It's situations like these in which fire support is called for. If the party is gonna play cheap, then so's the Empire, now that they know they're a threat. Stormtrooper patrol gone in under a second? TIE bomber. They ran from an AT-ST, because they know they're outmatched? Maybe the Empire steps up AT-ST patrols.

9 hours ago, Dayham said:

It's situations like these in which fire support is called for. If the party is gonna play cheap, then so's the Empire, now that they know they're a threat. Stormtrooper patrol gone in under a second? TIE bomber. They ran from an AT-ST, because they know they're outmatched? Maybe the Empire steps up AT-ST patrols.

Reminds me of the increasing threat responses that get sent after you in the Grand Theft Auto games. This group is essentially playing Star Wars: Grand Theft Auto , so time to send the full force of the Imperial military upon them.

You can only take out multiple minions in a single shot is there is more than 1 minion in a minion group, I like throwing a large number of solo minions at they players, each time they attack 1 minion goes down and the minions are only rolling 2 or 3 green, if you arm them with a damage 5 or 6 blaster pistol then the horde of solo minions are just wood chippers, they'll each do a couple of points of damage every time one succeeds on attack and if you use roughly triple the number of solo minions as there are players the combat will last about 3 rounds with each player taking between 2 and 9 damage (I have made some assumptions about PC stats based on what you said qualitatively about your PCs and those assumptions may not be valid).

1 hour ago, EliasWindrider said:

I like throwing a large number of solo minions at they players

Doesn't this defeat the purpose of minions and grouped skills?

26 minutes ago, themensch said:

Doesn't this defeat the purpose of minions and grouped skills?

Sometimes I use groups of 2 to let PCs kill 2 with one blow, but the point with this was to "wood chip" the PCs, to get combats to last longer and deal a small amount of damage over time, so having the minions have a good dice pools actually counter productive. But if there's some other skill they need to do well, minion groups can merge and split apart as needed.

13 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

Sometimes I use groups of 2 to let PCs kill 2 with one blow, but the point with this was to "wood chip" the PCs, to get combats to last longer and deal a small amount of damage over time, so having the minions have a good dice pools actually counter productive. But if there's some other skill they need to do well, minion groups can merge and split apart as needed.

Why would you want combat to last longer? It is painfully slow already as it is.

10 hours ago, Rimsen said:

Why would you want combat to last longer? It is painfully slow already as it is.

For the O.P. it was lasting 1 round. 3 rounds is about "right" in my opinion.

On 12/22/2018 at 3:03 PM, EliasWindrider said:

For the O.P. it was lasting 1 round. 3 rounds is about "right" in my opinion.

For me, one round combat isn't horrible to make the group feel good about themselves. If they're just dealing with a few thugs, I don't want to hold up the plot, so I don't try to drag it out.

When they face a boss or a plot important character, then I take the combat far more seriously on my end. With my group, it's all about the story above the raw mechanics.

On 12/16/2018 at 5:29 PM, SavageBob said:

Reminds me of the increasing threat responses that get sent after you in the Grand Theft Auto games. This group is essentially playing Star Wars: Grand Theft Auto , so time to send the full force of the Imperial military upon them.

This.
Murder hoboing nets you very few friends and quite a lot of enemies. Start looking into opposition in vehicles. You don't need to throw in an AT-ST to make their personal weapons rather ineffective. Gangsters blasting away from the safety of an Armor 1 or 0 land speeder are a lot harder to deal with. Even if you let the PCs target someone shooting from a vehicle directly, it should require an aim maneuver with two setback dice and probably another setback dice worth of cover, and that's just goons doing a drive by. Just putting an opponent on a speeder bike can make them a lot tougher to deal with, especially if their highly into dual wielding as this tends to cap their range at Medium. Mobile opponents using vehicles or even rocket packs can quite easily stay at long range, meaning the PCs need 2 maneuvers just to get within range. That means aiming is usually out.

Also considering starting to saddle them with obligations like "bounty" or "criminal". They will sit up and take notice when their total obligation hits 100 and they can't spend xp anymore, and obligation scores tend to be things you can't blast away. Let's say that every time they get into a fight with the empire or local gangster syndicate (or police department), you bump their collective "Criminal" or "Bounty" obligation by 5-10 points as more people start looking for them. They don't even have to be recognized as the obligation can just as easily mean that people are looking for whoever did it. That should send them looking for less violent and/or more subtle approaches fairly quickly.

But of course, this could also mean that the game starts devolving into a power struggle where the players feel the need to step up their game to beat you, and/or quit if they feel they can't. Returning fire to the point where they can no longer solve every problem by blasting it might make them re-think their playstyle and adapt to something you (and hopefully, they) find more enjoyable, but if what they actually want to play is an ultra-violent power trip, maybe it's better to just have a talk to see if you can find a playstyle more agreeable to all of you, or just maybe start looking for a different group.

Luckily, it seems that taking the ultra-violent murder hobo approach to RPGs is something a lot of players do merely because they can get away with it. When they no longer can the problem usually starts working itself out.

18 hours ago, evo454 said:

For me, one round combat isn't horrible to make the group feel good about themselves. If they're just dealing with a few thugs, I don't want to hold up the plot, so I don't try to drag it out.

When they face a boss or a plot important character, then I take the combat far more seriously on my end. With my group, it's all about the story above the raw mechanics.

I like to give players the opportunity to use their talents, many of which have to do with combat, and it's "cool" for the group to score a few triumphs per round to get creative with them. We usually don't get that narratively creative with advantage. But have your game, your fun, your way.

22 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

I like to give players the opportunity to use their talents, many of which have to do with combat, and it's "cool" for the group to score a few triumphs per round to get creative with them. We usually don't get that narratively creative with advantage. But have your game, your fun, your way.

That totally works! My group is not as mechanics focused. Unfortunately combat tends to last a really long time for my group, and I like to narrate the h*ll out of things.

Side note: The optimizer in my group randomly decided to change characters from Murder Bot with no backstory to a mechanically inclined (as in, he likes machines and tinkering) Viking Wookiee. He balanced the character and actually developed a backstory, and I am so proud of him.

There is hope guys!