[Sliver]

when designing my campaign, I worked in three sections: Roleplaying/Social detective work, infiltration, combat, and then a car chase. However, at the end of the combat section, my players were almost dead and we ended up having to skip the car chase completely. And by almost dead, I mean one with 1 health left, and two with 2 left.

How do I make campaigns last longer? It seems that my players get fucked up more than I expected sooner on. Do I just lower the difficulty or what?

[Zilfer]

when designing my campaign, I worked in three sections: Roleplaying/Social detective work, infiltration, combat, and then a car chase. However, at the end of the combat section, my players were almost dead and we ended up having to skip the car chase completely. And by almost dead, I mean one with 1 health left, and two with 2 left.

How do I make campaigns last longer? It seems that my players get fucked up more than I expected sooner on. Do I just lower the difficulty or what?

Well that's one possibility. <.< you could also fudge rolls a little bit to help them out. However!

I think it would be helpful to see a little more specific's on how they were getting F'd up and see if it's the players who aren't playing well or if it's the amount of offense your putting against them. For example are the characters using cover? Do they have weapons/ammo to turn it in their favor? I mean a flash grenade could come in handy for cleaning up the mooks.

[StarManta]

One of the early lessons I learned GMing was this: always plan for some level of failure on the part of the PCs. Don't make your plot hinge on any one dice roll.

With that in mind, two questions I have:
A) Are there serious (in-world) consequences to skipping the car chase? They fail the job, probably, but was there a whole story arc hingeing on that or do they just miss a payday? If the latter, then let it happen. If they get f'ed up in a combat, they get f'ed up in combat. You can't win 'em all. If the former, then engineer some way to get them back in the game. (And for future situations like this, take the above advice into account)

B) If you didn't plan on the team even having a possibility of getting badly hurt, what was the point of the fight?

[CanRay]

As they're driving away, have a cop stop them for a typical traffic stop.  Don't tell them it's because their taillight is out, just stop them.

I did that on my group once in the Troll's "RV From Hell" Ares Roadmaster (The commercial version of the Citymaster that's normally used for hauling high-risk cargo, and he had converted into an RV.  I'm considering a few things based on this, actually.).  After the Lone Star Cops (I ran in 2070) saw he was a Troll, their typical response happened, and the primary officer immediately went for the Shotgun while his partner went into the trunk for the M23 Assault Rifle.

Meta Profiling only.  License, registration, SIN check, all that.  Then let him off with a warning about the tail light.  All the while everyone is mentally thinking (And saying out of character), "Don't look in the back, don't look in the back, don't look in the back.", as all their illegal gear was in the back, and a thin curtain between the driver's section and the back was all that prevented a "Plain Sight" rule from kicking in.

They played it Bogart, and was able to get out of the situation, but it could have ended quite badly.

Now, if their vehicle is missing parts due to being hit by Assault Cannon rounds or is pockmarked with bullet holes, then more explaining will be needed.  But this is a Dystopian Society, "Sorry Officer, we drove past the Spikes and the Ancients going at it and caught some stray fire.  We're trying to get to a Pay and Spray for repairs right now." with a good Con roll, maybe a Data Search roll to find out which go-gangs are going at it at the moment in case the officers check on the Gang Report themselves...

A police stop is fun in so many ways.