I was under the impression that on a normal primary weapon attack the Focus and Target Lock tokens are mathematically equivalent: they both push your chances from 50% per die to 75% per die. Made sense mathematically too: focus made three quarters of the results hits (outright 0.75) and TL made your misses have a 50% chance to hit again (0.50 + (0.50 * 0.50)). However, I've seen a couple of times people saying that Target Lock is slightly better on the attack. Am I missing something?

Crits. A target lock can turn a blank or a focus into a crit, but focus can only change an eye to a hit.

I think it depends on how many dice you are throwing. With 2 attack dice I think I would focus. If you roll a couple of eyes...blow focus and risk the defense. 3 or 4 attack dice I think I would TL as the chances of having both blanks and eyes together increases.

Makes sense in my head, but so does peanut butter on hamburgers so I don't know if you should trust my advice!

Here's how each typical action changes the distribution:

Face  |p(none)| p (f) | p (tl)
Crit  | 0.125 | 0.125 | 0.188
Hit   | 0.375 | 0.625 | 0.563
Focus | 0.250 | 0.000 | 0.125
Blank | 0.250 | 0.250 | 0.125

As Rodrigo says ( ): in comparison to focus, target lock produces the same number of "success" results, but a higher proportion of those successes are [crit] results.

Also, if you end up not needing your TL or focus, the TL sticks around to the next turn so you can perform a TL & Focus attack.

This is mostly relevant to ships with 1 agility since its rarely useful to use spend focus on defense for them.

Focus has an advantage that you can spend it attacking any ship, which is relevant for low skill pilots versus slippery ships.

There is a lot of situational items that does not make one really better than the other.

I did a video on this recently and didn't actually show hard math, but I did rank TL as slightly better. You can get the crits... and ALSO if you happen to roll all hits, then you get to save the TL for next turn - which also gives it a slight edge...

But only when you KNOW exactly who you are going to shoot. if you are a Pilot Skill 1 ship - you may wanna focus because you don't know what shots you are going to have by the end of the turn.

To play devils advocate, here are a few reasons I think Focus is better.

1. Focus has the advantage of not giving away information on who you plan to target.
2. A Low PS ship acquires a TL. The other ships in his squad all attack that ship and destroy it. Now his TL is gone. If he had a Focus he could use that on his next attack. Now it's as if he hasn't taken an action.
3. As stated Focus can be used for Defense. The usefulness of this varies based on ship agility.
4. TL can't help you against Sensor Jammers.

There are some cases where Focus is the better choice. TL is a great action and any time you can up the odds on your attack it's a good thing. I find that Lower PS ships have a harder time pulling off a TL. They move up and have no one in range, so you default to Focus. High PS pilots have a better chance of making use of the TL. I don't think one is better then the other, I think they are very balanced. Understanding when to do which action is the real trick.

I find that Lower PS ships have a harder time pulling off a TL. They move up and have no one in range, so you default to Focus. High PS pilots have a better chance of making use of the TL.

To expand on this, I think there's also something about an informational advantage for low-PS pilots in the combat phase. That's awkwardly stated, but what I mean is that low-PS pilots get more out of the flexibility of focus than high-PS pilots do.

Compare Boba Fett + Veteran Instincts to a Rookie Pilot, when each chose focus as his action. Focus is technically more flexible, but Fett has to decide very early in the combat phase whether he's going to use it offensively or defensively. It's technically more flexible, but when he spends it he doesn't have much more information than when he acquired it: the only thing that's different is that now he's seen his attack roll. Maybe he has the happy(?) accident of not needing his focus token on offense and being able to save it for defense instead, but the tactical situation hasn't changed. If he expects to be secure with an offensive action, he should have used target lock; if he knew he was vulnerable and wanted defense, he should have used evade.

By contrast, the Rookie Pilot has seen (at least) most of the changes that will happen to the board by the time his turn to attack comes around--including the results of both the attacker's dice and his own for any attacks directed against him. He has a huge informational advantage, and that allows him to take advantage of the focus token's flexibility in a way Fett simply couldn't.

