In most matches i've played or seen, it always seems to be a better idea to use the evade instead of taking the hit and keeping it for juke. To me it just seems logical.

I've been told that's not the case and i'de like to have other opinions....

Depends on the context, a lot, but OL really, really doesn't want ot lose his evade or his TL unless he has absolutely no other choice. He needs the action economy, and one he spends it, it takes him a turn of lowered action economy to get back to full blast again.

Typically I would only spend the evade when doing so would save me a crit or potential (or definite) death.

^^^ that.

You have to look beyond the current turn, because you're putting yourself an action behind on all consecutive turns. You'll be Evading when you want to Focus, or switch your TL You'll be a lot less effective and more exposed if you sloop. Often burning the Evade will mean having to disengage to reset and come back in.

I am usually willing to take a damage or two to keep the Juke. Like thespaceinvader said, it's so dependent on context. (Who has already fired? Is OL going to be fired on again? Is it Dengar whose going to get a revenge shot? etc, etc.)

Yeah. I only came here to say "it depends".

Personally, I will spend the evade. You only have four health, why are you allowing a hit through when you have the option to, you know, not?

Unless Omega Leader has a potential game ending kill shot, myself and my gaming group will spend the evade.

Yeah i would spend it on surviving, which is for me.. more important.

7 minutes ago, Viktus106 said:

Personally, I will spend the evade. You only have four health, why are you allowing a hit through when you have the option to, you know, not?

Unless Omega Leader has a potential game ending kill shot, myself and my gaming group will spend the evade.

Thats what i was thinking and how i play him. A destroyed ship cant do any dmg. IMO a garanteed thing is better than something that might happen. You are guaranteed to avoid a hit vs you "might" make 1 more dmg on your next turn. OL is made to grind anyway so it doesnt really matter if he might lose 1 pt of dmg for 1 turn. Only time i would keep the evade is if i have the chance to finish a ship with juke.

Thats also how ive usualy seen him played. Im surprised to see it's not the common practice...?

11 minutes ago, Viktus106 said:

Personally, I will spend the evade. You only have four health, why are you allowing a hit through when you have the option to, you know, not?

Unless Omega Leader has a potential game ending kill shot, myself and my gaming group will spend the evade.

It's a false economy. The health you save this turn could be lost next turn when you have Evade but not Focus, in addition to which as previously mentioned you're nerfing your damage output and losing maneuvering flexibility.

And Omega Leader starts with 3 spare health points that you can spend to generate damage. Whether he ends the game on 1 hull or 1 shield he's still 26pts of MOV.

As others have said, it really depends on the situation, but generally speaking I try to keep OL alive as long as possible. I don't mind burning the evade and then running away for a turn or two to get it back. OL is way more effective in the end game when there is (hopefully) only 1 enemy ship remaining than in the opening rounds.

I'm a fan of spending the evade and disengaging to build your tokens back up, but as others say it depends on the board state. sometimes it can be worth taking a hit to then finish another ship off.

Just now, SOTL said:

It's a false economy. The health you save this turn could be lost next turn when you have Evade but not Focus, in addition to which as previously mentioned you're nerfing your damage output and losing maneuvering flexibility.

And Omega Leader starts with 3 spare health points that you can spend to generate damage. Whether he ends the game on 1 hull or 1 shield he's still 26pts of MOV.

It seems to me that by not spending the evade, you are paying 5 points for juke, which may or may not work.

Omega Leader is weird. Has an evade token and a target lock which people don't want to spend.

Part of why I personally struggle to use omega leader is this struggle he has with weak 'reset' economy. He wants 3 tokens every turn (tl, focus, evade) but only gets 1 action. I find it difficult for me to make him work well because of that struggle.

14 minutes ago, Viktus106 said:

It seems to me that by not spending the evade, you are paying 5 points for juke, which may or may not work.

Omega Leader is weird. Has an evade token and a target lock which people don't want to spend.

But, as pointed out, spending that evade means that you have at least one more turn before you can start taking focus actions, which will help you on both offense and defense.

I personally view Omega Leader as a ship who has three "hooks" that he latches onto his target. The first hook is the Evade, which lets you essentially cancel a green die. The second hook is the TL, which prevents your opponent from modifying dice. And the third hook is the Focus, which means that Omega basically gets full mods against a target with none. Once you get to that state, OL becomes nearly unstoppable 1v1.

