Some statistics about gunfights.

• 80% of firefights happen at an average range of 21 feet.
• Of these, 40% happen at a range of eight feet or less.
• 60% (counting for overlap) happen in dimly lit, difficult conditions.
• Even given these close encounters, more than half of shots fired miss.

This doesn't play out in Edge of the Empire. Not that I would necessarily want firefights to look like this, but this game, especially with skilled characters, is completely different. Ranged combat in Edge of the Empire is particularly deadly, and melee combat isn't much different. With a skilled enough group - especially with a large group - violence becomes the answer to everything, because the group can essentially steamroll everything.

Last night, our seven-person group killed Jabba's rancor (using the Captive Rancor, CRB415) before it managed to get a single attack out. It wasn't just damage - in fact, it wasn't really the damage at all, as they barely took out 13 of its 40 wounds - it was the critical hits. By the time the ranged characters had their way with the foul beast, the melee character just needed to do a single crit. Between Vicious 3 on his weapon, his own talents, and the number of times the rancor had been crit by the ranged characters, he buried his weapon in the thing's skull and felled the big bad beastie.

Someone pointed out to me in another thread that I may just have too big a group, and that may be true. After all, nothing seems to deter them, nothing seems too rough for them. They don't bother with any maneuvers other than aiming; they don't believe they need cover, since nothing will survive anyway. Even a Daunting fear check (surprisingly passed by more than half the players!) didn't give them a hiccup in their march forward. Maybe I should be a bold enough GM to simply say, "I'm sorry guys, but this group is too big. Two or three of you need to go!" but these are my friends, and I really don't have any desire to exclude them.

Some of this is my own fault. I started them out with a little extra XP, and they've advanced quite a bit since we got this game underway. I allowed the group to get this big - by accident, I swear! - and a group this large makes a game like Edge of the Empire (which appears to be balanced for a four or five player team) pretty deadly, especially since most of them are one combat spec or another.

I don't think that really changes the reality of the situation here, though. When a single attack with a Heavy Blaster Rifle can pull off 21 damage (pre-soak) based on extra successes and various mods and talents, well... that's pretty huge. Add Auto-Fire and it's 21 damage times two. With only two difficulty dice.

Ranged combat might be broken.

I don't have a fix yet, and maybe there isn't one, but I'm going to have to be proactive in making combat encounters more difficult. So far nothing stands up to this group, nothing is a threat. Nothing is a challenge.

Do you shoot back at them with minion groups armed with HBRs and such?

Ranged combat is definitely not broken. If your players are steamrolling everything, you're not giving them the right opposition. If they always initiate combat because they know they'll win, you're not giving them the right opposition. In short, if combat is easy for them, you're not giving them the right opposition.

I run a group of seven players, most of whom (all but two, basically) have excellent combat skills. They're currently at about 500-600 XP each (not including starting XP) with two specializations each. Since one character is a 6 INT Mechanic/Outlaw Tech they have highly modded weapons and armour, with high quality stuff from all the published books. And I have none of the problems you speak of.

In order for combat to work you need to not just make NPCs tough and dangerous, but you also need to put enough of them out there that the PCs can't just focus-fire one or two of them to death. A single Rancor simply won't work - it's too many against one. Although I have to wonder, how come they all got to act first? I'm looking at the stats right now, and it has Vigilance 2 and Willpower 3. It should have gotten to act before at least some of your players. And another thing - if you absolutely have to put a single enemy in front of them, give it 10 ranks of Durable. That'll keep the crits from getting out of hand.

When you set up a combat encounter, you have to be liberal with the setback dice. Anything less that broad daylight/well-lit room is at least one setback die for darkness. Are they standing on something that's moving? Setback dice. Fog/smoke/air pollution? Setback dice. Is it hot or cold? Setback dice. High gravity? Setback dice. Lots of clutter on the ground? Difficult terrain. Strong wind? Setback dice. Vile smell? Setback dice. Hand the stuff out like candy, and then give the NPCs talents that remove those kinds of setback dice. Outdoorsman and Brace are great for this. You don't need to make the opposition into super-soldiers, you just need to let them remove lots of setback dice that your players have to deal with, and you've already given them an edge.

