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If enemies are using cover to evade your fire, the simple solution is to destroy the cover.
Surely you have explosive capability suitable for the task. Otherwise why are you even in a fight?
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
There is no overkill, Pete. And I don't think PIE fighters need to reload either, so you're going to need to pull something off to survive here. Really, I'm quite surprised Pete doesn't have a laser longbow or missile launcher of some kind. What kind of trade offs has he taken that mean those aren't available at this point? To be fair, R2-D2 didn't have any of those things, but R2-D2 also lacked the arms to use them. R2/Pete always wanted a dreadnought and sort of got one for a while; maybe Rey has a hidden spaceship somewhere?
Multiple fighters. But maybe just the two? I'm only seeing two in all of the clips here. Two lone fighters hardly seems like a proper air strike, though they would be able to simply fly back and forth shooting up Niima until the pilots decide they're done. Personally, I'd been expecting the Finalizer to come down and hover above the outpost, firing with their repaired lasers or launching more missiles. That would feel more like an appropriate level of dangerous air strike.
Last panel; are they turning around to face the fighters now? After just running away in the second to last? I'd have said Rey was looking back to continue pulling Finn along, but it looks like BB-8 is looking at the duo. That to me makes it seem like they're not rolling away from the explosions any more, but moving to be closer to the group. With explosive attacks, being more spread out is a much better idea for group survival.
Commentary by Keybounce (who has not seen the movie)
I want to point out that these are extremely impressive fighters. They went from the equivalent of machine guns, to the equivalent of grenade launchers.
Now, having two completely different sets of ammo, able to be switched like this from the same barrels, is really impressive technology. Not only that, but they are now willing to go kablammo on the entire town, instead of just trying to shoot these targets. After all, close counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear explosions. Will we see something even deadlier next time if they survive these explosions? Would they only have taken 2 points of damage, and only some of the party at that, if they had been using explosions?
Maybe these people have seen Monty Python's "How to stay hidden"? I mean, if you've seen how that routine ended... :-)
Or, maybe they are trying to flush them out, for some reason, and don't care about collateral damage? First try to flush them out with guns, then with grenades? Except...
Except...
Well, we already know Hux was planning on wiping the town out, right?
... SO WHY DID THEY USE MACHINE GUNS IN THE FIRST PASS AT ALL??
If you decide that town X is a threat (check), and you're able and willing to use explosions to wipe it out (check), then why not send in a real force of, oh, I don't know, half of the fighters in that giant bay, and have them carpet bomb the whole place with massive overlapping grenades and not even risk something getting away?
Transcript
GM: The fighters bank around for another strike.
[SFX]: vreeeeooooowww...
Rey: Finn! Are you all right?
GM: Annie, Constitution roll to recover.
Finn: 10.
Finn: I’m okay.
Finn: But they’re destroying our cover!
[SFX]: Pow! Pow! Pow!
Rey: Follow me!
Finn: Where are we going?
Rey: Off this dustball.
GM: The next strafing run peppers Niima with explosions.
[SFX]: Pow! Pow!
[SFX]: Kaboom! Kboom!
Rey: Either this is overkill, or they really don’t want you to defect.
BB-8: Could we discuss their motivations later and focus on not being blown up?