So yeah, I will happily spend that shield token if it means I don't have to delay taking Focus actions.

I will spend if it either stops a crit or I know next turn I am not going to be engaged with the enemy.

Spending the evade is seriously hurting future turns, is spending the evade now to stop one damage more important then a focus next turn? Or if you are s-looping juke next turn? You can still spend that evade in future turns. When ever you spend the evade it's 1 action for one hit point, the longer you don't spend it the more valuable that one action was due to juke. Everytime you spend that evade you reset the value of that single action. I want to focus or move my target lock.

Most Palp ace builds leverage their advantage by making their ships as unkillable as possible. Usually in this context, you want to play conservatively and spend your evade. If you haven't shot yet and/or if there are other incoming shots likely to deal damage, the value of spending it decreases. If both of those are true, you should definitely save it.

Burning a health for yourself in order to potentially damage an enemy is pretty risky though, so it needs to be a sweet shot. You're paying 1/4th of a 26pt ship in a vacuum, but you've gotta look at the whole context. OL gets progressively stronger as ships are removed, making her probably the most points efficient closer in the game.

1 hour ago, Viktus106 said:

It seems to me that by not spending the evade, you are paying 5 points for juke, which may or may not work.

Omega Leader is weird. Has an evade token and a target lock which people don't want to spend.

You're not paying 5 points for Juke you're paying 5 points for infinite crack shot.

I have played Omega Leader to exhaustion. I have done very well with Omega Leader. I have won games I should not have, because of Omega Leader.

As I said in the other thread, and others have said here, there are some scenarios where you spend the Evade. In all others, you are doing yourself a favor by not.

Some caveats - if you're flying OL wrong, in terms of how you're engaging, then it doesn't matter what you spend or not, she's dead. Also, regardless of how you do it, you are really hoping your Agility dice don't crap out on you. If they do... you're pretty dead.

One of the base-line considerations for taking the hit is that you have to remember that Omega Leader is not easy to hit in the first place. If you have the opponent Target Locked, only their natural dice rolls are coming out you (... and Palp, and one or two other extreme edge cases). If you have a Focus token, you've got a decent chance of benefiting from your green dice on top of that. Getting through that, on a regular basis, requires extremely awesome rolls from your opponent, and crap rolls from you. It can happen, but odds are that it does not.

The Evade is there for Offense. The TL is there for Offense and Defense. The Focus is there for Defense.

^Missing any of those, even for the turn you're disengaging (because, hey, you're opponent would be a FOOL for letting OL run and reset), is going to cost you dearly. Also, and this is still mostly counting on luck of the dice, but a Juke shot after a sloop has won me more than a few games against difficult-to-catch aces.

I've actually had the best success with lists that let OL enter combat fully kitted out from the get go. Jendon w/ title is a personal favorite, though, with the reduction of Palp's efficiency, I don't tend to bring the Lambda anymore.

1 hour ago, Icelom said:

I will spend if it either stops a crit or I know next turn I am not going to be engaged with the enemy.

Spending the evade is seriously hurting future turns, is spending the evade now to stop one damage more important then a focus next turn? Or if you are s-looping juke next turn? You can still spend that evade in future turns. When ever you spend the evade it's 1 action for one hit point, the longer you don't spend it the more valuable that one action was due to juke. Everytime you spend that evade you reset the value of that single action. I want to focus or move my target lock.

I don't even like S-looping Omega if I don't have to. I'll usually only do it if I'm sure I won't get shot at. Otherwise, two hard turns usually achieves a similar result. I might lose one unmodified attack, but the tradeoff is that I'll gain a focus token for defense.

5 minutes ago, PhantomFO said:

I don't even like S-looping Omega if I don't have to. I'll usually only do it if I'm sure I won't get shot at. Otherwise, two hard turns usually achieves a similar result. I might lose one unmodified attack, but the tradeoff is that I'll gain a focus token for defense.

It's important in a one-vs-one scenario against a higher PS ace, but otherwise, yeah, it's certainly not something you want to spam.

