Archanubis wrote: Its missions like these that sometimes make me wonder what the BioWare writers were thinking.
As a matter of contrast, there's a really well written sidequest on Imperial Balmorra I ran with my agent.
You speak to an Intelligence officer who shows to you some boobytrapped communicators. He explains a mission to plant these on the bodies of fallen enemy troops so that when they're picked up by resistance fighters scavenging for useful items they'll make their way back into strongholds and explode.
After accepting the mission he points you to a man nicknamed Toybox, a Balmorra native hinted to be a toymaker before the occupation, who you can tell has been press-ganged into using his technical skills to supply munitions to the Empire. He voices his concerns that the holocomms would get into the hands of civilians and children and may kill or maim them.
He comes up with a new plan, use grenades as the trojan horse instead, that way only resistance fighters will be harmed. Now you can choose to go with the original plan (dark side) or change to his idea (light side).
If you go dark side, everything goes as planned. The Intelligence officer is happy and you leave. If you pick lightside like my agent did, the intelligence officer asks why there are reports in resistance radio chatter of grenades exploding. You can tell him of the new plan, and take ownership of it or give Toybox the credit.
You then get called an idiot, because the troops have been informed they had to avoid salvaging comms from enemy units, now they have to throw out every salvaged grenade in their arsenal. What's more, terror deaths in the civilian population were the actual plan because this was a terror/psy-ops mission.
You have just screwed up a complex mission by changing the plan on your own initiative without thought. If you give Toybox credit as, there's a suggestion he is going to be severely punished for it as well.
At which I managed to argue the Empire still came out ahead. However the intelligence officer said, with no restraint of his obvious anger and contempt in his tone, we'd never work together again.
In character for my Agent it was a really defining moment. It said so many things about the cruelty of the Imperial occupation, while showing that being a "good guy" within the Empire without being smart and thinking through was going cause you trouble. I had made mistakes, but learned something important and still considered orphans not being blown up a win. Got me totally immersed in the story.
Feels like the writers really brought their A game for the Imperial stories.