I have now heard 2 different podcasts imply that a Lock is a better offensive action than focus, or that somehow taking a Lock instead of a focus makes you clever or demonstrates how good you are at planning ahead. I think these guys were close to being right about this, but both podcasts left out some key information when comparing locks to focuses that I think people need to be aware of.

First of all, the notion that somehow a lock gives you better odds than a focus are incorrect, they are statistically the same. Both actions increase your chances of rolling a hit from 50% per red die to 75% per die. A focus effectively makes 6/8 (0.75) sides of the die into a hit, and a lock reduces your chance of rolling a nonhit on any given red die from 50% to 25%(which means 75% chance to roll a hit). The only thing that a lock is better at is slightly increasing your chance of rolling a crit from 0.125 average per die to 0.188 average, assuming you are only rerolling blanks and eyes.

Here's why focus is usually better than lock:

1. Unless you are moving after all of your opponent's ships, you can't guarantee that you aren't going to get shot at. Maybe that ship that is far away decided to do a fast maneuver to close with you more quickly or to avoid a bump that you hadn't even thought about, and now your unfocused ship is the only target your opponent can shoot at. Or maybe the ship you locked made an unexpected evasive maneuver that took it out of the fight or out of your arc, and now you have no mods against the ships that are still in your firing arc.
2. You know that your opponent is going to pour all their attacks into 1 of your ships (like Biggs), so you don't bother focusing with your other ships. Except that the dice go horribly bad for you and that ship that you thought would be eating all the opponents attacks dies faster than you anticipated, and now the opponent gets to attack your other ships that locked instead of focused.
3. Inversely, maybe you end up killing the opponent's ship faster than expected and now you have an extra attacker left to shoot at another target. Well, if that attacker locked instead of focused, your action just disappeared with that dead ship.
4. By the same token, if you have 2 ships attacking and you predicted that the opponents ship would die to your first attack, maybe because it was at 1 hull, so you locked the other ship with your 2nd ship, but your first attack fails to kill the damage ship for some reason, now your 2nd ship isn't going to have mods while attacking to finish off that damaged ship.

As you can see, the bonus of focus over lock isn't just that it can be used for defense, it's also how flexible it is when you have to shift your target priority. Even zero defense dice ships will often benefit from taking a focus instead of a target lock. Yes, if you perfectly predict your opponent's position and attacks, and are also able to predict how the dice will roll and which ships will live and die during engagement, a lock can be just as good as a focus. But what about the argument that, "well, a lock persists if I don't use it and that's action economy". Here's the thing, the chances of you not needing to use your lock when you're attacking (because you rolled all hits) are very low, 25% with 2 attack dice and only 12.5% with 3 attack dice. If you decide to save the lock even if you could have used it because you think you might get more rerolls out of it later, then you also have to factor in what are the chances that you'll get to attack that particular ship again with your particular ship later in the match before their ship or your ship are destroyed? It might be high, or it might be low, but it's less than 100%. Maybe they disengage that ship and your ship is going the wrong way or has to deal with the rest of the opponent's ships before you can break off and go chase down the ship you locked. Or more likely 1 of either ships just dies before they get to attack or defend again. The point being, the flexible of a focus is usually going to far outweigh the small chance of a lock providing action economy.

Now, I'm not saying you should just always focus and never lock. Here's the scenarios where a lock is actually better than a focus without relying on luck.

1. Your ship has moved after all of the opponent's ships, and with perfect information, you know that you're not going to be attacked this turn and also that there's a zero chance that the ship you have locked might blow up before you get a chance to attack it.

2. You have an upgrade or native ability that already lets you utilize eye results without taking a focus. Force users, Chiraneu, Thane Kyrell, Saw crew, etc.

3. You have an upgrade or native ability that synergizes with having a lock, like the Advanced Targeting Computer, Fire-Control system, ordnance, Dutch, Genesis, Shara Bey, etc.

4. You have an upgrade or native ability that synergizes with crit results, such as Seyn, Bossk, etc.

5. Your opponent has an ability that can punish focus tokens but not locks, such as Palob, Old Terroch, Kimogila, Hotshot Gunner, etc.

6. Pointed out by @ dotswarlock : If you are low ps but you are very very confident that you are going to block your opponent's only remaining ship and therefore not be able to shoot or be shot at for the turn. Carries some risk if there is a chance of the opponent outmaneuvering your block and being able to shoot you (such as by k-turning).

[edit: added this from my post below to further clarify] I think if you are locking instead of focusing, and it's not under one of the 5 scenarios I laid out in the 2nd half of my OP, you are falling victim to "fancy play syndrome". Yes, if everything goes perfectly, and you get that 12.5% of rolling 3 natty hits AND you don't get shot at AND you get to line up a 2nd shot on that locked ship before it or you dies, you get to feel really clever, but if any of those very specific things don't happen, you didn't benefit at all from locking over focusing.

