First of all - it's not my intention to start a flame war or anything, I'm honestly curious.

This said:

Whatever we might think about DnD games, one nailed one thing - it was very easy for busy GM to set up encounters, thanks to Challenge Ratings, encounter levels etc. It other systems I GMed it was more trial and error.

So my actual question: can you guys, especially those more experienced with the system, tell me what is challenging for players, especially when it comes to minions. For simplicity sake let's assume we have a starting 4-pc party, a smuggler, a wookie brawler, a bounty hunter and a tech-droid.

How many stormtroopers are challenging? Is it better to group them, or are they more deadly considered separately?

What about space combat - are 2 TIEs enough to scare, but not to wipe them out?

Is it possible to create some sort of a scale for the npc in the book?

^{Here's my take on it so far....}

^{DnD was easier to buid adventure encounters due to challenge ratings. They weren't always accurate, but it was easy to put together a couple encounters and know how challenging the adventure was going to be.}

^{So far, from what I've seen, EotE is a little tougher to figure out exactly what a group can face, and it won't get easier as they level up. This is probably the biggest reason for no challenge ratings. Without levels, people can grow their characters however they want. People will build their characters in completely different ways, and that will force GMs to change things accordingly.}

^{The nice part about EotE, it's a lot easier to change things on the fly. Underestimated the number of stormtroopers you'd need to make an enounter actually matter? Toss in another squad and/or a commander with some adversary levels.}

^{Space combat has the same issue. It's very dependant on the craft and weapons available to the players.}

^{EotE is a much more organic game. If you are really used to the D&D or Pathfinder style of RPGs, every element of EotE will start off shakey (narrative focused story/combat, dice pools, etc), but eventually start to flow after an adventure or two.}

^{Also, I feel like I should add that EotE isn't focused around combat as a means for pushing the story. In D&D, it always seemed like the adventure was simply a path to the next encounter, the next fight. The fights were the source of experience. You needed combat, and lots of it to advance your characters.}

^{In EotE, you'd want to reward players for avoiding combat as much as engaging in it. In fact you might give them a few bonus xp for coming up with a clever way to avoid combat. Combat is not the end-all, be-all, center of the game.}

From my experience so far running a game for fresh PCs* I've found the following:

1) 4-5 Minions in a group is a hassle but relatively safe for PCs to deal with. I use these small encounters to whet the players' appetites for more significant skirmishes later in the session. These would be similar to your stock NPCs in D&D that would be a few levels lower than your PCs, but are usually grouped. In fact, what I like about the EotE rules is that Minions are meant to be grouped. For my PCs, unless they go all Leroy Jenkins, they can usually survive these encounters with few if any Wounds and little to no use of Strain.

2) A Rival with a group of 4-5 Minions is an excellent end of adventure encounter and provides a significant challenge. A couple of Rivals can also be a decent challenge for PCs and will require a bit more in the way of coordination. I usually like to run a Rival with 2-3 Minions somewhere in the middle of a session, esp. as an obstacle to something important. These have led to some fairly challenging encounters for my PCs with some decent Wounds and Strain.

3) I like to make my Nemeses something rare to encounter and 1 Nemesis should provide a significant challenge and coordination. In fact, I've already begun scaling up the stats for the Hutt Crime Lord in the Core Rules in order to design the Arch-Nemesis for my campaign. The Nemeses in the book are a decent challenge for the players, but if your looking for a real challenge, they may still need a Rival or two, or some Minions to make them truly fearsome. In terms of D&D, these should be your end of campaign bosses that are a few levels above the NPCs and require significant coordination to bring down. I haven't had my PCs meet a Nemesis yet, but I feel as though the stock Nemeses would be a good end of adventure "boss encounter" if you will. But, as I said, I can already see the need almost to create a new class of villain; Arch-Nemesis, although I'll probably just scale up my Nemeses.

4) I haven't done much space combat yet (so I don't feel qualified to comment), but I'm thinking (on the advice of some of my players) to just adapt the X-Wing mini rules somehow.

5) As far as scaling goes, this will be a bit of "flying by the seat of your pants" so to speak, but a good gauge I've found useful is to keep your Rivals right around the same total characteristics and skill rating as the average player in your group, e.g. if your players average a total of say 14 combined for characteristics, your Rivals should also have that same combined total, although they can be distributed differently of course. Same with skill points. I like to keep my Nemeses 5 points or so higher on combined Characteristics totals, and anywhere between 10-15 points higher on a combined skill points total.

As a side note, there is a group on Twitch.tv called Thursday Knights who run a campaign using the EotE rules. The campaign world isn't Star Wars, but it's still valuable to watch as it's helped me understand the crunch a lot better since I get to see it in action. They are an experienced group, and they do a good job of working through the mechanics of the game. They stream every Thursday (hence the name) from 7pm-10pm PDT. There is also a concurrent live chat where you can discuss the game play with other viewers.

Sorry for the novel, but I hope this helps.

* My group consists of a Hired Gun (Bodyguard), Technician (Slicer), Explorer (Scout), Smuggler (Scoundrel), and Colonist (Doctor)

Thanks, actually right now I'm more used to Dark Heresy line and WFRP3ed, where it is also difficult to determine opposition's challenge. And since I still have a month before my group returns from hols and such I'm asking questions, read the book and try to plan ahead

I know that my players (or me) like challenging combat, one that is too easy seems a bit a waste of time and could be done in a narrative.

Thank you for the disclaimer first off.

I would reccomend looking into the beginer box. While the gregenerated characters may or may not be appealing, the pogs are amazing, it includes dice, and the maps are helpful as well. The rule books also include some useful areas, like equipment, and a general outline of some actions the characters can take, which cuts down on book sharing.

The adventure calls for 2~3 squads of stormies of 3 stormies each. because of how the adversaries are designed, minions are generally only a threat in groups (even storrmies) but rivals are used for a more elite 1 on1 kind of fight.

For TIE's, 2 wings of 2 TIE's are called for, which is good for the characters included. depending on the ship the players go with, this number may +/- by 1 wing, the firespray haveing a slightly easier time, the wayfarrer a slightly harder.

Given my experiences, there really isn't any way TOO scale the adversaries, as their are no "levels" for the characters to scale to. As much as I hate this expresion, common sense goes a long way. a 3 man squad of Imperial army soldiers is less of a threat that stormies, but more than street thugs. However, if my party has a hired gun and an assassin who both have light repeaters, all of the above are going to get mowed down pretty quickly.

Also, if your coterie is packed with gun-bunnies, you can always beef-up the NPCs with a level of Adversary to make 'em last longer than 1 round...