I'm sure this must have come up before but I have searched the forum and cannot find an answer:

Do I have to be attacking someone to spend a target lock? I think I do, but want to check. (scenario came up where I was play a TAP with title card against a turret ship. I target locked and got my free evade, but could not spend the target lock as I didn't have a shot. The next turn I couldn't target lock again as I already had a lock on the only ship left on the board, therefore not getting my evade token - things didn't go to well from there...)

Thanks in advance!

You can always re-target lock on the same ship.

Rulebook, pg 3:

You can always re-target lock on the same ship.

Rulebook, pg 3:

A ship can acquire a new target lock on a ship

that it already has locked; the old target lock is

removed.

Evade away, good sir!

This. Also: yes, OP, you're correct, you can't spend a Target Lock unless you have some reason to do so. The most common one, and the only one covered in the base rules, is "I'm attacking the ship that I have target locked".

Cool beans. Thanks guys, it's good news for the TAP tonight

There was a FAQ that said that you couldn't re-lock a ship you had a lock on. That was reversed fairly recently so it's a pretty common source of confusion (a lot of people know of the old FAQ and are unaware that it was reversed).

There was a FAQ that said that you couldn't re-lock a ship you had a lock on. That was reversed fairly recently so it's a pretty common source of confusion (a lot of people know of the old FAQ and are unaware that it was reversed).

No kidding? I didn't know that was a thing. I mean, I never really did it because I didn't fly anything that benefited from re-locking but that is interesting.

You can always re-target lock on the same ship.

Rulebook, pg 3:

A ship can acquire a new target lock on a ship

that it already has locked; the old target lock is

removed.

Evade away, good sir!

Not exactly true.

You have NOT always been allowed to re-lock a ship you already have a TL on. It is a relatively recent change (post Punisher) that now allows you to re-lock a ship you already have a lock on.

Now I see Inquisitor has already mentioned this exact thing so your confusion is easily explained and also justified.

To be accurate, under the original rules you could only remove a target lock token by spending the TL to fire a secondary weapon that required it, spending the TL to reroll, or by acquiring a new TL on a different ship. And all the FAQs reiterated this.

Then when the TFA core set came out with the new Rules Reference, it was now a rule that you could acquire a target lock on ship you already have locked. However, this doesn't mean that you are spending the TL when you reacquire a new TL. But it can act as a triggger for any ability that requires you to "acquire a target lock". And there's a few of those.