Vorpal's arguement makes complete sense.

Let's relist MrFroggies reasons again:

1. Focus has the advantage of not giving away information on who you plan to target.
2. A Low PS ship acquires a TL. The other ships in his squad all attack that ship and destroy it. Now his TL is gone. If he had a Focus he could use that on his next attack. Now it's as if he hasn't taken an action.
3. As stated Focus can be used for Defense. The usefulness of this varies based on ship agility.
4. TL can't help you against Sensor Jammers.

Vorpal was stating that Boba (or Wedge for better comparision) with VI isn't giving anything away by TL the rookie... he's coming from the last action in activation to the first attack in the combat phase. So its no information is given away. Furthermore, Boba/Wedge is ensured that no other information is going to occur and change the attack preference, for example a phantom screws up and ends on an asteroid at R1, in which case you'd wished you had focused so you had a modifier to take out the phantom. Since such a thing can happen, its difficult for a Rookie to know with a high degree on confidence who he is going to be attacking, and would be better off taking a focus to ensure he has a modifier to attack.

Another reason for the Rookie to take a focus is that he's going to be attacked before he attacks... in order to survive long enough to make sure he can attack, he may have to spend the focus on defense. Taking a TL prevents him from doing this and could end in his death before he can take his unmodified shot.

So, lets EXPAND mrfroggies' list...

Reasons to take TL:
1) You have high confidence that you are going to live to get your shot off, as well as who your target is

2) You have a low confidence on doing damage this turn and want to action stack for the next turn

3) You are a two attack ship, which has a 25% of rolling 2 hits naturally, and a 50% chance of rolling no focuses

4) You have no shot and want to prep for the next turn

5) You have a special ability such as Dutch that favors TL over F

6) You have ordnance you want to spend

7) Carnor Jax is in the area

8) You want to influence your opponent to shoot at this target

Reasons to take a F:

1) You have incomplete information about who you are going to be shooting

2) You have incomplete info regarding if you are going to be the target of a shot

3) You have the EPT Predator, are running with Howl/Jonus, or are Krassis

4) You would have to lock onto Kagi

5) You have a TL on another target you do not wish to lose

6) Your opponent is equipped with Sensor Jammer

7) Your opponent is equipped with the EPT Opportunist

8) You are equipped with Recon Spec

9) You have confidence in who you are going to be shooting at, but don't want to tip your hand

10) Your preferred target is not in TL range

11) You want to influence your opponent to shoot at a different target

I'm sure there are others, but this is all I can think of right now.

Vorpal's arguement makes complete sense.

Let's relist MrFroggies reasons again:

1. Focus has the advantage of not giving away information on who you plan to target.
2. A Low PS ship acquires a TL. The other ships in his squad all attack that ship and destroy it. Now his TL is gone. If he had a Focus he could use that on his next attack. Now it's as if he hasn't taken an action.
3. As stated Focus can be used for Defense. The usefulness of this varies based on ship agility.
4. TL can't help you against Sensor Jammers.

Vorpal was stating that Boba (or Wedge for better comparision) with VI isn't giving anything away by TL the rookie... he's coming from the last action in activation to the first attack in the combat phase. So its no information is given away. Furthermore, Boba/Wedge is ensured that no other information is going to occur and change the attack preference, for example a phantom screws up and ends on an asteroid at R1, in which case you'd wished you had focused so you had a modifier to take out the phantom. Since such a thing can happen, its difficult for a Rookie to know with a high degree on confidence who he is going to be attacking, and would be better off taking a focus to ensure he has a modifier to attack.

Another reason for the Rookie to take a focus is that he's going to be attacked before he attacks... in order to survive long enough to make sure he can attack, he may have to spend the focus on defense. Taking a TL prevents him from doing this and could end in his death before he can take his unmodified shot.

