Apologies in advance if this is a straightforward question but I'm not sure how Starfinder Society character experience is supposed to work in APs. I'm a veteran GM going to run my first Society game and want to prepare accordingly.
The problem is that the AP 'Dead Suns' has multiple level ranges that don't seem to match up with the experience Society adventures give out. I've read over the SFS rules pdf and Dead Suns rules pdf and it seems like the PCs get 3 experience AFTER they complete AP #1. There are two problems with this understanding.
1) The AP itself says the PCs should level up twice by the end of the AP (starting at level 1 and ending at level 3).
2) The next AP lists level 3-4 as the level range.
Am I understanding correctly that to run this AP the PCs need to run the first adventure as 1st level characters (or second level if they've run other scenarios) and don't level up until AFTER they've completed it? And then, can't run AP #2 until they've run secondary scenarios to get up to 3rd level (assuming they weren't 2nd level to start with)? So basically there's no way to go from a beginning level 1 SFS PC and play through all 6 APs one after the other?