if a ship v ship attack happens and one crit icon and three hit icons show up, defender braces. does defender pick what dice are negated or is it a general attack pool.

example, attack pool is 4 (3 hit one crit) and defender braces negating half the damage, does he pick physical dice to remove from the combat (crit facing) or just the metaphorical pool of damage. with the crit floating overhead.

im asking if the defender can take damage but remove the risk from taking the critical.

Brace does not affect dice. It only halves damage. All of the dice stay in the pool, but the damage total is halved. So there'd be no way to remove the crit with brace.

If the defender had evade, however, then the defender could choose to have the crit rerolled (medium range) or removed from the pool outright (long range).

makes sense, we went with the half damage leaving the crit but i was curious. evade seems like a good option as well, now if you were to brace removing half the damage, than evade in the same combat removing the long range would it go from 4 to 2, than from 2 to one when you remove that other di?

Brace doesn't kick in instantly. You spend it and then when you move to the next step where you total damage it kicks in.

makes sense, we went with the half damage leaving the crit but i was curious. evade seems like a good option as well, now if you were to brace removing half the damage, than evade in the same combat removing the long range would it go from 4 to 2, than from 2 to one when you remove that other di?

Timing (page 2):

1)Declare target

2)Roll Attack Dice

3)Resolve attack effects (attacker can spend concentrate token/dial here for exemple and spend accuracy icons)

4)Spend defense tokens:

- evade take effect immediately

- Brace will take effect in the next step (resolve damage)

5) Resolve damage

-sum all damages (brace allows you to halve the damages here)

It is important to remember that, unlike in X-wing, a crit result is just a hit with something special tacked on. So in your example of three hits and a crit, you're causing four damage with a crit effect TBD. The Brace defense token halves the damage to two, but the crit effect is still there. You're not canceling dice, just reducing the final damage. Only Evade and Scatter negate the crit effect from occurring (the former through specific die canceling or rerolling, the latter through canceling all dice).