6 minutes ago, Icelom said:

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.

Go ahead, let your ships take preventable damage. Great idea, I was completely wrong.

27 minutes ago, SaltMaster 5000 said:

Go ahead, let your ships take preventable damage. Great idea, I was completely wrong.

Glad we agree.

If you are to blind to the future action cost i cant really help you.

I'll spend it most of the time unless its a game wining shot such as:

• One on One, the enemy is shooting OL, OL will survive the single point of damage and its not a crit (don't want Blinded, etc.), and has a potential killing return fire. Take the hit and rely on Juke to finish the game.

Otherwise, it's all about keeping OL alive until that endgame state. OL is very squishy when you are not One on One and you need to keep her alive as long as possible to get there.

This is one of those questions that isn't simple enough to give a straight answer to, because the overall game state is hugely important to the decision. How healthy is Omega? How healthy is the rest of your list? How difficult will it be to get the token back? Has she attacked yet? How important is her attack? How likely is she to be attacking next round?

Sometimes you'll need to conserve health, other times you'll want to sacrifice health to push for damage. Having a hard and fast rule either way is going to lead to mistakes.

52 minutes ago, DR4CO said:

This is one of those questions that isn't simple enough to give a straight answer to, because the overall game state is hugely important to the decision. How healthy is Omega? How healthy is the rest of your list? How difficult will it be to get the token back? Has she attacked yet? How important is her attack? How likely is she to be attacking next round?

Sometimes you'll need to conserve health, other times you'll want to sacrifice health to push for damage. Having a hard and fast rule either way is going to lead to mistakes.

This^^

You cant answer the question unless you lay the ground for the board state. There isn't enough info to answer the question. Sometimes you have to, other times you dont.

52 minutes ago, DR4CO said:

This is one of those questions that isn't simple enough to give a straight answer to, because the overall game state is hugely important to the decision. How healthy is Omega? How healthy is the rest of your list? How difficult will it be to get the token back? Has she attacked yet? How important is her attack? How likely is she to be attacking next round?

Sometimes you'll need to conserve health, other times you'll want to sacrifice health to push for damage. Having a hard and fast rule either way is going to lead to mistakes.

It's not quite that hard. In general, spend the evade unless it's critical to keep it for Juke.

4 hours ago, Icelom said:

Glad we agree.

If you are to blind to the future action cost i cant really help you.

Go watch some pro video on Youtube (high level events) and come back to tell us all who was blind... I wasnt sure so i did exactly that in order to evaluate if i should change my mind. What i saw was exactly what i expected. Unless for some very rare occasions, most skilled players use the evade to avoid the hit. To me it just seems logical but seeing some people disagree actually made me doubt. I dont anymore.

4 hours ago, SaltMaster 5000 said:

It's not quite that hard. In general, spend the evade unless it's critical to keep it for Juke.

We're on the same page! Because it's always critical to save for Juke... Unless you're going to eat a Crit or die, because then Juke might not matter.

2 hours ago, Thormind said:

Go watch some pro video on Youtube (high level events) and come back to tell us all who was blind... I wasnt sure so i did exactly that in order to evaluate if i should change my mind. What i saw was exactly what i expected. Unless for some very rare occasions, most skilled players use the evade to avoid the hit. To me it just seems logical but seeing some people disagree actually made me doubt. I dont anymore.

Which players, exactly? Were they winning these events, or just having a good game? OL is a tricky pilot no matter how she's flown, what we're describing is how to get the best results.

The logic is pretty clearly expressed in this thread. You're choosing to ignore it doesn't really matter, one way or the other.

Would love to see an after-action report when you win an event running OL like your way. It'll be an interesting read.

Also, using the evade is a certainty (You will block one damage)

Suffering damage and reserving it for juking is an uncertainty (You may not roll any hits at all, your opponent may not roll any evades, your opponent can outmaneuver you in the next turn... and so forth)

Essentially, taking the hit and keeping the evade is an act of faith.

It is, but sometimes it's worth it.

Again, it's very dependent on the game state, and whether you're blocking 1 damage, or 1 damage out of 2-3.

It's not uncommon, for example, for spending the evade to make things worse; spending it to block the only hit (or last hit) on a shot and triggering Gunner or IG-88B, for example, is likely much worse than just taking your lumps.

