Plans that just wont work

[Esoomian]

Ever had the players come up with a really great plan that due to them missing some vital piece of information just won’t work?

I've had this happen a few times and it's always somewhat bittersweet to see the players put a lot of effort into a plan that's never going to work.

The best example I have is several players encountered an insane mining droid. The droid had been running for thousands of years with no real repairs/supervision and it had got it into it's head that anything that wasn't flat was bad and wrong... yes this included sapient beings.

The droid looked like the crushbot from the game roborally (upon which it was based) but with the addition of a wrecking ball. For those who haven't seen/played the game think of a droid/steamroller hybrid.

The droid was designed to operate deep in the mines where blasting was constantly taking place so it had quite a lot of amour to prevent damage from falling rocks and the like. The players made a few very average damage rolls with their heavy weapons causing no damage whatsoever and concluded that the droid was impervious to all their weaponry. This was not the case it was actually designed so that it would be challenging but not impossible.

The players noted that the droid was fairly slow (mentally and physically) so they resolved to dig a pit trap and then leave a trail of rocks which the bot would follow and crush. The plan worked well until the bot fell into the pit and simply fired it's grappling wires and winched it's way out. I pointed out that a machine working in the mines would probably occasionally have problems with weak rock and would need to deal with falling down holes and the designers had already though of this. The players all agreed that it made perfect sense for the droid to be able to overcome such their big plan (and in fact one thought the idea of the grappling cables was incredibly obvious and wondered why he didn't think of it first) but were still disappointed.

Anyone else had any experiences like that?
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Don't waste money on expensive binoculars.

Simply stand closer to the object you wish to view.

[garhkal]

Yes. Just as in real life, there are times even the best made plan fails due to unknown variables or unforseen happenings. Such as in one game the group was planning on neutralizing the security in a building to sneak in and steal data. They went all our learning of the security computer's type, os, passwords etc, but failed to bother checking into whether the security system itself had security watching it...
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[wulfgar]

Ahh, but if they thought quick on their feet, their plan might still of succeeded.

PCs dig pit.

Droid falls in pit.

Droid fires grappling cables and begins pulling itself out.

Quick thinking players sever cables with blasters/light sabres/etc.

Droid is stuck in pit.

[TrueGrit]

Wulfgar is a player after my own heart.

[cheshire]

That was my first thought. Cut them and let the droid sit, then reprogram with a termal detinator.

[Esoomian]

That would have been great, sadly only one player (or perhaps two) watched the droid fall into the pit and they were too stunned when it rose up to do anything much.

Also there were no jedi so they'd have had to use blasters to break the cables and I'm not sure they could have severed them all before it was out of the pit, that said there was nothing stopping them trying it again the droid was not very smart.
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Don't waste money on expensive binoculars.

Simply stand closer to the object you wish to view.

[Yak Face]

I'm presently running a Privateer campaign. The PCs needed to hijack a large corporate freighter, so they prudently investigated the planned route and usual mode of operation for the transport crew. They decided to slip an infiltrator aboard and sabotage the hyperdrive when the ship stopped at a remote transit point along the route. There they would attack, board, and take the ship, repair the cut power cable to the hyperdrive, and jump away. All went well until they discovered the missing bit of info - the way point was also used as a deep space refueling point for elements of the Imperial navy. The infiltrator figured it out quickly (after his sabotage was complete), but had no way to warn the attack force. The attack force narrowly escaped, and the infiltrator was caught, interogated vigorously, and met a grim end. Had the PC's investigated the corporate security arrangements, scouted the way-point ahead of time, dropped the ship from hyperspace early, or simply forced the crew to plot a new course, things might have gone differently.
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However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -Sir Winston Churchill