Technically Hull Upgrade goes away after one shot too. It is the last shot so we don't care psycologically.
Stealth Device should be better but it doesn't FEEL that way so our brains do what brains do...

Also, green dice suck.

I think it massively depends on what you are wanting to do with the ship you have it on.

For example, and these are the extremes but they show my point, if you put a stealth device on a decimator, quite frankly you're pissing in the wind, it's going to get shot a lot and 1 dice is likely to fail at some point, therefore, hull upgrade is going to serve you better.

However, if you put a stealth device on an A-Wing/Interceptor/phantom that is going to stay on the flanks or be able to stay out of arcs/at long range, a stealth device is probably better. (3+1 for range 3 +1 for stealth device)

I'm sure some Math Wing genius is going to interject with their number wizardry and prove me wrong, but unitl then...

Are you going to get shot at a lot? Yes - Hull

Are you going to get shot at a lot? No - Stealth

I like hull over stealth

Technically Hull Upgrade goes away after one shot too. It is the last shot so we don't care psycologically.

Stealth Device should be better but it doesn't FEEL that way so our brains do what brains do...

Also, green dice suck.

But I still have three hull after my hull upgrade goes away and when my stealth goes away I only have two!

Technically Hull Upgrade goes away after one shot too. It is the last shot so we don't care psycologically.

Stealth Device should be better but it doesn't FEEL that way so our brains do what brains do...

Also, green dice suck.

No, the Hull Upgrade will stick with a ship the entire game. It just allows a ship to collect an additional damage card before being destroyed. If you can get rid of cards then a hull upgrade can bring added life.

Addition:

In some ways the Decimator is actually the perfect ship to compare SD and hull upgrades on. I say that for the SD because it eliminates all of those normal Defense dice which may cloud someone's view where they think the only reason the dice produced and evades was because of the SD.

People have pretty much covered it. The better your agility, the more appealing a stealth device is.

The Emerald Octahedrons Of Inevitable Betrayal need all the encouragement they can get to stay pointed the right way, but 4+ dice can be annoyingly tough, especially with tokens.

It boils down to this:

A hull upgrade is an extra point of damage. No ifs, no buts, no chance of failure.

To match this, you have to believe that a stealth device's extra die will stop a point of damage. This means you need to roll it 2-3 times (depending on focus tokens, etc) - which means you need to believe you can completely evade 1-2 attacks before you actually get hit.

A big question will be your existing evade dice (obviously) but also your battleplan and your opponent. If you like to lurk at range 3 then it's good. If your opponent is big into heavy laser cannons then it isn't. Autothrusters good. Wedge Antilles bad. Etc. etc.

The one other thing worth bearing in mind is that a stealth device may or may not equal a hull upgrade's damage mitigating abilities, but when it does equal or beat them, it does so by not letting you get hit in the first place. This is important, because it is relevant for 'after an attack that hits' or 'after an attack that misses' abilities, such as assault missiles or ruthlessness. Ion weapons are a big one, since fighters with many evade dice tend to be manouvreable and really not like ion tokens as a result.

Take Laetin A'shera as an extreme example. If he has an evade token and a stealth device, you've got 5 evade dice and one automatic evade to contend with at range 3, and if you chose to fire and miss, he's going to start 'stacking' evade tokens up if he doesn't need to spend them on the attack....

People have pretty much covered it. The better your agility, the more appealing a stealth device is.

The Emerald Octahedrons Of Inevitable Betrayal need all the encouragement they can get to stay pointed the right way, but 4+ dice can be annoyingly tough, especially with tokens.

It boils down to this:

A hull upgrade is an extra point of damage. No ifs, no buts, no chance of failure.

To match this, you have to believe that a stealth device's extra die will stop a point of damage. This means you need to roll it 2-3 times (depending on focus tokens, etc) - which means you need to believe you can completely evade 1-2 attacks before you actually get hit.

It would be interesting to set up something to run through a couple thousand attack and defense rolls to see what percentage of them would have had less damage inflicted with the results of the extra die.

The other thing to consider is that you need Stealth Device to give you that extra evade when you actually need it. Stealth Device has done nothing for you when you roll 1 or 2 evades more than you need for 4 attacks straight and come up with nothing on the fifth.