So, lets EXPAND mrfroggies' list...

Reasons to take TL:

1) You have high confidence that you are going to live to get your shot off, as well as who your target is

2) You have a low confidence on doing damage this turn and want to action stack for the next turn

3) You are a two attack ship, which has a 25% of rolling 2 hits naturally, and a 50% chance of rolling no focuses

4) You have no shot and want to prep for the next turn

5) You have a special ability such as Dutch that favors TL over F

6) You have ordnance you want to spend

7) Carnor Jax is in the area

8) You want to influence your opponent to shoot at this target

Reasons to take a F:

1) You have incomplete information about who you are going to be shooting

2) You have incomplete info regarding if you are going to be the target of a shot

3) You have the EPT Predator, are running with Howl/Jonus, or are Krassis

4) You would have to lock onto Kagi

5) You have a TL on another target you do not wish to lose

6) Your opponent is equipped with Sensor Jammer

7) Your opponent is equipped with the EPT Opportunist

8) You are equipped with Recon Spec

9) You have confidence in who you are going to be shooting at, but don't want to tip your hand

10) Your preferred target is not in TL range

11) You want to influence your opponent to shoot at a different target

I'm sure there are others, but this is all I can think of right now.

This is a very solid list for why you would choose one action over the other. There's probably more, but this covers most cases.

To expand on this, I think there's also something about an informational advantage for low-PS pilots in the combat phase. That's awkwardly stated, but what I mean is that low-PS pilots get more out of the flexibility of focus than high-PS pilots do.Compare Boba Fett + Veteran Instincts to a Rookie Pilot, when each chose focus as his action. Focus is technically more flexible, but Fett has to decide very early in the combat phase whether he's going to use it offensively or defensively. It's technically more flexible, but when he spends it he doesn't have much more information than when he acquired it: the only thing that's different is that now he's seen his attack roll. Maybe he has the happy(?) accident of not needing his focus token on offense and being able to save it for defense instead, but the tactical situation hasn't changed. If he expects to be secure with an offensive action, he should have used target lock; if he knew he was vulnerable and wanted defense, he should have used evade.By contrast, the Rookie Pilot has seen (at least) most of the changes that will happen to the board by the time his turn to attack comes around--including the results of both the attacker's dice and his own for any attacks directed against him. He has a huge informational advantage, and that allows him to take advantage of the focus token's flexibility in a way Fett simply couldn't.

This is totally situational and should be taken with a grain of salt. MrFroggies made some great points and now you're just confusing the matter more.

You are terrible at trolling. You should take up another hobby.

Focus is the action that IMO defines the value of the action economy. If you don't know what you want to do focus in never going to be a bad idea. Almost all other actions are only going to be situationally better than focus. TL is a great action if you aren't

Going to shoot on a given round. TL is required to shoot ordnance. TL is slightly better at getting crit results that focus.

But just Bout every action can be compared to focus and be worse in the general situation. One obvious choice is Marksmanship. It is just a better offside focus, that you can

use on defense.

Evade is usually not as good of an idea as focus, because it will likely mean you just won't get shot at. But what if that is exactly what you want.

Barrel roll and boost are even better examples. I can't count the number of times I have seen a rookie player use a boost to get a range band closer to who they want to shoot, only give their opponent a better shot at them as well. But if you can boost or barrel roll out of a firing arc, or use a boost to tail an enemy ship, they can seem like the best actions in the world.

My point is every action besides focus is situational. It's not a matter of being better or worse than focus, it is a matter of knowing when to use what action.

Vorpal's arguement makes complete sense.

Let's relist MrFroggies reasons again:

1. Focus has the advantage of not giving away information on who you plan to target.
2. A Low PS ship acquires a TL. The other ships in his squad all attack that ship and destroy it. Now his TL is gone. If he had a Focus he could use that on his next attack. Now it's as if he hasn't taken an action.
3. As stated Focus can be used for Defense. The usefulness of this varies based on ship agility.
4. TL can't help you against Sensor Jammers.

