All

I know the rules state a ship "...CANNOT [caps mine] perform the same action more than once during a single round, even if one or more of the actions are free actions."

However, a some upgrade cards and pilots mention assigning a focus token, as an example, to a nearby ship - can they still do that if the ship has a focus token already?

For example, Operations Specialist allows an attacker, if it fails to hit, to assign a focus token to another ship within 1-3 of the attacker. Can a ship have two focus tokens if one was assigned? Or is that considered a "free action" and therefore, it cannot assign another focus token to that ship if it has a focus token already?

Assigning a token and performing an action are two different things.

Assigning tokens is different from performing free actions.

You can only perform one of the same action (or free action) once per turn but you can assign more than one of the same token.

Operations specialist would allow this unless stated other wise on a card (advanced optics).

So a ship can have two focus tokens but can only spend one per round?

12 minutes ago, Leobarron2000 said:

So a ship can have two focus tokens but can only spend one per round?

A ship may spend any number of Focus tokens during a round. However, it may only spend one per opportunity. An "opportunity" would be something like Spend one to fire certain ordnance, modify a die using Calculation, modify and attack/defense with it's normal function, perform something else requires spending a Focus.

A ship may only perform a given action once per round but just because the end result of that action assigns some type of token to a ship does NOT mean something else could not also assign another of that same token to the ship. I mean if you just look at the Recon Specialist upgrade it assigns it's ship +1 Focus tokens every time the Focus Action is taken; if you put three of those on a ship and take a Focus action the ship would gain FOUR Focus tokens when the Focus Action is taken where one comes from the Action itself and each of the three upgrades contributes one more.

Unless something else is preventing it ALL Focus tokens will be lost during End Step but a ship could have any number of tokens on it going into that step.

Here is a perfectly legal scenario.

Soontir Fel equipped the Push the Limit upgrade is in a squad with a Lambda Shuttle equipped with a Fleet Officer upgrade.

The shuttle moves and for its action uses fleet officer to Assign Fel and another ship each a focus token. When Fel take his action, he performs an evade action to get an evade token, then he uses Push the Limit to perform a focus action . Push the limit gives him a stress which allows his special pilot ability to assign himself a focus token . At this point, Soontir Fel now has 1 evade token, 1 stress token and 3 focus tokens as we go to the combat phase, even though he only ever performed 1 focus action.

In combat, he performs an attack and spends one token to modify his attack dice to change his eye results to hits. Then an enemy ship at Range 2 equipped with a Tactician attacks Fel. Fel uses a focus token to change his eyes to evade results and take no damage, but the Tactician assigns him a stress token. This again triggers his ability to assign himself a focus token when he is given a stress token. Then two more enemies attack, and during each of those attacks, Fel again spends a focus token to change his eyes to evades.

In this situation, Fel only did 1 focus action, but was also assigned 3 focus tokens. He performed 1 attack and defended 3 times. For each of those 4 times rolling dice, he was able to spend 1 focus token to modify his dice.

Action is a defined keyword in this game. It's not just a synonym for "do something". Everything that counts as an action will use the word "action" somewhere. So assigning a token isn't an action (though there are certainly actions that assign tokens), nor is receiving one or spending one.

We do have a FAQ entry about not being able to spend a Focus token for its standard effect more than once in an attack, to make it clear you can't Focus then reroll them Focus again if some eyes come up on the reroll. (Normally you wouldn't want to do that, but it comes up with R4 Agromech.) But that's in one attack, not the whole round.

Thanks everyone. So, let me see if I get this straight.

Every round, a ship can "perform" one action, which is usually after it conducts its maneuver. The "actions" it can perform are the ones labeled on the pilot card or as an upgrade.

However, if another ships "assigns" a focus, evade, or target lock token through its pilot ability, upgrade, etc that is not consider an action.

A ship can "spend" as many of the same tokens as it wants so long as the tokens spent are not spent in the same combat, etc. e.g. You can't spend two focus tokens to modify one die, reroll another die, and modify that die with another focus token.

Does that apply to evade tokens? Can I only spend one evade token per combat roll?

11 minutes ago, Leobarron2000 said:

Every round, a ship can "perform" one action, which is usually after it conducts its maneuver. The "actions" it can perform are the ones labeled on the pilot card or as an upgrade.