Another thing is the actual opposition. Give them decent Brawn (at least 3) and good armour (+2 soak) and they'll last longer. Good Agility (3+) and skill (2+) helps a lot. Equip them with blaster carbines or rifles, and suddenly each hit will sting quite a bit. And don't be afraid to give them modded equipment. Blasters with increased damage, weapons with sights that remove setback dice (see paragraph above), hunter goggles (again, see above) and armour with Cortosis. Issue them stimpacks in military belt pouches (incidental to draw) and maybe a rank or two in Stim Specialist. And speaking of Stim Specialist, don't be afraid to pile on useful talents. Put them all on slick ice and give the NPCs the Swift talent. And if you really want to put the fear of You in them, have a couple of 4 AGL/4 Ranged (heavy) guys with light repeating blasters Jury Rigged to trigger Auto-Fire on a single Advantage. Your players will fear combat like it was real from there on out. Oh, and I really cannot overstate how well the Durable talent works against players who crit everything.

Something to keep in mind is that combat rounds are about a minute and the PCs are exceptional, even the non-combat oriented ones. The PCs aren't exactly hitting with every shot rather the damage they're doing is the result of a minute or two of sustained combat. It's a shift away from how many other RPG systems describe combat (usually they're 10 secs or so) and it takes a bit of a change in perspective. Just remember to describe the action with this in mind and it may help keep some of the drama.

I'm guessing that you have more than half of your PCs heavily invested in combat skills etc., this is a common thing. The thing is a lot of players don't quite get that this game is supposed to be about more than combat and tend to focus too much on combat skills, they go for 5 dice when 3 will do and leave the rest of their PCs abilities without much character. I try and impart to my players that, for example, Han Solo was not just a great pilot or a good shot with his blaster but also a charmer, a leader, a mechanic, a gunner, and knew a lot about the underworld, the Imperial Military and the places he visited. He was a well rounded character that could excel in a variety of situations not just fly well and shoot baddies. In fact all the lead characters in Star Wars are more than one trick ponies.

The system is designed so that Players can make well rounded PCs and survive but the side effect of this is that those PCs that focus on just, or just mostly, combat will out pace what would normally be a challenge.

So you're probably going to get a lot of advise to up the baddies, or have them come in waves, and other useful stuff to help extend combat. You'll also get some advise on creating more non-combat challenges, also a good idea, but as it stands there isn't a lot else you can can do at this stage. I hope these things will help you but my advise is for those that haven't reached this point yet and that is to discourage Players from focusing too much on combat skills by filling your adventures with lots of non-combat challenges. Not to eliminate combat, it's a lot of fun, but to advise Players to make well rounded PCs and to reward them for doing so.

PPS. I also just thought of something after reading another topic.

If combat is not a challenge to the PCs then they shouldn't receive much, if any, EXP for defeating their opponents. This isn't to punish Players but to acknowledge a fact, you only really learn much the closer you get to failure. So if your Players are just shooting they're way through problems and don't break a sweat doing it then give them less EXP.

Ranged combat is definitely not broken. If your players are steamrolling everything, you're not giving them the right opposition. If they always initiate combat because they know they'll win, you're not giving them the right opposition. In short, if combat is easy for them, you're not giving them the right opposition.

I run a group of seven players, most of whom (all but two, basically) have excellent combat skills. They're currently at about 500-600 XP each (not including starting XP) with two specializations each. Since one character is a 6 INT Mechanic/Outlaw Tech they have highly modded weapons and armour, with high quality stuff from all the published books. And I have none of the problems you speak of.

