Two might. But, your ideas are great, and should solve that problem.
Any RPG group with two rocket scientists is one I want to play in!
I do hope, however, that my usual blather can be of some use for you.
At worst they're provided by the company, they want them back, and perhaps they're some kind of "Beta" unit so that even if the party says "sorry, we lost it", the devices will inevitably fail after the adventure.
In short, it's not gear the team will likely keep or be able to keep. It's not a +5 magic sword with long term campaign effects. It's tool for the adventure, with the shtick that you simply don't hand it to the players, they need a teeny bit of insight to purchase in the first place. So, in the end, it doesn't really matter how much they cost.
That is an excellent piece of advice for any referee who wants to ensure his players get the equipment they need for the adventure without also giving away too much of an edge.
As for the combat, simply run some examples a few times using CT. Take on the bugs with some shotguns and SMGs, and see what happens. Then try running the same things with T5, and see whether the animals wither and die or simply turn the party in to lunch. Then tweak the critters to taste.
Another excellent piece of advice. Run a couple of "smoke tests" and tweak as needed.
In the end, the goal of the adventure is not to butcher the party, but simply provide them with, well, "adventure". Remember the definition of adventure is "a bad day fondly remembered". If the monsters are too weak, make more of them. Too strong, make them weaker or make less of them. All sorts of things you can do to keep them from overrunning the party.
Yet more insightful advice for this or any adventure.
I have a vague memory of this adventure, and I recall the party wiring up some warheads from the missiles on the ship and blowing the critters to smithereenies.
A session of
The Chamax Plague was of the few times my players actually surprised me during play.
They'd failed to enter the grounded subbie for a second time when an attempt to open a side cargo hatch instead opened
all the cargo hatches revealing the maternal and her nest in what had been the bow ATV bay. A hasty retreat back a couple hundred meters away to where their far trader was hovering a couple of dozen meters over desert then ensued.
As the referee, I first told the players they couldn't remain hovering for more than few hours as the contragrav equipment wasn't designed to operate in that manner for lengthy periods. (They'd gone into hover mode after their first failed attempt.) I then had the three (miraculously surviving) NPCs standing in the far trader's open forward cargo hatch observing the milling bugs. The Doctor was using his PRIS binoculars and muttering notes to himself, Pilot/Fiance was chewing his fingernails to the quick and whining about Lost Girlfriend, and Red Shirt was using his laser rifle to pot shot bugs out of frustration more than anything else.
After talking quietly among themselves, the players' leader approached me in character and asked Pilot/Boyfriend that, if the bugs were taken care of, he still thought the grounded subbie could be flown off. I said no because the visible damage was too great.
The players' nodded, picked up the dice, and said:
"Firing the port sandcaster..."
My jaw hit the table. I called for a break and began paging through the rules while thinking about what I should do. Much to my relief, another player quickly reminded me that
Striker allowed sandcasters to be used as weapons. I agreed, pretended to look up something, asked the player with the dice a few general questions about where he was aiming, and told him to roll.
The roll really didn't matter. I'd already decided the plan would succeed; you simply must reward such original thinking at the game table.
The dice came to a stop. I nodded and began describing scenes like the sandcaster's hyper-velocity particles sleeting through the target zone, the desert sands in front and around the grounded subbie dancing, the subbie's bridge windows blowing out, a waterfall of sparks caused by sandcaster particles impacting the subbie's hull and wings, and the bugs basically
melting.
You could argue that there should have been bugs milling around further inside the subbie which survived the sandcaster's hail. I decided, however, that the players' idea killed them all and opined later through The Doctor that all of the bug must have been drawn to the nest when the hatch opened to defend the revealed maternal.
The rest of the session defined anti-climatic. The players boarded the subbie's through the blown out bridge windows, retrieved the computer core, read the researcher's log, and then flew off to rescue them from the glacier cave they'd sheltered in.