I don't think there is an easy answer. Yes, Omega Leader ending the game on 1 HP left is getting your maximum mileage out of the points you spent on him, but that doesn't necessarily make it a desirable thing to seek, because 1 lucky roll and your awesome budget endgame pilot is so much drifting debris.

As a rule of thumb, I'd probably let the hit through if he's got a shot this turn still to fire and still got his shield token. Other than that.....very situation dependent.

~ Is it going to get me a kill?

~ Does my opponent have an "after an attack that hits/misses" trigger?

~ Is there anyone else still to shoot?

~ How much of the rest of my squad is left intact?

5 hours ago, Jehan Menasis said:

Also, using the evade is a certainty (You will block one damage)

Suffering damage and reserving it for juking is an uncertainty (You may not roll any hits at all, your opponent may not roll any evades, your opponent can outmaneuver you in the next turn... and so forth)

Essentially, taking the hit and keeping the evade is an act of faith.

Exactly. In my book a sure thing is better than a maybe.

5 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

It is, but sometimes it's worth it.

Again, it's very dependent on the game state, and whether you're blocking 1 damage, or 1 damage out of 2-3.

It's not uncommon, for example, for spending the evade to make things worse; spending it to block the only hit (or last hit) on a shot and triggering Gunner or IG-88B, for example, is likely much worse than just taking your lumps.

I don't think there is an easy answer. Yes, Omega Leader ending the game on 1 HP left is getting your maximum mileage out of the points you spent on him, but that doesn't necessarily make it a desirable thing to seek, because 1 lucky roll and your awesome budget endgame pilot is so much drifting debris.

As a rule of thumb, I'd probably let the hit through if he's got a shot this turn still to fire and still got his shield token. Other than that.....very situation dependent.

~ Is it going to get me a kill?

~ Does my opponent have an "after an attack that hits/misses" trigger?

~ Is there anyone else still to shoot?

~ How much of the rest of my squad is left intact?

What i was asking is "most of the time". Another way to express the question would be: Do you spend the evade most of the time except for some rarer occasions or do you keep it most of the time. I'd say more often than not it would be the 1st option. You summarize perfectly the few moments i think you should keep it :-)

Damage now is better than damage later. - Preventing damage now is usually better than preventing damage later.

Generally - the only time that I would keep Omega Leader's evade on board - is if I know OL is going to take multiple shots - or the opponent is threatening multiple shots. If you have 3 ships lined u p to shoot at OL - it's generally in your best interest to concentrate fire on OL. As a result, you're likely to roll hits on more than one of those shots - and i'm likely able to spend my evade token on my choice of incoming shots. Granted, Dice can screw with me... so I want to see if you have good attacks, or weak ones. For example - if i'm looking at 2 dice shots incoming - It's probably better for me to spend the evade the first time I need it, but if i see 3dice modded shots incoming, I can probably spend that evade token on any of those shots. In this case - if OL would fire before 1 or more of those incoming shots - I can get more use out of the evade by taking the early hit, juking your incoming shot, then spending my evade afterward. This is clearly optimized over evading your first shot, not having juke, and then taking damage afterwards.

Now - the opponent might try to be clever, and split fire - ha! you didn't spend your evade, now I shall attack another target! - that means OL keeps action economy, and doesn't have to worry about dying. I probably would've preferred no damage, but - not being shot at is a pretty solid defense, and thus it's a poor choice for your opponent not to concentrate fire, just because I didn't use the evade.

Of course - if your opponent has multiple shots on OL, you've probably run him into a bad situation - make sure you have an escape maneuver set to help recover the actions without having to spend it again, if you are under constant fire for a few turns - you're really wasting those 26 points, and it might as well be an epsilon running and evading each round. OL is ok as a bait piece if the rest of the list can punish the bait - but OL is better as a flanker. Whatever decision you make should be about optimizing your action advantage. Juke later is not guaranteed damage (depends on if opponent has focus, if they are likely to spend focus, how many green dice they are rolling, how your red dice roll, what actions and virtual actions you have to support your red dice!) , and spending the token later is not guaranteed damage prevention. Evade's are easier to deal with than focus - because an evade will dodge a hit, focus could dodge more than one - so the calculus is actually easier.

TLDR - don't spend evade if you will survive, and are likely to be able to spend the evade to prevent damage later within the same turn. - Otherwise, spend the evade and save the damage. Better yet, try not to put OL in situations where he needs to spend the evade.

I nearly always run Omega Leader with Stealth Device.

I spend the evade.