This is the mantra I've heard before when broaching this same subject, but I'm not sure you're right. The rancor was just a singular example; they'd just walked through a group of twelve powered-up Gamorean Guards like it was nothing. Last week we played through what amounted to a cut scene (I had the players control of squad of Rebel infiltrators breaking into an Imperial cloning facility), and these low-XP throw-away characters walked through a pair of Sith Inquisitors I had designed specifically to be particularly tough.

Your group sounds a lot like mine, by the way. Seven players, five using combat-spec characters.

When is enough enough? That group of throw-away PCs they played for the last session's cut-scene waded through a group of 25 Stormtroopers and Imperial Navy troopers with little problem, all while dealing with sniper fire from a hidden target. I honestly don't see how changing it to 50 or even 100 opponents would have made that much difference, and this wasn't even with their 400-500XP characters. The case of the rancor was a unique one; they usually don't fight a single opponent. But I figured a creature with 12 Soak and 40 Wound Threshold might survive at least long enough for a single attack.

Why didn't it? Well... with two Proficiency Dice and one Ability Die, it flubbed its Vigilance roll and got two Advantages. It went last. But yes, maybe I should have beefed it up a bit; I won't make that same mistake again.

I'm pretty liberal with the setback dice, though I admit there weren't many of them used during the rancor encounter. Understand, though, that this was just one example of many, and one I thought was particularly poignant because, well... RANCOR. I'll admit, I was wrong, I should have done more with it. I should have also had turrets in the room firing on the PCs from all sides, perhaps.

You know... I've done an awful lot of that already. The problem isn't the power level of the NPCs. The problem is that half the time half of them are dead before they even get to act. Maybe I need to give them better Vigilance and/or Cool? More Willpower? Higher Presence? Also... stimpaks only work if you use them after you get hit. But if you die when you get hit? Ah well.

Something to keep in mind is that combat rounds are about a minute and the PCs are exceptional, even the non-combat oriented ones. The PCs aren't exactly hitting with every shot rather the damage they're doing is the result of a minute or two of sustained combat. It's a shift away from how many other RPG systems describe combat (usually they're 10 secs or so) and it takes a bit of a change in perspective. Just remember to describe the action with this in mind and it may help keep some of the drama.

Half of my players are experienced tabletop gamers but are quick enough to understand this. The others are brand new to roleplaying games and have never had something else to compare it to, so it's come naturally to them.

EIght. Seven players, five of them are combat-oriented. I have done my best to impart the same sort of knowledge, the same sort of feel, but with a few of them (particularly a couple of the new gamers), it hasn't seemed to take. A glance at their character sheets shows a heavy emphasis on combat and not a whole lot to make them well-rounded.

Power up the baddies... that's fine enough, so long as they get a chance to act. That and, well... if I do make the NPCs tougher, it seems to punish those players who have chosen to make their characters more well-rounded. The medic/mechanic who's got several Knowledge skills, the Slicer, these two non-combat oriented characters are going to get hurt a lot for their decision not to munchkin their combat abilities up.

You're right, short of following Krieger22's advice on setback dice and some of the talents I should be giving my NPCs, there might not be as much I can do. Still, I'll keep trying.

Part of the problem with non-combat encounters right now is that half the party is really new to roleplaying - and really timid about doing it. We had a great opportunity for story last night, and at least two players just sort of hung in the background and did nothing, waiting for combat to break out. Their characters don't have the skills necessary for those types of encounters, and their players can be a little introverted, too. A rough combination.

Yup. But we'll see. I do like some of Krieger22's advice. Maybe I can make this work.

Yea it's hard enough with 4-5 and 3 are combat monsters, I admire your fortitude.

I might actually suggest picking up Age of Rebellion and move your group into a more military style setting. Just drop the idea of playing on the Fringe and stick to more strait forward assault, capture, defend, etc. type adventures. It shouldn't be too hard to get your party in contact with the Rebellion. Then if you're really missing the more role-play just start up a second game with fewer players.

