I'm about to start running my first Star Wars EOTE campaign in a couple weeks and while writing my first session I noticed it is pretty combat heavy. I have GMed especially in DND for a few years now and my players, while they do enjoy combat, are used to me giving them atleast one good noncombat encounter a session often involving puzzles or riddles. I was wondering if you guys had a few ideas for puzzles or riddles I am specifically having trouble coming up with ones that would fit into the star wars universe.

I have never had much luck with puzzles and riddles in my games, but...

Real-life pen-and-paper puzzles can easily translate to the "Slicing a computer" algorithm with a bit of tweaking. The problem with these is that it takes away the characters abilities, and makes the player's abilities the key focus.

"I'm playing a master slicer, this is definitely something she would know. But I have no idea how to solve this kriffin' puzzle."

While it's not a puzzle or riddle, one of the things I love to do is using the SAGA or D&D 4E Skill challenge rules (with some tweaking).

Basically I give my player's a scenario "Escaping large ship that's blowing up from the inside" or "Tracking down the master bounty hunter" and make sure to specify what the ultimate goal is for that challenge. Then I go around the table one-at-a-time and each player describes what they are doing and translate that into a skill check (with an appropriate difficulty). The dice results determines how that plays out, and you can use that as the spring board for the next person's skill check. You have each person do that until they reach "X" success or "Y" failures.

I love this approach because it puts narrative power directly into the players hands. Each player can play to their character's strengths, if they can find a way to make it work (keep in mind the "Yes, but" or "Yes, and" policy), and you hardly have to do any work. Just set up the scene and adjudicate the dice results both mechanically and narratively. If you do the Skill Challenge approach, make sure that success or failure still moves the story along. If they fail, they shouldn't be stuck.

Gambling is a good non-combat encounter. (See my post at http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/88673-sabacc-tournament/#entry844173 for rules on Sabacc). You can have one of the plot points be set in a gambling den where the PCs have to play a few hands with an NPC to weasel information out of him.

When in doubt, look at the available skills in Edge and think about all the different ways those skills can come into play that might not be so obvious. Maybe that will help you come up with something cool and interesting.

If I come up with any more ideas I'll try and post them.