Not quite. Other sources for actions exist - damage cards, condition cards, missions. And it gets one Perform Action step where it can perform one action from one of those sources (two if it's Darth Vader) , plus any number of free actions if it can get them (including but definitely not limited to Push the LImit, Experimental Interface, TIE/x7, Lando Calrissian, Dauntless, etc etc etc etc).

13 minutes ago, Leobarron2000 said:

However, if another ships "assigns" a focus, evade, or target lock token through its pilot ability, upgrade, etc that is not consider an action.

Again, not quite. Extra tokens can come from upgrades or abilities on that ship (e.g. Soontir Fel's pilot ability, Fire Control System), as well as from other ships.

13 minutes ago, Leobarron2000 said:

A ship can "spend" as many of the same tokens as it wants so long as the tokens spent are not spent in the same combat, etc. e.g. You can't spend two focus tokens to modify one die, reroll another die, and modify that die with another focus token.

Again, not quite. You can use each ability once per opportunity - and a die roll is an opportunity. So, you can only spend one focus for its default effect of eyes to hits/evades per roll, but if you have Weapons Guidance equipped, for instance, you can spend one on eyes to hits, and one on a blank to a hit.

15 minutes ago, Leobarron2000 said:

Does that apply to evade tokens? Can I only spend one evade token per combat roll?

Correct - at the moment. The default 'add an evade result' is currently the only way to spend evade tokens, and you're limited to spending one token per defence on that. If some putative future upgrade let you spend an evade token on something else when defending, and you had several, you could do both once per defence roll.

Just a little more clarifying on the rule that says you may not perform the same action more than once.

Say a ship moves then it performs a focus action. Later a wingmate has the Squad leader upgrade card that lets it grant a free action to that first ship. For that free action the ship can choose from any available actions (on its pilot card, upgrade cards or damage cards) except it may NOT perform a focus action since it has already done that this round.

Another example. Poe Dameron is equiped with BB-8 and Expert Handling. Poe reveals a 2 straight green maneuver but an Academy Tie has parked itself right in Poe's way. To avoid a bump, Poe uses BB-8 to perform a free Barrel Roll action to the left so he can get past the tie. After his maneuver for Poe's action phase he wants to use his Expert Handling to roll back right to dodge Soontir Fel's firing arc while also discarding a pesky target lock from a Tie Bomber with a Harpoon missile. The wording on Expert Handling says perform a "free barrel roll action" but Poe has already performed one barrel roll action this round so he may not use his Expert Handling ability in this case.

Ok. Thanks again. Let me mull over this.

On 2/3/2018 at 10:53 AM, Leobarron2000 said:

However, if another ships "assigns" a focus, evade, or target lock token through its pilot ability, upgrade, etc that is not consider an action.

One other slightly related bit, since assigning is not an action it can also happen while the ship is stressed. Stress prevents actions but not assigning. The Soontir example covers that as well but just though I'd make it explicitly clear.

Additionally Target Lock is a bit unique. If you do the TL action on your ships bar that is an action, can be blocked by stress, once per round etc. However, there are loTS of upgrades and abilities that may tell you that you can "Acquire a Target Lock" rules wise this is identical to being assigned a token. It is not an action so you can do it while stressed and any number of times per round. You just have to obey the other TL rules of range limit and only holding one at a time.

4 minutes ago, sharrrp said:

One other slightly related bit, since assigning is not an action it can also happen while the ship is stressed. Stress prevents actions but not assigning. The Soontir example covers that as well but just though I'd make it explicitly clear.

Additionally Target Lock is a bit unique. If you do the TL action on your ships bar that is an action, can be blocked by stress, once per round etc. However, there are loTS of upgrades and abilities that may tell you that you can "Acquire a Target Lock" rules wise this is identical to being assigned a token. It is not an action so you can do it while stressed and any number of times per round. You just have to obey the other TL rules of range limit and only holding one at a time.

TL is no more unique in this capacity than any other token.

The important point is that if the word 'action' is not part of the ability concerned, stress doens't block it by default.

It's unique in that it says "Acquire". Everything else says assign. This is sometimes a point of confusion for newer players (and OP is at least new to the forums for sure) because it can seem to imply an action.

@thespaceinvader is right on this one: "Acquire" isn't a unique term: the technical name of the action is the "Acquire a Target Lock" action.

If we're going to bring acquiring tokens and Stress into this discussion we should point out that STRESS generally does NOT prevent using tokens in any way. If you have Stress token you generally may not perform ANY actions which could give you a token but if you happen to have a token you are still free to use/spend it.