So i'm confused about a few things, I just picked up the game the other day. Not sure i'm understanding xp, pf and achievement points correctly. My understanding is that after an objective is complete you award xp and achievement points and the achievement points count towards finishing an endeavour. Once an endeavour is complete the parties profit factor goes up, which in turn lets them purchase harder to find items and what not. Is there a way to determine how much the pf goes up when an endeavor is complete, or do you just 'wing' it when making it?

I'm sure this is a super noob question, but i've really only played dnd. Any clarification on these things would be great, thanks!

Unless you are using a pre-made adventure (which will likely list a few Endeavours - the achievement points needed to complete them and a specific PF increase) it is entirely up to the GM.

There are guidelines in the Corebook, 1-2 for lesser, 2-3 for Great and 3-5 for Grand. In ITS the introduce Meta endevours that scale up from there.

alright, that makes sense, thank you. one more question, are there guidelines on how to create a combat encounter? like amount of enemies equal to party members or anything like that?

No, that's a shot in the dark I'm afraid. I've found that if you average your groups armour rating, toughness bonus and Wounds and then pick weapons with median damage/pen that it tends to work out decently. If there's a big discrepancy (aka someone with a 10 AR and 8 TB and someone with a 2 AR and 2 TB) then the tough one likely won't be hurt and the weak one will almost certainly die, but baring that it works out decently well.

As far as numbers, it most depends on how quickly you want the fight to be over with. As long as you don't overtank your NPCs, eventually the group will kill them all/drive them off, it just may take a while. For instance, the

from Into the Maw in the Corebook, IMO has too many orcs that are too tough for starting PCs. Unless they are absolutely ready for that encounter, either scale back the number or the armour rating.

There's no guideline like in DnD. However, one easy trick is to simply use "normal" opponents but increase their number and/or the direction they come from depending on how easy your PC's blast through them. After a couple encounters you'll get the feel for what they can take. The first one's you'll likely either overestimate or underestimate them.

Works even with a boss ... if (s)he is to weak, just let some underlings appear drawn in by the noise of the combat to act as a distraction for some of the PCs evening the odds a bit. After all: reinforcements can be expected to arrive as long as loyal troops and the leader remain.

Alright, that makes a lot of sense. Going to be getting a first game going soon here so hopefuly i can catch on quickly. Going to run the endeavor in rulebook, so it should be pretty straightforward and give me a good idea about this.

One more dumb question though, so i reread the section on achievement points, and is there any point to these other than keep track of how far you are in the endeavor? It seems to me they might be unnecessary unless i missed something about them.

For every 100AP you achieve in excess of the needed amount to complete the endeavour, you get an additional point of Profit Factor.

They are good in case you aren't entirely sure on how much PF your players should get. Personally, i do without them as i detail in advance how much PF players can get and then either give them a bonus or a malus depending on how creative (or boring) they were. If they manage to be creative enough to either blast through my encounters or bypass them, or necessitate me to throw in a few curve-balls to keep things interesting: bonus time. If they need more clues then i anticipated or blunder into each and every trap, and even manage to blunder into some that i hadn't anticipated them to ... malus time.

The only thing to watch out for is to not penalise them because they botched a dice roll. Dice rolls can greatly affect their performance in game, but i'll not penalise them for the results any more then i'll grant them an additional bonus on top of the effects of DoS give them already.

The above way i avoid some tedious bookkeeping and i also keep more control on the end result PF the players gain. Given the right ship components it can otherways be to darned easy to gain additional PF imo.