It would be interesting to set up something to run through a couple thousand attack and defense rolls to see what percentage of them would have had less damage inflicted with the results of the extra die.

I've seen videos showing people demonstrating that last idea. A SD has four outcomes.

1. Normal Defense dice cancel potential damage = Stealth Device worthless even if it would have prevented damage.

2. Damage exceeding normal Defense: Stealth Device fails = Stealth Device is an expensive failure.

3. Damage exceeding normal Defense: Stealth success: One more damage negated: No damage over = WIN and repeat.

4. Damage exceeding normal Defense: Stealth success: One damage negated: damage still over = win but that's it.

One outcome (3) is clearly better than a Hull or Shield Upgrade.

One outcome (2) is clearly worse than a Hull or Shield Upgrade.

With one outcome (1) the presence of upgrades doesn't matter so all are actually Bad at least until the next attack.

Only one outcome (4) actually has a sliding result where all are marginally equal although the specifics could potentially matter. In outcome 4 you have have 2 uncancelled attacks incoming. The SD turns one away so you don't suffer it although you would still suffer the second. The Shield forces a token to be removed but no card is dealt. A Hull Upgrade lets one extra damage card sit on your ship although something could interact with that later.

The other thing to consider is that you need Stealth Device to give you that extra evade when you actually need it. Stealth Device has done nothing for you when you roll 1 or 2 evades more than you need for 4 attacks straight and come up with nothing on the fifth.

It would be interesting to set up something to run through a couple thousand attack and defense rolls to see what percentage of them would have had less damage inflicted with the results of the extra die.

I've seen videos showing people demonstrating that last idea. A SD has four outcomes.

1. Normal Defense dice cancel potential damage = Stealth Device worthless even if it would have prevented damage.

2. Damage exceeding normal Defense: Stealth Device fails = Stealth Device is an expensive failure.

3. Damage exceeding normal Defense: Stealth success: One more damage negated: No damage over = WIN and repeat.

4. Damage exceeding normal Defense: Stealth success: One damage negated: damage still over = win but that's it.

One outcome (3) is clearly better than a Hull or Shield Upgrade.

One outcome (2) is clearly worse than a Hull or Shield Upgrade.

With one outcome (1) the presence of upgrades doesn't matter so all are actually Bad at least until the next attack.

Only one outcome (4) actually has a sliding result where all are marginally equal although the specifics could potentially matter. In outcome 4 you have have 2 uncancelled attacks incoming. The SD turns one away so you don't suffer it although you would still suffer the second. The Shield forces a token to be removed but no card is dealt. A Hull Upgrade lets one extra damage card sit on your ship although something could interact with that later.

That's a great explanation. I have no clue what sort of math wizardry it would take to determine the expected frequency of case 2 and case 3 in an average game. I think it would get difficult because you'd want to capture the likelihood of SD to drop before it is responsible for stopping a single damage and you'd also want to measure how many case 3s you are likely to get before hitting a case 4.

It would be pretty cool to see something along the lines of "On a 3 agility ship facing 10 shots a game from 3 dice attacks: 20% of the time Hull is equal to Stealth, 10% of the time both upgrades were a waste of points, 40% of the time Hull was better, 30% of the time Stealth was better. In the cases where Stealth was better 60% of the time it stopped 2 points of damage, 30% of the time it stopped 3 points of damage, and 10% of the time it stopped 4 or more points of damage"

Don't forget to calculate the % chance that a Direct Hit happens on your extra Hull, negating its effect.

Don't forget to calculate the % chance that a Direct Hit happens on your extra Hull, negating its effect.

That may happen but it does NOT "negate its effect" as you still have one more hull than you initially did. If you are looking at an A-Wing or E-Wing and get dealt a face-up card via Proton Bomb that happens to be a Direct Hit the ONLY upgrade that will save you is the Hull Upgrade.

Maybe a SD will get lucky and allow that [kaboom] to be negated but you can't count on it when it matters. The Shield Upgrade would see you remove a token instead of deal a card but how often will the SU actually be getting used on a [kaboom] instead of just a [boom] which make the HU nearly as useful especially at a 25% discount.