My apologies if this has been answered before, but I've searched like crazy and can't find a definitive answer. Can you perform a Free Action, such as the Expert Handling barrel roll, before you move ?

1 minute ago, marlowc said:

My apologies if this has been answered before, but I've searched like crazy and can't find a definitive answer. Can you perform a Free Action, such as the Expert Handling barrel roll, before you move ?

Yes, provided something grants you a free action to use on Expert Handling, e.g. Advanced Sensors.

Many thanks for the speedy reply. So normally a Free Action can only be performed after you have moved? It's just that the rules seem to imply that free actions are not restricted to the Perform Actions step of your activation. Though this would make Advanced Sensors rather irrelevant .

Free actions are not tied to the perform action steps, but that doesn't mean they can be done whenever you feel like it. Something has to grant you that free action at a specific time.

19 minutes ago, marlowc said:

Many thanks for the speedy reply. So normally a Free Action can only be performed after you have moved? It's just that the rules seem to imply that free actions are not restricted to the Perform Actions step of your activation. Though this would make Advanced Sensors rather irrelevant .

I think you may be misunderstanding what a free action is. You don't get to take a free action unless a game effect says you can. In this case, you can't just choose to use the free Barrel Roll action on Expert handling whenever you want. You only get the free barrel roll when you perform the Action on Expert Handling because the text explicitly tells you to do it there and then.

If, then, a card effect gives you a free action, such as Advanced Sensors , you could choose to take that free action as Expert Handling , which in turn gives you a free barrel roll action. Without a game effect to trigger Expert Handling , however, how would you ever get to use the free barrel roll?

So the free barrel roll action on the Expert Handling card is not actually a Free Action? And you can't do this barrel roll and also assign a focus token to your ship as it's normal action?

Why did they correct the card to say free barrel roll - seems meaningless to me. The Expert Handling card is still an Action, not a Free Action?

This was the original card and wording. It was one of the very early FAQs done, as the way it was written the Expert Handling let you do a barrel roll, then you could potentially do an additional Barrel Roll as your Action (with something like Push the Limit or other additional action generating event). It was reworded to prevent double barrel rolls. But again, this was way back around Core/Wave 1 release and FAQ so I may not be remembering it entirely correctly. By changing the wording to "free Barrel Roll action" it prevents you from doing a double BR in the same turn.

14 minutes ago, marlowc said:

So the free barrel roll action on the Expert Handling card is not actually a Free Action? And you can't do this barrel roll and also assign a focus token to your ship as it's normal action?

Why did they correct the card to say free barrel roll - seems meaningless to me. The Expert Handling card is still an Action, not a Free Action?

Normally, you only perform a single action during your Perform Action step. A free action is when a card effect allows you to perform an action out of sequence – it is free because it does not 'use up' your regular action for the turn. But you must be given the opportunity to take such a free action by a game effect. Also, many things are free actions rather than simply 'do X' as it stops you from doubling up similar effects. If you were to perform a free evade action, for example, you could not then also perform an evade action during your Perform Action step. However, if you are assigned an evade token, then you are still able to perform an evade action. Thus, many such examples were printed as free actions to avoid the possibility for abuse further down the road. It also means that you can't do these things while stressed because you can't perform actions while stressed, but you can be assigned tokens.

So basically, the 'free' part of free actions means it is performed outside of you regular action during your activation.

I was under the impression that the Free part of a Free Action meant it did not count as your 1 regular action for that activation?

1 minute ago, marlowc said:

I was under the impression that the Free part of a Free Action meant it did not count as your 1 regular action for that activation?

Yeah, that's pretty much what "free action" means. The barrel-roll action granted by Expert Handling isn't doesn't count as the action that you take during your Perform Action step.

The upgrade, Expert Handling, doesn't do anything but make a new action available for your ship to chose from when it is allowed to choose an action. You still need to spend an action to use it. In most cases that action will be the one you get during your Perform Action step.

Take Squad Leader as an example of granting Free Actions . You've moved a low PS ship and performed it's action for it's "Perform Action step", and it's done for the round. You now progress onto the next higher PS ship you have, and for it's action you decide to use Squad Leader and choose the first ship as the target. You've now given it a Free Action , and it can now perform that free action out of sequence.

2 hours ago, marlowc said:

So the free barrel roll action on the Expert Handling card is not actually a Free Action? And you can't do this barrel roll and also assign a focus token to your ship as it's normal action?

No. Because your action for the round is to activate 'Expert Handling'. Within that action is a free barrel roll.

I think I've finally got this nailed now, many thanks to all the helpful answers from you guys. Though I don't see why they "corrected" Expert Handling to say free barrel roll, because there's nothing free about it is there - you still need to spend an Action to use it .

1 minute ago, marlowc said:

I think I've finally got this nailed now, many thanks to all the helpful answers from you guys. Though I don't see why they "corrected" Expert Handling to say free barrel roll, because there's nothing free about it is there - you still need to spend an Action to use it .

Because if it just said preform a barrel roll action, it would never do anything

35 minutes ago, DeathstarII said:

Because if it just said preform a barrel roll action, it would never do anything

Unless you were Darth Vader and could perform two actions.

It's "free" because if it wasn't you'd have used the Action from your Perform Action step to activate Expert Handling and thus not had an action for the barrel roll.

52 minutes ago, marlowc said:

I think I've finally got this nailed now, many thanks to all the helpful answers from you guys. Though I don't see why they "corrected" Expert Handling to say free barrel roll, because there's nothing free about it is there - you still need to spend an Action to use it .

@Slugrage talked about this above. The original wording said " Perform a barrel roll " omitting the word action (Errata wording being " Perform a free barrel roll action "). This meant that you could perform a barrel roll action , then (provided another action, e.g. Darth Vader pilot or Experimental Interface) perform the action on the Expert Handling card, granting you a barrel roll that is not an action, allowing two barrel rolls in the same round.

I personally dislike the usage of the word "free" in regards to "free actions", it only ever seems to lead to confusion.

3 hours ago, marlowc said:

I think I've finally got this nailed now, many thanks to all the helpful answers from you guys. Though I don't see why they "corrected" Expert Handling to say free barrel roll, because there's nothing free about it is there - you still need to spend an Action to use it .

It may be easier if you think of Expert Handling as an action itself. If you perform the Expert Handling action during your Perform Action step as your normal action, then the Expert Handling action involves performing a free barrel roll and removing a target lock. Without the "free" in the text you'd need to be able to perform two actions; one for the Expert Handing and one for the Barrel Roll action within the Expert Handling action.