I hope it works out

OK, I officially don't understand how your game works. 25 minions? Stormtroopers and Navy troopers? And with "throwaway" characters? That's 5 groups of 5 minions each, with (in the case of stormtroopers, at least) 5 soak and a total of 25 wounds. They have Ranged (heavy) 4 and 3 Agility, and are packing blaster rifles. How do they not do some serious damage to your players? Are they all 10 soak/ 25 wounds monsters?

And 12 Gamorrean melee specialists? I'm assuming that by "powered up" we're talking maybe 4 Brawn, 3 Melee, 6 soak and 17+ wounds, with vibro-axes? How do they possibly not down at least half your group. Even if every single player got to act first and killed one enemy with every single shot you should still have had 4-5 Gamorreans left to whale on them. That should have inflicted some serious hurt right there.

You are absolutely right when you say you should give them better Initiative stats - maybe some ranks in Rapid Reactions to make sure. What do your players usually roll for Initiative? Even on average you should at least have some NPCs rolling high enough to be in the top four, at least.

I really ought to emphasize, though, that combat in EotE is usually over pretty fast. I think the longest fight I ever ran lasted for 6 rounds, and most of them are over in 2 or 3. That's just the nature of the game, and in my opinion it's a good thing. It makes for faster combat (although they still can take some time to play out) and it's how it's supposed to work.

Two points about encounters that a character may not be well-suited for:

1. Since the dice pool is set up as much by stats as it is by skills, you can be decent at something without having a single point in the skill. The only time I would say that a character was really unprepared for a given situation mechanically would be if they were of a race with a 1 in the relevant stat and no points in the skill.
2. Given the narrative dice system, there's no real reason to fear failing a roll. So what if you roll no net successes, three Threat, and a Despair? That's going to be awesome story fodder. How often in the movies do we see people fail rolls? If you think of RotJ as an EotE session, Han failed his Stealth check to sneak up on the Stormtrooper scout. Leia lost out on her rolls during the speeder chase. When that happened, the GM decided to introduce little anthropomorphic teddy bears, and boom! The entire story went in a different direction. I really can't emphasize enough how important failure, and particularly Threat and Despair, are to driving the story forward in new directions. It's in those times that the story comes off the rails and the really cool stuff happens. In the game I'm GMing, my players failed a roll to sell a shipload of used ship parts but got a Triumph. Having no idea what to do, I asked my players. One of them said "treasure map?", and I replied "...yes. Sure, a treasure map. Well, he doesn't have the map. Remember that planet you swore you were never going back to? Yeah, he says that assassin working for the Hutt you angered has it..." (to account for massive Threat). Now my players are trying to figure out what to do in the bowels of a Hutt mining camp with a star map that happens to be an old Mandalorian relic. My Mandalorian player refuses to let the other players destroy it, and they're worried that leaving it intact will lead to massive pursuit through the Unknown Regions by powerful, ruthless enemies (it will). All because the players rolled a test they were unlikely to pass.

You want them to face a tough, potentially lethal challenge? Throw a couple of AT-PT's or something similar at them. Taking vehicles on foot can be very daunting. If you want to go way overboard, through a AT-AT with full complement at them.

Yea it's hard enough with 4-5 and 3 are combat monsters, I admire your fortitude.

I might actually suggest picking up Age of Rebellion and move your group into a more military style setting. Just drop the idea of playing on the Fringe and stick to more strait forward assault, capture, defend, etc. type adventures. It shouldn't be too hard to get your party in contact with the Rebellion. Then if you're really missing the more role-play just start up a second game with fewer players.

I hope it works out

Yeah, I've got Age of Rebellion and we're transitioning toward that. Thanks for the well-wishes!

