I find the source books very vague on how to scale pre-made encounters and create new ones based on the size of a party and their experience. Do any experienced GM's have any advice for how best to go about this? Or did I manage to miss a section of the rulebook that actually covers this in better detail?

The vagueness at the beginning of the Adventure Modules is really all you need. Group destroying everything in combat? More minions, higher wound threshold, and/or adversary talents. Group conquers any tasks? Now the more important ones have extra difficulty dice, or worse conditions that can add setback dice. Group is struggling everywhere? Decrease difficulties and knock down the power of enemies.

It really does depend entirely on your group, so they can't really be especially specific on everything. If your group doesn't have a slicer, it might be better to knock the difficulty down on Computers checks; if the slicer is highly specialized and everyone else is more rounded, it might be better to kick up the difficulty on Computers checks. You really just have to reason and adjust things as the party grows.

A blanket +1 soak to all creatures can't hurt. Find excuses to use setback. Players get all sorts of talents that remove setbacks, make those talents useful and throw in setbacks.

Find excuses to use setback. Players get all sorts of talents that remove setbacks, make those talents useful and throw in setbacks.

Of course, many of those situations that impose Setback tend to be impartial and inflict it on everyone. That means that the PCs without talents to remove Setback - as well as most NPCs - are going to really suffer if this isn't handled very carefully.

I'm dealing with this, and in addition to adding minions (and groups of minions) I've given them Adversary 1. I generally buff up Rivals and Nemeses across the board, but I would agree that there's not really any clear mechanism for doing so (as the multiple discussions on the topic imply.) My most useful tool is looking at the character sheets and then adjusting my baddies' skills to match. This is where the "easy prep" of this system falls down for me, and I pine for a faster solution that makes sense.

Up until lately I've had success using the rough guideline of a minion group or rival per 2 non-combat PCs and a minion group or rival per combat-oriented PC. That worked until they all crested the 300xp mark. Lately it seems I have to go with 2-3 minion groups or 2 rivals per combat-oriented PC.

Those numbers I use as "even" opposition. If they are in over their heads then I put more than that and throw in some specialists into the opposition.

Up until lately I've had success using the rough guideline of a minion group or rival per 2 non-combat PCs and a minion group or rival per combat-oriented PC. That worked until they all crested the 300xp mark. Lately it seems I have to go with 2-3 minion groups or 2 rivals per combat-oriented PC.

Those numbers I use as "even" opposition. If they are in over their heads then I put more than that and throw in some specialists into the opposition.

How big are you making the minion groups? I've been adding more to a single group to increase the dice pool instead of splitting the groups up too much.

If a combat is going too easy for the players, flip a Dark Side Destiny Point and call in another group of minions or maybe a strong rival. That allows you to adjust the difficulty on the fly while still giving the PCs a little something to ease the sting of "the GM decided to be harsher."

Up until lately I've had success using the rough guideline of a minion group or rival per 2 non-combat PCs and a minion group or rival per combat-oriented PC. That worked until they all crested the 300xp mark. Lately it seems I have to go with 2-3 minion groups or 2 rivals per combat-oriented PC.

Those numbers I use as "even" opposition. If they are in over their heads then I put more than that and throw in some specialists into the opposition.

How big are you making the minion groups? I've been adding more to a single group to increase the dice pool instead of splitting the groups up too much.

Depends on what they are. Random mooks used to be groups of 4, but now are groups of 6 on average. I did that before upping the number of groups.

More combat oriented minion types I still keep around 4-5 per group for now though I've been running playtests outside of the weekly sessions where we are experimenting with larger numbers.

Imperial army and stormtrooper squads can be eight men strong. That's a nasty minion group. It has to be reduced to half it's number before it loses effectiveness.