Vorpal was stating that Boba (or Wedge for better comparision) with VI isn't giving anything away by TL the rookie... he's coming from the last action in activation to the first attack in the combat phase. So its no information is given away. Furthermore, Boba/Wedge is ensured that no other information is going to occur and change the attack preference, for example a phantom screws up and ends on an asteroid at R1, in which case you'd wished you had focused so you had a modifier to take out the phantom. Since such a thing can happen, its difficult for a Rookie to know with a high degree on confidence who he is going to be attacking, and would be better off taking a focus to ensure he has a modifier to attack.

Another reason for the Rookie to take a focus is that he's going to be attacked before he attacks... in order to survive long enough to make sure he can attack, he may have to spend the focus on defense. Taking a TL prevents him from doing this and could end in his death before he can take his unmodified shot.

So, lets EXPAND mrfroggies' list...

Reasons to take TL:

1) You have high confidence that you are going to live to get your shot off, as well as who your target is

2) You have a low confidence on doing damage this turn and want to action stack for the next turn

3) You are a two attack ship, which has a 25% of rolling 2 hits naturally, and a 50% chance of rolling no focuses

4) You have no shot and want to prep for the next turn

5) You have a special ability such as Dutch that favors TL over F

6) You have ordnance you want to spend

7) Carnor Jax is in the area

8) You want to influence your opponent to shoot at this target

Reasons to take a F:

1) You have incomplete information about who you are going to be shooting

2) You have incomplete info regarding if you are going to be the target of a shot

3) You have the EPT Predator, are running with Howl/Jonus, or are Krassis

4) You would have to lock onto Kagi

5) You have a TL on another target you do not wish to lose

6) Your opponent is equipped with Sensor Jammer

7) Your opponent is equipped with the EPT Opportunist

8) You are equipped with Recon Spec

9) You have confidence in who you are going to be shooting at, but don't want to tip your hand

10) Your preferred target is not in TL range

11) You want to influence your opponent to shoot at a different target

I'm sure there are others, but this is all I can think of right now.

Also some secondary weapons require either a target lock or a focus.

For Target Lock if your target is not within arc but within range 3.

For Focus, If you already have a Target lock.

Now weapons that require focus means you loose a powerful modifier unless you can get a double focus for that turn Still if you have a target lock you can still modify the dice with a re-roll. Weapons that require target lock do not have to spend that target lock on that turn. So you can wait for a turn and focus on the turn you wan't to spend a target lock.

Lets not forget one of the veteran abilities (often called super focus even though inaccurate because it has no agility modifier) marksmanship. It is like a focus the diffrence is that it only works for attack dice and it can turn one focus result into a crit.

Here's how each typical action changes the distribution:

Face  |p(none)| p (f) | p (tl)
Crit  | 0.125 | 0.125 | 0.188
Hit   | 0.375 | 0.625 | 0.563
Focus | 0.250 | 0.000 | 0.125
Blank | 0.250 | 0.250 | 0.125

As Rodrigo says ( ): in comparison to focus, target lock produces the same number of "success" results, but a higher proportion of those successes are [crit] results.

While this is true on a basic level of probability you dont account for the fact that with a TL you can choose which die to reroll after you see the initial results. It's hard for me to explain in a foreign language but this leads to an increase of succes results due to a mechanic like the Monty Hall problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

TL produces more hits/crits than Focus, but Focus has a lot more flexibility.

In my opinion; High PS should TL, Low PS should Focus.

Thanks Joostuh, just lost half an hour of my life reading Wikipedia!

I'm sorry but the Monty Hall problem has absolutey no bearing in this case.

For the TL/Focus comparison, there is no dice with "the correct answer".

Each dice in the roll is independant.

Focus is better for ships using a Blaster Turret, Target Lock is better for ships loaded with missiles or torpedoes*

*unless they also have Deadeye.