I just ran my first game using the beginner’s box set. Towards the end of the adventure is ship combat with TIE fighters, and the pilot of the PC’s ship has the only action of “Gain the Advantage.” According to the rules of this action the pilot makes a pilot check and if successful it sounds like it basically negates the disadvantages gained by “Evasive Maneuvers.”

So my question is if neither ship has used “E vasive M aneuvers” as their maneuver, does that mean “Gain the Advantage” is pointless?

I get narratively it’s like a dog fight between the two ships trying to get the advantage, but mechanically it seems useless without “Evasive Maneuvers.”

There are three potential answers to your question.

1. Yes, it is useless without Evasive Maneuvers. Naturally doing yourself double Evasive Maneuvers and than negating the two upgrades via GtA seems like a weak, but not completely useless choice, especially if you have enough gunners for your ship and even more so when the enemy TIE Fighters decided themselves to use Evasive Maneuvers (GtA negates in the best case FOUR upgrades!)
2. Gain the Advantage can be used as well like a regular pilot check to manipulate the facing on positions of ships to each other. For example locking your own front arc into the rear arc of an enemy fighter. Used this way it is a potent tool in a dogfight to take control over the encounter. Though there are conflicting answers from the developers if this is a legitimate interpretation of GtA and you have to decide and communicate to your group if you like to play it this way. From personal experience I can say that this would make GtA an essential tool in every aces sleeve.
3. You can port over the Gain the Advantage action from Genesys which replaces the old effect and instead provides you with TWO upgrades for shooting the target and TWO difficulty upgrades if the target tries to shoot you. Lasts until broken by an GtA action of your target as well, so it is a once per encounter check when fighting sil 5 and above ships.

Personally I like the control aspect of locking arcs and forcing positioning onto your enemy, alas, the sw rules would allow something similar via a piloting check as well and genesys has the dangerous driving action (basically just a pilot check) to cover for stuff like this. So it is not necessary needed to use GtA for this, even when the difficulties based on speed difference are the most logical choice for stuff like locking relative positioning or distance … technical this would be as well a more logical difficulty table for a chase (when not in difficulty terrain).

Thanks

Sea also forgot to mention GtA allows the Aed vehicle to select which Defensive zone of the Target their attacks land in. In the case of shieldless targets this is a moot point, but shielded targets may make it a more useful option.

Jup, I did forgot to mention this.
It can make the difference between rolling 4 setbacks or none at all on your attacks.