When flying a TIE Swarm vs TLTs, is it better for your health to Evade or Focus?

Now, I know that with 3 agility, Evade prevents more damage on average. However, does it prevent your ship from getting ​hit more often?

Evade gives you a +1, so it preventing a hit means that you were only off by one.

Focus gives you a +X, where X is the number of focus results, so it preventing a hit means that you rolled X Focus Results, and X is not < the difference needed to change a Hit to a Miss.

I am interested in this question, too, since I'm about to take a 4x TIE/fo Ace list to the Covenant Store Championship.

My thinking in practice play has been, if I'm at high health and need my action for defense, stick with focus. If I'm nearing death, evade.

(This quandary is mitigated in my list by the fact that 3 of them have Comms Relay, so it's rarely a hard choice.)

When flying a TIE Swarm vs TLTs, is it better for your health to Evade or Focus?

Now, I know that with 3 agility, Evade prevents more damage on average. However, does it prevent your ship from getting ​hit more often?

Evade gives you a +1, so it preventing a hit means that you were only off by one.

Focus gives you a +X, where X is the number of focus results, so it preventing a hit means that you rolled X Focus Results, and X is not < the difference needed to change a Hit to a Miss.

Generally speaking an evade is superior to a focus for defense. However, if you are flying a TIE swarm, for instance, in general you will want to take focus actions with all of them in order to push damage through with their 2 dice since your opponent can't kill all of them in one go. If they all take an evade your chances to deal damage go down the drain.

In my experience, the action that would prevent damage from a TLT attack is the one that I did not take.

take focus all the way.

TLTs will concentrate fire anyway, and you need MOAR DAMAGE before they chew you through

For TLT take focus at Agility 3+, Evade at lower than that.

http://teamcovenant.com/vorpalsword/2013/02/06/when-is-focus-better-than-evade/

If I'm nearing death, evade.

It's the wisdom of this I'm wondering,

My list is a Howlrunner+Youngster+Academy swarm. I'm confident that I'll take out high HP targets, and fairly confident that I'll be better suited than most swarms vs Aces. What to do vs TLTs is the only variable remaining

For TLT take focus at Agility 3+, Evade at lower than that.

http://teamcovenant.com/vorpalsword/2013/02/06/when-is-focus-better-than-evade/

TL:DR for those who don't click the link: As a Focus Token isn't spent when you've rolled 0 evade results, across multiple attacks in a single round it will produce slightly more than 1 evade result, on average.

Given that TLTs throw out two attacks, I think I have my answer.

Thanks, Stabbald!

For TLT take focus at Agility 3+, Evade at lower than that.

http://teamcovenant.com/vorpalsword/2013/02/06/when-is-focus-better-than-evade/

TL:DR for those who don't click the link: As a Focus Token isn't spent when you've rolled 0 evade results, across multiple attacks in a single round it will produce slightly more than 1 evade result, on average.

Given that TLTs throw out two attacks, I think I have my answer.

Thanks, Stabbald!

For extra clarity it depends on the Agility of the defending ship. Agility 1 ships should always take evade, Agility 2 ships should always take evade unless they are going to be attacked 4 or more times, Agility 3 ships should take focus if attacked twice or more, and agility 4+ ships should always take focus.

This obviously *only* takes defense into consideration.

**** you people asking interesting questions.

Here's my crack at it... I think it's right but I'll have to double check.... a few times..

TLT (naked) vs 3 agility

token focus evade naked

1st attack est Damage .23 .18 .47

Chance to save token .77 .71 0

2nd attack est Damage .29 .26 .47

total damage .52 .44 .93

Here's my methodology:

I listed each case by combination evade, focus, and number of attack hits (40 total). I calculated the probabilities of each case occurring and manually calculated the result... ie damage dealt per outcome and if the token remained. The second attack was calculated by using the probabilities from the first and the probability of the token remaining.

So the estimated damage for the second attack vs focus was (.23 * .77) + (1-.77 * .47) = .29 I could use a sanity check.

The odds of saving a token are quite high b/c with TLT, you have an interesting situation where you would only use the token if it prevents 100% of the damage. If the attacker rolls 3 but you can only block 2, there's no point to blow a focus/evade as the damage is still 1.

Agility 3 ships should take evade if attacked twice or more

Did we read the same article? I thought the answer in this situation was Focus.

It's obviously focus

They can't hurt you if they're dead

Agility 3 ships should take evade if attacked twice or more

Did we read the same article? I thought the answer in this situation was Focus.

Oops, nice catch. That's a typo I'll edit it.

The other piece to this is the swarm, quad tlt is going to get 8 attacks, which at worst is 2 ties (regular or FO). If you are flying with higher p.s. Than the tlt swarm, you'll have at most 8 attacks. if you evade, you're dropping your offensive power, which will take longer to kill th TLTs.

It's a damage race, and they're unable to mod all of the attacks that you can. With focus being important for your offense as well, use it on offense, and if you can't keep it for defense, with the exception of howlrunner or other named ties, they will attack your defenseless ties first. So maybe save a focus on howl for defense, but otherwise hit hard. If you trade a tie for a ywing, you'll be in good shape.

It's obviously focus

They can't hurt you if they're dead

I read that as "you're", lol.

Agility 3 ships should take evade if attacked twice or more

Did we read the same article? I thought the answer in this situation was Focus.

I think I'm in a good position to comment, here.

The answer, after getting a more extensive picture, is that it's all about context. If you're expecting just a single attack, you should usually take the evade. If you expect to be attacked multiple times, you should usually take the focus.

(However, TLT works a bit differently from a pair of regular attacks: you can never use a focus token to prevent more than 1 damage from a TLT. That actually boosts the value of evade in comparison; I expect, but can't prove right now, that evade actually has an edge against TLT.)

But if you zoom out a little further, there are good reasons to take focus regardless of its value compared to evade. A focus token avoids committing to either offense or defense until it's your turn to attack. That can hide your intent from your opponent, and it also makes you tactically flexible: if you're flying 4 TIE/fo and they all evade, then most of the time 3 of them wasted their actions.

If you focus with those four TIEs instead, then even if that token has a marginally smaller expected value, you get much better offensive power out of your squad as a whole. The major benefit of those posts is showing that the expected value of focus and evade are so close to one another in value that the small remaining difference (against that first attack) is very easy to forego in favor of the flexibility of focus.