OK, I officially don't understand how your game works. 25 minions? Stormtroopers and Navy troopers? And with "throwaway" characters? That's 5 groups of 5 minions each, with (in the case of stormtroopers, at least) 5 soak and a total of 25 wounds. They have Ranged (heavy) 4 and 3 Agility, and are packing blaster rifles. How do they not do some serious damage to your players? Are they all 10 soak/ 25 wounds monsters?

And 12 Gamorrean melee specialists? I'm assuming that by "powered up" we're talking maybe 4 Brawn, 3 Melee, 6 soak and 17+ wounds, with vibro-axes? How do they possibly not down at least half your group. Even if every single player got to act first and killed one enemy with every single shot you should still have had 4-5 Gamorreans left to whale on them. That should have inflicted some serious hurt right there.

You are absolutely right when you say you should give them better Initiative stats - maybe some ranks in Rapid Reactions to make sure. What do your players usually roll for Initiative? Even on average you should at least have some NPCs rolling high enough to be in the top four, at least.

I really ought to emphasize, though, that combat in EotE is usually over pretty fast. I think the longest fight I ever ran lasted for 6 rounds, and most of them are over in 2 or 3. That's just the nature of the game, and in my opinion it's a good thing. It makes for faster combat (although they still can take some time to play out) and it's how it's supposed to work.

What I did last week was hand out pre-generated PCs, a Rebel Alliance infiltration squad, for a cut scene. The characters were roughly starting XP plus an additional 100XP. Each player had three such characters, but could only act with one per round. Each of them lost one or two characters by the time they reached the bottom, so the scene with the Stormtroopers and Imperial Army guys wasn't a total victory on their part.

As for the Gamorrean Guards (this is, of course, back to their normal characters), there's this Auto-Fire thing. That and minion rules, which basically makes them canon fodder for anything that does any significant damage. It was three groups of four Gamorreans with 4 Brawn, 4 Melee, 8 Soak, and... they're minions, so they don't get a base Wound bonus. And maybe that's something I should change. A minion group had 32 Wounds between the lot of 'em, so I suspect I could crank that up a bit. However, Auto-Fire tinkered down to only needing a single Advantage to activate means that taking out a group with 32 Wound and 8 Soak isn't as difficult as it might sound.

I'll definitely be improving the Vigilance and Cool of some NPCs my players run into. I like combat that's short, but I'd prefer it to last more than a round. *chuckles* I'd like the NPCs to get a chance to act.

So... the upshot here is... NPCs are getting some characteristics boosted, more talents, and the right kind of skills (to pay the bills), and I'll be utilizing setback dice a whole lot more.

We shall see!

I have 8 players at my table, I feel your pain.

I don't think there is any rpg that can support that many players, but while some other rpgs can support pretty ok up to 6 players, the nature of EotE is more geared toward groups of 3 - 4 players.

Best answer to this problem, IMO: split the party up. Have 3 of them fight a rancor while the others are elsewhere, perhaps indisposed or in a heated social encounter.

If you pit 1 enemy, any enemy, against 7 strong PCs, you've already spelled the doom of that enemy.

After all, Luke faced that rancor by himself, and unarmed!! He didn't have Han and Chewie down there with their DL-44 and bowcaster, nor did he have any heavy blaster rifle-wielding armored mercenaries.

---

A more mechanical fix to the specific problem could be found in the following: if you're fighting a rancor or something appropriately large, use something the "Massive" rules present in AoR: require more Advantage than normal to trigger a crit. This makes a lot of sense when using something like a vibro-ax against a rancor.

But even so, best to split the party up so combat is a bit more of a challenge.

Ah, I think I see the issue here. You need to not use minions. I figured this out when my group grew to seven people; with that many PCs you just can't pile on only minions anymore. You'd have to have ridiculous numbers of enemies in order for it to be a challenge. Use maybe one or two groups of minions, and use rivals for the rest. Believe me, it makes all the difference. Give some of them Adversary 1 or 2, hand out some talents like Side Step, Dodge and Defensive Stance, and watch the playing field level out. Minions alone simply won't cut it against a group that large.