Of course everything is up to the situation, but I'll spend it normally. I actually think the tl is the more important thing to keep then the evade, because it helps defense and offense. I would rather do no damage and stay alive then spend the lock or take a damage just to do what, 1 DAMAGE? Maybe 2, that's a quarter of your health, and then your open for crits?

He is a late game ship, so play the long game, survive and disengage. With imp aces your best move is that you can disengage and get back into the fight better then any other faction.

plus you don't have omega leader in your list for his damage output, you have him because he closes games like a boss. Your other two ships, especially Quickdraw + whatever can do plenty of damage

1 hour ago, ArbitraryNerd said:

I have played Omega Leader to exhaustion. I have done very well with Omega Leader. I have won games I should not have, because of Omega Leader.

As I said in the other thread, and others have said here, there are some scenarios where you spend the Evade. In all others, you are doing yourself a favor by not.

Some caveats - if you're flying OL wrong, in terms of how you're engaging, then it doesn't matter what you spend or not, she's dead. Also, regardless of how you do it, you are really hoping your Agility dice don't crap out on you. If they do... you're pretty dead.

One of the base-line considerations for taking the hit is that you have to remember that Omega Leader is not easy to hit in the first place. If you have the opponent Target Locked, only their natural dice rolls are coming out you (... and Palp, and one or two other extreme edge cases). If you have a Focus token, you've got a decent chance of benefiting from your green dice on top of that. Getting through that, on a regular basis, requires extremely awesome rolls from your opponent, and crap rolls from you. It can happen, but odds are that it does not.

The Evade is there for Offense. The TL is there for Offense and Defense. The Focus is there for Defense.

^Missing any of those, even for the turn you're disengaging (because, hey, you're opponent would be a FOOL for letting OL run and reset), is going to cost you dearly. Also, and this is still mostly counting on luck of the dice, but a Juke shot after a sloop has won me more than a few games against difficult-to-catch aces.

I've actually had the best success with lists that let OL enter combat fully kitted out from the get go. Jendon w/ title is a personal favorite, though, with the reduction of Palp's efficiency, I don't tend to bring the Lambda anymore.

Listen to ^^this guy^^ as often as possible. He perfectly articulated what Omega Leader is all about, especially his caveat about engagement. This is really the major obstacle to learning how to effectively fly OL.

3 hours ago, nigeltastic said:

Part of why I personally struggle to use omega leader is this struggle he has with weak 'reset' economy. He wants 3 tokens every turn (tl, focus, evade) but only gets 1 action. I find it difficult for me to make him work well because of that struggle.

IMO its a very easy formula: first priority TL, second priority evade, third focus or barrel roll. My #1 objective is to keep him alive as long as possible. Like other "pro evade usage" have said, he is at his best during end game. Ive once taken a falcon down from full health to half with only OL. It's so nice to beat a 40+ pts ship with a 26pts one :-)

5 hours ago, Thormind said:

In most matches i've played or seen, it always seems to be a better idea to use the evade instead of taking the hit and keeping it for juke. To me it just seems logical.

I've been told that's not the case and i'de like to have other opinions....

Comm Relay is no different from Pulsed Ray shield. It's regen-light, so treat it as if it were a regen ship.

You can always get that evade back, just like you can always get that shield back. But you can't get hull back.

Always spend it unless it's crucial that you keep it for Juke.

An alive ship with no tokens can always luck out and max out its attack dice. A dead ship has zero chance of that happening.

39 minutes ago, SaltMaster 5000 said:

Comm Relay is no different from Pulsed Ray shield. It's regen-light, so treat it as if it were a regen ship.

You can always get that evade back, just like you can always get that shield back. But you can't get hull back.

Always spend it unless it's crucial that you keep it for Juke.

An alive ship with no tokens can always luck out and max out its attack dice. A dead ship has zero chance of that happening.

This is simply wrong,

Spending the evade is spending a future action as well.

1. to save death

2. stop a crit (even then i have let crits through)

3. if you dont have a critical action next turn (you know you will be out of both offensive and defensive combat next turn so you can take the evade without costing you another action... this is not 100% true because sometimes you may want to be moving your target lock in that situation).

IF you always use the evade, you wont do well with omega leader or any other commrelay juke ship.

Commrealy is 3 points so you can run juke every turn without having to use an action to do so with the added benefit that it can be used on d-fence only if required.