I know the answer is probably "as many as fits the plot"

But how many minion groups, and how many minions do you field against your player?

Obviously, the Minion Rules are there to field many enemies, without bogging the story down with too many dice rolls.

But I have a group of 4, and if I field 2 minion groups, it essentially means 2 shouts out, 4 shots in. And one of my players is a Selonian Marauder with a Glaive and makes short work of mooks. (Easily kills 2 in a single hit)

So I was wondering, how many groups, and how large are those groups, do you throw at your party?

I am thinking, if and when they come up against Stormtroopers, I would field them in 6-8 Minions per group, and maybe 3 or 4 groups..

6-8 because it gives the groups abit of extra 'soak' before their effectiveness drops off

and 3-4 groups, so the Marauder has a good lunch, while the weaker party members (A Mechanic, A Doctor and a Scoundrel with a big gun), have a challenge.

But not sure about other encounters.

In Debts to Pay they basically ate the Droids for dinner... except the Load Lifters, which was a Rival and nearly ate them.

Against Bandin Dobah, they made VERY short work of Dobahs crew, it was only Dobah, the Rodian Hunter, and his First Mate (All Rivals) that posed much of a threat.

So I am abit fuzzy on the power balance.

6-8 in a group is a lot. Usually its safer to cap each group around 3-4.

I try not to field slotted opponents that number too much more then the players, to avoid spending more than 50% of the encounter managing NPCs.

Also note you are not required to group minions at all. They are allowed to run solo. So you might want to try having soming like:

Storm Sgt. (Rival)

Veteran storm with light repeater or sniper(rival)

Storm GRP of 2

Storm solo

Storm solo

Storm solo

Storm Solo

The solos won't deal much damage, with the Sgt. And Vet being the real damage dealers, but at the same time the marauder will have to cut down each solo trooper individually. Which will eat up his turns and give the rivals more time to do real damage...

Also you may want to look into squad rules, which will also reduce the kill per turn the marauder can dish out without increasing the init slot numbers...

My rule of thumb is to have one minion group per 2 players in the party, one more if all you have are minions. This gives you a few actions per round but still gives the PCs the advantage. As for how many per group, that depends

Age of Rebellion has a few military organization structures that we can use as a baseline (pages 391–394).

For normal, "grunt", military a squad is 8 troopers and a sergeant. A platoon is 4 squads commanded by a lieutenant and a master sergeant. So one squad can give you 2 minion groups, one of 4 and one of 5. Throw two squads at the PCs and you can have two groups of 9 or three groups of 3 (assuming 4 PCs). Three squads gives you 3 groups of 9, or 1 group of 13 and one of 14.

If you consider Stormtroopers to be elite troops, (I know I do) SpecForces organize a bit differently. One fire team is 2–4 troopers, one of which is a senior trooper. A squad is 5–15 troopers, up to 4 fire teams of 4 troopers. So one squad could give you anywhere from two groups of 2 minions to three groups of 5.

I'm going off of the military organization because Stormtroopers are a military unit, and should be deployed as such. Running into a lone Stormtrooper should be a rare occurrence.

-EF

Start small slowly increase till you reach how difficult you want for your group.

6-8 in a group is a lot. Usually its safer to cap each group around 3-4.

Agreed, 6-8 is formidable. A minion group of 3 stormtroopers has a shooting dice pool of YYG. That's enough to probably hit anybody at Medium range, and possibly crit. A minion group of 5 stormtroopers has a dice pool of YYYG, which is almost an auto-hit at Medium range, and the crits are going to start coming in with regular frequency. A group of 7 is YYYYG...you'd only do that if you want a TPK.

Also note that the groups take a while to whittle down...even at 1 minion popped per turn, that's 4 rounds (from 7) of great to decent shooting. Having 3 or 4 of these against a group of 4...I can't see the PCs lasting too long.

Also consider the probable tactics of either side and how that will effect your groups. The game runs smoother if you can treat minion groups as a single character as much as possible and have them stay together.