I just wanted to hopefully dispel the misleading notion that somehow locking is a strictly better action than focus if you are trying to be offensive. Focus has a lot of benefits over lock that will usually make it the better action 95% of the time if you're not trying to use a lock to synergize with a specific ability. If you guys think I'm wrong, please discuss, I think this is a really interesting topic.

I thought all of this was common knowledge. Who's saying lock is statistically better for rolling hits? The one thing it does better is give you a slightly higher crit chance, but that's it.

Just now, defkhan1 said:

I thought all of this was common knowledge. Who's saying lock is statistically better for rolling hits? The one thing it does better is give you a slightly higher crit chance, but that's it.

I don't want to name the casts because I don't want to mischarecterize what they might have been trying to say, but of the two I was listening to, one of them implied that somehow taking a lock action is better than a focus if you are trying to kill a ship and don't care about defending, and the other cast had one of the members straight up say he thought a lock gave you better odds at hitting (though he didn't back it up with any math). Again, not sure if I'm misinterpreting what they were trying to say, but they both left out most of the points I mentioned of why a focus is better than a lock, so to me it felt like any new players listening would get the impression that they should be trying to lock whenever they could or that good players lock more often.

It is better when you don't consider defense (or as you could say, on offense), because it can persist when you highroll, that is potentially a huge advantage.

the fact that locks stick around is their purpose.

Focus is statistically better...slightly...but in the off chance you didnt need the lock its still around. But the focus goes away.

Thus every time i dont need to worry about defense i will lock.

Focus and TL are statistically the same. The difference is TL is more useful for setting up future attacks. On two extreme ends of dice variance (natties or a complete whiff), you can save your lock for future rounds whereas Focus would be "wasted" in those edge cases. That's the only reason people recommend taking locks if you're not getting shot.

14 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

I don't want to name the casts because I don't want to mischarecterize what they might have been trying to say, but of the two I was listening to, one of them implied that somehow taking a lock action is better than a focus if you are trying to kill a ship and don't care about defending, and the other cast had one of the members straight up say he thought a lock gave you better odds at hitting (though he didn't back it up with any math). Again, not sure if I'm misinterpreting what they were trying to say, but they both left out most of the points I mentioned of why a focus is better than a lock, so to me it felt like any new players listening would get the impression that they should be trying to lock whenever they could or that good players lock more often.

Nuckols's gut feeling that locks are better is a joke among the Barons. He knows they're the same statistically, its just an inside joke at this point.

26 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

First of all, the notion that somehow a lock gives you better odds than a focus are incorrect, they are statistically the same. Both actions increase your chances of rolling a hit from 50% per red die to 75% per die. A focus effectively makes 6/8 (0.75) sides of the die into a hit, and a lock reduces your chance of rolling a nonhit on any given red die from 50% to 25%(which means 75% chance to roll a hit). The only thing that a lock is better at is slightly increasing your chance of rolling a crit from 0.125 average per die to 0.188 average, assuming you are only rerolling blanks and eyes. 

This is exactly why lock is better than focus when evaluating purely from an offensive position. The other reason is that there are times when you don't need the focus, in those cases "banking" a lock is better. Additionally a lock reduces variances more than a focus does. IE, the more times you roll a dice, the more it converges towards the 0.50 hit/crit yield. A lock can always be used to re-roll the dice, a focus might not be used.

It's for this same reason that you see certain poker players choose to run a hand multiple times with the pot divided each time to attain long run expected values.

Again this is all evaluating from purely an offensive perspective. You have clearly and correctly laid out why focus is typically better overall once defense, initiative (pilot skill), etc is taken into account.

For those that replied, I think you missed 2 key points in my post.

1. The chance of "banking" a lock for later is low, 25% for 2 atk dice and just 12.5% for 3 atk dice.

2. The increased chance of getting a crit is also very tiny, 12.5% to 18.75% per die if you aren't rerolling normal hits.

3. Focus gives you flexibility on offense too because of target selection. It often happens that the ship you think you're going to be shooting at during the activation phase, isn't actually the ship you are able to shoot at during the engagement phase. This is the offensive benefit of focus over lock, it's greater flexibility. I would argue that the chances of being forced to switch targets between activation and engagement is equal or greater than the chances of banking an unneeded lock.

This offensive flexibility over lock is compounded on top of focus's obvious defensive flexibility over lock.

I think if you are locking instead of focusing, and it's not under one of the 5 scenarios I laid out in the 2nd half of my OP, you are falling victim to "fancy play syndrome". Yes, if everything goes perfectly, and you get that 12.5% of rolling 3 natty hits AND you don't get shot at AND you get to line up a 2nd shot on that locked ship before it or you dies, you get to feel really clever, but if any of those very specific things don't happen, you didn't benefit at all from locking over focusing.