Or, like awayputurwpn said, split the group. This lets you run combat on a smaller scale while still keeping it satisfying.

Oh, and by the way: there's no rule that says you can't give minions a higher wound threshold. Just look at the scout stormtroopers in Beyond the Rim, they had a WT of 10 each. A group of 4-Brawn Gamorreans with 6 soak and a total WT of 50 should keep them standing a while longer.

Yea it's hard enough with 4-5 and 3 are combat monsters, I admire your fortitude.

I might actually suggest picking up Age of Rebellion and move your group into a more military style setting. Just drop the idea of playing on the Fringe and stick to more strait forward assault, capture, defend, etc. type adventures. It shouldn't be too hard to get your party in contact with the Rebellion. Then if you're really missing the more role-play just start up a second game with fewer players.

I hope it works out

Yeah, I've got Age of Rebellion and we're transitioning toward that. Thanks for the well-wishes!

OK, I officially don't understand how your game works. 25 minions? Stormtroopers and Navy troopers? And with "throwaway" characters? That's 5 groups of 5 minions each, with (in the case of stormtroopers, at least) 5 soak and a total of 25 wounds. They have Ranged (heavy) 4 and 3 Agility, and are packing blaster rifles. How do they not do some serious damage to your players? Are they all 10 soak/ 25 wounds monsters?

And 12 Gamorrean melee specialists? I'm assuming that by "powered up" we're talking maybe 4 Brawn, 3 Melee, 6 soak and 17+ wounds, with vibro-axes? How do they possibly not down at least half your group. Even if every single player got to act first and killed one enemy with every single shot you should still have had 4-5 Gamorreans left to whale on them. That should have inflicted some serious hurt right there.

You are absolutely right when you say you should give them better Initiative stats - maybe some ranks in Rapid Reactions to make sure. What do your players usually roll for Initiative? Even on average you should at least have some NPCs rolling high enough to be in the top four, at least.

I really ought to emphasize, though, that combat in EotE is usually over pretty fast. I think the longest fight I ever ran lasted for 6 rounds, and most of them are over in 2 or 3. That's just the nature of the game, and in my opinion it's a good thing. It makes for faster combat (although they still can take some time to play out) and it's how it's supposed to work.

What I did last week was hand out pre-generated PCs, a Rebel Alliance infiltration squad, for a cut scene. The characters were roughly starting XP plus an additional 100XP. Each player had three such characters, but could only act with one per round. Each of them lost one or two characters by the time they reached the bottom, so the scene with the Stormtroopers and Imperial Army guys wasn't a total victory on their part.

As for the Gamorrean Guards (this is, of course, back to their normal characters), there's this Auto-Fire thing. That and minion rules, which basically makes them canon fodder for anything that does any significant damage. It was three groups of four Gamorreans with 4 Brawn, 4 Melee, 8 Soak, and... they're minions, so they don't get a base Wound bonus. And maybe that's something I should change. A minion group had 32 Wounds between the lot of 'em, so I suspect I could crank that up a bit. However, Auto-Fire tinkered down to only needing a single Advantage to activate means that taking out a group with 32 Wound and 8 Soak isn't as difficult as it might sound.

I'll definitely be improving the Vigilance and Cool of some NPCs my players run into. I like combat that's short, but I'd prefer it to last more than a round. *chuckles* I'd like the NPCs to get a chance to act.

So... the upshot here is... NPCs are getting some characteristics boosted, more talents, and the right kind of skills (to pay the bills), and I'll be utilizing setback dice a whole lot more.

We shall see!

3 minion groups should get wiped out by 8 players, no problem at all. If you aren't even deploying an equal number of target sets as players, they are going to walk all over your opposition. 8 players, 5 combat oriented, if all those combat specs have autofire then Id throw at least an equal number of minion squads and probably include some SGTs.