So if you have an encounter where you have like 4 stormtroopers, but you want one to flank while the other three suppress, make it one group of three and the flanker a solo so he can move around freely without making awkward situations when someone activates knockdown or something.

Its easy if solo guy is knocked down and the group keeps rolling. Its weird if they are a single 4man group and the flanker two range bands over gets knocked down and the other three fall down too...in a show of solidarity?

A lot is going to depend on the combat power of the PC group, too. You have four players, sure, but if they're all combat specs (like your Marauder), they'll have a much easier time just mowing through minions than a group with a Doctor and a Slicer in tow. The "start small and build up" route is definitely the direction I'd take, though. Give your players a basic challenge, and if they overcome that challenge easy enough, make it a little tougher next time. At some point you'll build a challenge they'll barely survive. If that matches the tone of your story, keep it there... otherwise dial it back a little.

A group of 7 is YYYYG...you'd only do that if you want a TPK.

Agility 3, Ranged (Heavy) 5 = YYYGG, and you'll get there with 6+ (no matter how big the "+" is) minions.

if you want groups with more than 4 minions in it so they last, then i recommend them having no skills, call them rookies or whatever you want, but if they dont have the skill they dont upgrade the pool.

if you want effective damage dealing minion groups make them 3-4 with a relevant combat skill

if you want to ensure a high slot on the initiative track create a large minion group with either vigilance or cool

for your party of 4, 1 large group of minions with a couple of rivals or a rival and nemesis who uses the squad rules would be a nice starting point

or 2 - 3 small minion groups with either a rival or nemesis comander

if your interested in social situations then a big minion group with Discipline to back up your nemesis NPC can work wonders

or small groups with coercion or deception

Basically:

more than 4 minions in a group with no skill training = longer lasting but not high damage

4 or less minions in a group with appropriate training = downed quick but pack a punch.

more than 4 with training = heavy hitting serious threat

4 or less with no training = annoyance just there to create more NPC initiative slots

I use minions less and less against my players. I run a group of 7 players (when everyone's there, which isn't always) and several of them are very combat-intensive builds. Minions simply aren't a challenge anymore; I'd have to run like 6-8 groups of 5+ minions for it to be a challenge, and at that point it becomes somewhat ridiculous.

My suggestion would be that if your players are mowing down minions, switch to using rivals instead. Less bookkeeping and increased challenge.

One problem with using a "reasonable" number of minions in a group (say, 4 or 5) is that the PCs generally get the first few initiative slots, which means more than likely, one or two (or more) minions will go away before the group gets a chance to attack. That means they'll never get to attack at full power and effectiveness. I do want stormtroopers to be somewhat scary, at least at the start of the combat, but I rarely get a chance to make an attack with them that uses more then one or two yellows.

The easiest way of countering this, of course, is to throw multiple groups against the PCs, spread out so that they're not engaged with each other, and hope the PCs don't lob grenades or do autofire attacks at each of the groups Having groups of 6 or more will probably mean that they'll get off at least one attack that's been upgraded 3 or 4 times before the wookiee lops off all of their bucketed heads. Having multiple groups of 6 or more... well, that could prove deadly to the PCs

Or give them the vigilance skill, 6 minion group with vigilance is a hefty roll that should get a spot close to the top.

One problem with using a "reasonable" number of minions in a group (say, 4 or 5) is that the PCs generally get the first few initiative slots, which means more than likely, one or two (or more) minions will go away before the group gets a chance to attack. That means they'll never get to attack at full power and effectiveness. I do want stormtroopers to be somewhat scary, at least at the start of the combat, but I rarely get a chance to make an attack with them that uses more then one or two yellows.

The easiest way of countering this, of course, is to throw multiple groups against the PCs, spread out so that they're not engaged with each other, and hope the PCs don't lob grenades or do autofire attacks at each of the groups Having groups of 6 or more will probably mean that they'll get off at least one attack that's been upgraded 3 or 4 times before the wookiee lops off all of their bucketed heads. Having multiple groups of 6 or more... well, that could prove deadly to the PCs

The other way is to throw a couple more minions in the groups with the knowledge that the pcs will whittle them down pretty fast.