If this port is part of your usual trade route, or integrated enough with other nearby worlds to share law enforcement information, then leaving illegally might become much less attractive.

It's funny, I'd always thought of D ports as being casual and low-bureaucracy, but there's actually no reason for that. There's probably a loose positive correlation between increasing starport quality and increasing bureaucratic overhead, but there are no doubt many outliers on both sides of that curve.

On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 3:53 PM, Richard Aiken <raikenclw@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 6:11 PM, Bruce Johnson <johnson@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:

On Jan 12, 2015, at 4:01 PM, Anthony Jackson <ajackson@iii.com> wrote:


The usual solution to this sort of problem is that you keep them from leaving by preventing them from *reaching* the ship. This could be done directly by the bad guys minions, or indirectly by bureaucratic means (so it's really port police who are blocking the PCs).


 A few credits slipped to the right folks and a surprise inspection of the [mumble mumble mumble ] systems on the ship can be arranged. All in the name of public safety of course. Any inspector worth her salt could find a multitude of things wrong with the average PC ship :-)


Ah, yes.

But it's a Class D port, wherein the "berths" are likely nothing more than marked-off stretches of concrete/tarmac (e.g. there are no physical impediments to leaving, such as a lockable ship-sized iris hatches).

And these are PCs.

So a merely bureaucratic hurdle (without something physically dangerous with which to back it up . . . like mercenaries carrying anti-vehicle weaponry . . .) isn't very likely to hold them on the ground. 

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein
"A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the stupid ones that need the advice." - Bill Cosby
"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester
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