Does the exhausting of Defense Tokens due to Overload Pulse take place before the defender would have the chance to spend any tokens, thus making Intel Officers on the same ship pointless, or does the OP critical effect kick in after the defender spends tokens, so IO would still be a good move to force a discard.

Thanks!

In Short, No, it does not take place that quickly.

The Overload Pulse is a Critical Effect , in which case, it takes place at the start of the Damage Step, which is Step 5 of an attack.

The enemy has a chance to Spend their Defense Tokens in Step 4 of the Attack Sequence.

You have a chance to Modify your Dice, including spending ACC to negate defense tokens, in Step 3, Modify Dice.

So your enemy has an opportunity to, potentially, Evade away, or use something else, to remove Critical facing Dice, so you don't actually get to trigger Overload pulse.

Things happen in the usual attack order, so tokens get spent before critical is resolved.

Here, have a handy dandy video!

You guys rule, thank you, I was worried I was wasting points.