Before my last game started I announced that the more combat characters there are the less combat there will be. not very nice or diplomatic, but it worked

you could devide them? its a risky thing to do because you create a lot of downtime.

Give them other things to do during a fire fight, enviromental problems, fire, poison gas, anything that threatens them beside standing and fighting. trap them, maybe they become famous for their approach on problems and opponents react to that?

Actually, I was surprised how easily it went when my party divided. I just switched back and forth between individuals. Given that one of the groups was in combat, I more-or-less treated the whole thing like combat. The group fighting would take a couple of actions, then I'd say "meanwhile..." and cut over to the diplomat trying to start a riot amongst the miners. Since I'd be switching between players anyway, it didn't really slow things down at all.

Eight. Seven players, five of them are combat-oriented. I have done my best to impart the same sort of knowledge, the same sort of feel, but with a few of them (particularly a couple of the new gamers), it hasn't seemed to take. A glance at their character sheets shows a heavy emphasis on combat and not a whole lot to make them well-rounded.

Seems to me you've answered your own question here.

You have a large group of characters built for MMO-style raids or D&D 4E sessions. EoE isn't only about that.

The book makes it clear that you should have encounters that involve interaction, exploring, space travel, ship combat, investigation, role-playing and sneaking too. If all you do is combat encounters then yes, they are going to be overpowered.

The answer is to present them with other challenges, problems they can't solve with combat. What you really don't want to do is play a game of escalation, where they end up fighting dark troopers riding cybered rancors. The integrity of your game will definitely suffer.

And you should rein in the generosity as they are clearly abusing it. Rigorously enforce things like wealth, expenditure and Restricted items. The game has a lot of little balance checks, of which many GMs seem to ignore. You control what's available, not them.

One thing I did was make the Heavy Blaster Rifle into a Restricted item, it was just too overpowered. Let them have consequences for walking around with heavy weapons and heavy armour; they are going to attract the wrong kind of attention from absolutely everyone, from the local crime lords to the Imperials, if they wander around civilised areas tooled-up and looking for trouble.

If I were you, I'd restart - tell them they've had their fun with overpowered characters and now you're going to reboot using more varied encounters that don't only include combat.

And sad as it is, you really need to play with a small group. EoE simply wasn't meant for such large groups - about six is max, tops, and the game plays best with 3-5 players.

I'll second Maelora's last suggestion, and say that 4 is really the magic number (in my experience, both playing and GMing). You could split your 8-player group into two 4-player groups (maybe meeting every other week, or at different times...whatever everyone's schedule allows) and see if another guy wants to GM so you can play. Unless of course you like GMing more than playing, in which case you could run both groups!

One thing you might consider if your players are killing too many of your Minion groups, use the Reinforcement stick!

"Ok, so you gunned down this group. But an identical group appears out of this side hatch behind you and opens fire!"

If they prematurely gun down a group of minions or a couple Rivals, just have some identical goons show up and use the same initiative slot.

5 Storm Troopers with HBRs are going to put a hurt in even the toughest PCs.

Also, liberal use of Stun damage and setback can help. Once your players lose the ability to suffer strain to aim and need to keep moving things can quickly go south for them.

I'd also consider tossing in Adversary ranks. Maybe even on Minion groups. "These Storm Troopers aren't just any old Storm Troopers. They're a spec ops unit thats been around since the Clone Wars and were trained by Arc Troopers! So they have Nemesis 2!"

BadMotivator gave me an Idea, let the last one call for reinforcements. LOTS and LOTS of reinforcements. With Tanks. And Darth Vader. or more seriously that speacialist group. that one every barter and bartender started talking about.

Vehicle scale weapons will put the fear of god in any PC.

Even just the humble auto-blaster. Minimum of 31 damage on a successful hit, and its got Auto-fire just for LoLs. That should plant any of the PCs in the dirt, and if its on a vehicle they'll have a tough time killing it. They better not just seek cover, they better break line of sight and fast.