I'm thinking of starting a Starfinder Arena.

I need at least 1 co-GM to do so.

Your thoughts/opinions/suggestions/concerns/nerd rage/fanboyish or fangirlish squeals?

Wow, have been thinking about that! Sounds great! Only concern would be splitting the time of players and GMs between two arenas :)
What does a co-GM do? Not ever play a character?

I've actually been really excited to give Starfinder a go, though making a character doesn't interest me much, so I'd be happy to put my hand up.

Have you thought about ship combat as well, or just character combat?

I've tried ship combat in the forum. It needs a LOT of adaptation to work here. And it's meant for party vs party: you need the pilot and gunner, but also want the captain, science officer and engineer. So I don't think it would work here.

A suggestion for simplifying the balancing:
Base the arena rules on what is and is not allowed, on Starfinder Society rules. Within that organized play system, they are rather strict on what is allowed and what is not, to ensure balance. It is a different balance, of course... And it would be sad to be so limited to races as in Society play, but more things are made available with time so that shouldn't be a big problem.

I mean, I'm sure you'll do a great job balancing that Arkrim. But in case you hadn't thought about that, there's a good source for paizo-based balance judgements :)

I could do that. I didn't do that for Pathfinder because Society rules are a LOT more strict than what I have but since I'm new to Starfinder I guess just copy/pasting Society rules will work just fine.

A challenge will be regarding the laser pistols, I think. There are so many ranged weapons in Starfinder. I don't see many ranged attacks in the arena now, it's either magic or heavy melee attacks... And I don't think it's a bold statement to say that ranged attacks are at a disadvantage in a standard colosseum fight - with no tank in the way and without the versatility of the magician. Even though a longbow, or a heavy reaction cannon, has a range of 100ft - the ranged attacker would much rather be at 150ft or even 250ft than 10ft.
There are 5 categories of ranged weapons in starfinder (Small arms, longarms, heavy weapons, snipers, grenades) vs 2 categories of melee weapons (basic, advanced).

So is there a way to make more place for ranged weapons, given that they are more important in a sci-fi world? You're good with offering a variety of maps, Arkrim, and maybe maps with even tougher obstacles could work (large chasms between the fields one can stand on, only a few small islands spotting a bottomless pit) - I think there are many ways to move around anyway, probably rocket boots and zero-g-arenas and such, so making the chase/approach harder and more unconventional could help. Make it easier to team up 2v2 could work as well, for skirmish tactics, tank & damage dealer, damage dealer & support. Not sure how to aid that though, but specific game modes to make the partner fight as easy to start as a duel - a ready to use structure with beneficial rewards etc.

In reply to Vry (msg # 7):

Yeah, probably, but everyone using ranged weapons is fine. We've had archer vs. archer fights before.

"Easier to team match"? It's pretty easy to do that already. You can even team match with your own alts if you wanted (1v1 players but 2v2 characters). I'm surprised nobody's tried to do that yet. It takes a LOT of tactical thinking but can be pretty fun.

In reply to GM Arkrim (msg # 8):

I'm just brainstorming :)
I think one reason there are few 2v2 etc is that the arena is already rather complicated, playing with cohorts and stuff makes it very easy to make crucial mistakes (move on map but not state the move action, for example). Playing two characters would probably make things harder. That's why I suggested some sort of simplification to make it work... I guess the really complicated things, however, is adding work to controlling one character; and waiting for/co-operating with more players.

The long ranges on the weapons are so much greater than the map distances, but there are like no class abilities focused on snipers, so there shouldn't be much lost in keeping to the same sizes anyway :)