a ride witha smuggler to leave or enter a system under the noses of imperial authorities. To make sure this market is available for smugglers, I think some kind of travel authority should be posted at the ticket terminals to scan players purchasing tickets. These guys are not there to attack any opposing combatant player that comes into the station. They only concern themselves with players buying tickets and will allow clean players to purchase the ticket and deny shady players to purchase the ticket. If the player gets denied, feel free to smoke the officer and then deal with the consquences of raising an alarm in the starport. (This could get interesting, muuuahahahahaha!)

This also opens the door for the underworld trade. Ships carrying illegal cargos, or in the simpler case, a pilot carrying illegal goods in his inventory, could face the dangers of scanning from imperial or even rebel authorities. If caught, the authories impound the ship and seize the illegal goods. The pilot can pay a reasonable fee to get his ship back, but the goods are gone forpermanently. Again, a smuggler could help traffic these goods into or out of a system and use their bonus to attempt to defeat the scans. Plus, even if a pilot fails to fool the authorities, they should still get an chance to try to fight their way out of the system. Failure means the npc ships successfully disabled the players' ship and sent ina boarding party. If it's techinally feasible, you could even allow for the boarding mission to be fought out as the players try to take out the boarding troops.

WIth the supply lines under attack, as suggested in the original post, this could make smugglers invaluable as they could be the key to the ground forces getting their high quality supplies in from the outside.

All this would certainly make every trip you want to make an adventure. Some players may not like having to worry about what's going to happen every time they want to go to a planet. I personally like the idea of danger of trying to leave or enter a system that's under control of an opposing faction. After all, this is star wars. Traveling in space isn't like dusitng crops, boy.

Airtrent

The ability to speak does not make you intelligent, but can still make you annoying.