ok I'm still new at running SW EOTE and I'm having a problem. 2 in fact.

1. The marauder is melee and very powerful. She usually sweeps like 3 minions a pop. Now her character is very intimidating and melee oriented. So she like to get up and tear things up. But I keep running into the problem of: "oh if she engages we get a black dice to combat checks while she's engaged with the target-- so let the shooters shoot first. So it can end up with all dead minions and her just yawning and waiting for some action to come again. Lame. Now here is a question; if she engages the minion group since they are a minion group-- is she technically engaged with the whole group or just one dude in the group so only setback to the one dude she is engaged-- but than is it thematically oriented if she does 1 kill and enough crits to kill more minions? Or is that only working if she is technically engaged with the whole minion pack?

2. how do I fix the problem of her getting benched because initiative roll is almost a group effort which PC can slot into a PC a lot on the initiative order because they always vote shooters first melee last because a dinky black dice. She gets sidelined even though she years through minions better than the whole group.

Thanks for help

Update: I was told its an upgrade not a setback to fire into engaged and the ally is hit I LFG despair is rolled.

Simple solution is to have more than one minion group.

Otherwise I think I would be inclined to lean towards my description of the combat. If the minion group is spread out and shooting I would probably allow shooting into the combat with no penalty. If I had the whole minion group playing "pile up on the queen", she is such a good sport, then I would be inclined to upgrade the to hit rolls.

Actually my solution is to completely disregard that whole "Despair automatically means you shoot the ally" part of the rules on firing into a melee. I disliked that rule when it first cropped up in the EotE Beta, primarily as it's the only instance in the rules where a Despair overrides the result of the roll and enforces a specific result. Instead, I treat as an option that I as the GM could spend the Despair on... and a large number of times, I've got something better in mind for the situation. That's not to say I've not used that as a Despair option in any games I've run, but it's not an automatic thing.

Amanal is on to something in that the game almost seems designed so that minion groups shows up in multiples. I've used this quite often, typically going for about 2 to 4 minion groups, often in sets of 3 (the PCs in my Force and Destiny game are coming up on the point that I might upgrade to groups of 4) so that they're a decent threat but can still be taken down pretty quickly (fitting as lightsabers are a thing for two of the PCs and a third has a heavy blaster rifle).