On the ErikB level of rude. That I finally got pissed off enough to let that out - he's got a potential out- English is obviously and explicitly not his native. What's your excuse?

ErikB is a Brit like myself actually.

And while he's one-note and tiresome, he's not personally obnoxious like you are.

I'm done with you. You might make good points but you're absurdly hostile.

I still see mass combat as something that isn’t required. Some help and assistance given to the GM is going to go a long way to ensuring the mass combats feel good and resolve as the GM would like.

My thoughts are to take battles as being a whole mess of smaller fights. Think of the GM as a director in this regards and the fight just moves around the players.

As such, I think you setup the fight, will the players win or lose? Make the choice as a GM and build the story towards the goal. In general you should give the players something to achieve and at least two means of escape. If they are to win they won’t know that the means of escape won’t be used but describe them any ways. That way when they need them they have the routes in their minds and can’t metagame the outcome of the fight.

The players aren’t quite on rails, the outcome of the fight is known, but what the players do to contribute to the fighting and their actions beyond the scope of the battle are most certainly theirs.

Now as the director of the fight I would highlight some of my thoughts:

Star in medias res, you are behind cover and fighting, your commander calls for the attack or signs off after asking your squad to hold the line and delay the enemy. Unless the players are removed from the front lines they will not be directing troops or giving commands, they are caught up in the moment. At Hoth the Imperials attack, Luke jumps into his fighter, Han prepares the Millenium Falcon and Leia and the droids get ready to evacuate. The rebel commanders would have told them what to do, their actions are somewhat out of their control.

Now you could have the players build the trenches, locate the heavy blaster cannons, ion cannons and arrange troop positions. But for me that is logistics and tedium not awesome roleplaying and fun. If you want run such a session, based on my mix of players 1-2 will engage with the idea and plan everything out. And 3-4 of them will drift off and start reading emails and playing PvZ. Put them all in the thick of it and they will all engage and be playing. Start in the thick of it, want to play through the battle of Hoth, task the players with holding 20m of trench and throw in a minion group of Rebel soldiers and have them allocated a Repeating Heavy Blaster for the defence.

You could use advantage and disadvantage as a mechanism to provide hints as to when someone nearby should get hit and knocked out. Maybe say for every 6 advantages the players get or disadvantages the NPC’s get you have someone notice that a foe near the combat falls and similarly for every 6 disadvantages the players score or advantages the NPC’s score some other “good guy” falls. You could bump these numbers up or down to tweak the end result. If you want the players to win, maybe they need 4 advantages to the NPCs 8.

Have the players engage small groups, maybe a couple of minion groups and a rival. If you are finding they are having a hard time you can add in a minion group to assist or if it seems to easy a nearby minion group adds into the “main” part of the action. Have a look at the large fights that are in Clone Wars or the Movies. When you zoom into the action it is very personal. Say JarJar running around with the tanks and droids after him, it is all shown from JarJar’s perspective. When it zooms away from JarJar you see there is a bigger picture and then it zooms back in.

Also use strain, if the players are supposed to lose a fight having them slowly suffer strain each turn will eventually push them into fleeing the fight rather than staying on for a glorious end to your campaign. Conversely as the players find they are winning the fight reward them with reductions to their strain.

If you want the players to decide the fate of the fight then ensure they understand this: “The command group must destroy the shield generators or our attack will fail.” Then have the tasks that must be achieved in order to succeed and have the outcome of the battle linked to these tasks. If the players fail to plant explosives on the shield generators or are captured they will have to escape and get off planet somehow. If they plant the explosives and destroy the shields they will win in space and may have to survive the imperials chasing them down until some help comes. If they befriended the Ewoks then they could provide the help….

Amanal, I like the way you think.

To really make it feel like star wars, Split the party into simultaneous scenes. Large space battle + large ground battle + sabotage/personal objective.