5 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

2. Focus gives you flexibility on offense too because of target selection. It often happens that the ship you think you're going to be shooting at during the activation phase, isn't actually the ship you are able to shoot at during the engagement phase. This is the offensive benefit of focus over lock, it's greater flexibility. I would argue that the chances of being forced to switch targets between activation and engagement is equal or greater than the chances of banking an unneeded lock.

These offensive flexibility over lock is compounded on top of focus's obvious defensive flexibility over lock.

Very good points. This one is generally mitigated by high init aces though. Since you have perfect knowledge and know you're not going to be shot at, you can safely take a lock. And since you're high init you're almost certainly shooting first anyway, so you're guaranteed to shoot the target you have locked. All of these decisions should be made intelligently of course. Don't take a lock if there's a chance the ship is going to die by a bomb detonation at the beginning of engagement, or if you're not the first of your ships shooting during engagement etc. There are times to take locks, you just have to know when it makes sense to do so.

Just now, defkhan1 said:

There are times to take locks, you just have to know when it makes sense to do so.

Yes, as I mentioned in my OP under the list of scenarios where it makes sense to lock instead of focus, and flying an ace that has perfect positional information going into the engagement phase would fit into my scenario #1.

When I know I'm going to be getting a second volley in so take a lock, ready to add focus to it next turn for the full monty. Then roll all eyes.

One scenario where a lock is better than a focus that was missed is a scenario where a lower PS pilot can move to block a higher PS target that cannot shoot him under any circumstances.

Example: Guri and Luke and facing off and Guri has initiative, but Luke has a stress. By moving into a blocking position (close to range 1 of Luke), Guri knows that the opponent cannot target her and she can safely bank a target lock for the next round, hopefully blocking the opponent in the process and denying him that possibility in return.

16 minutes ago, chico2323 said:

Additionally a lock reduces variances more than a focus does. IE, the more times you roll a dice, the more it converges towards the 0.50 hit/crit yield. A lock can always be used to re-roll the dice, a focus might not be used.

wat? Lock doesn't have lower variance. Focus and lock have the same variance.

3 die focus: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=AAAAAAAAAAA&a1=MQgAAAAAAAA

3 die lock: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=AAAAAAAAAAA&a1=MwAAAAAAAAA

I already called out the other podcast members, since missing one podcast they screwed it up already! ?

What they were trying to say is, in situations where you don’t need the focus, you lock and hopefully you can just save it for when you have lock and focus. This is important now that we’re back to basics and things like Expertise/K4 aren’t a thing.

Just now, dotswarlock said:

One scenario where a lock is better than a focus that was missed is a scenario where a lower PS pilot can move to block a higher PS target that cannot shoot him under any circumstances.

Example: Guri and Luke and facing off and Guri has initiative, but Luke has a stress. By moving into a blocking position (close to range 1 of Luke), Guri knows that the opponent cannot target her and she can safely bank a target lock for the next round, hopefully blocking the opponent in the process and denying him that possibility in return.

That’s is actually a really interesting scenario that I hadn’t thought about, but I would argue that you are still taking a risk there unless you can guarantee the block due to ion and also guarantee that the blocking ship isn’t going to be defending that round from say another enemy ship.

After all what if the opponent predicted the block and k-turned behind you, or slow rolled so they’re right in front of you, or self block with their other ship so they lose their action but still get to attack you? Also what if your blocking ship does get to shoot this round against another ship that it didn’t block. Again, the flexibility of the focus is so valuable. But I think under very specific circumstances, that is another valid scenario for locking instead of focusing.

I rolled 3 hits natural... My target lock stays around, my focus is garbage.

If you know, or are fairly sure you won't get shot and not need a focus on defense, then a lock is hands down the better action.

52 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

Yes, as I mentioned in my OP under the list of scenarios where it makes sense to lock instead of focus, and flying an ace that has perfect positional information going into the engagement phase would fit into my scenario #1.

So your whole statement is pointless, a focus is not better then a lock, it's just different. Depending on the situation one is better then the other.

It's very easy to tell who read the whole post and who only read the title.

Just now, Icelom said:

So your whole statement is pointless, a focus is not better then a lock, it's just different. Depending on the situation one is better then the other.

Maybe you should read my whole post instead of just the title.

31 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

Maybe you should read my whole post instead of just the title.

I did, and your title or idea makes no sense. Maybe you should call this "what's better focus or target lock" and the go into your discussion. But you flat at called focus better the target lock in your title.

Lastly a lock is better then a focus offensively. You can't say something is not better offensively because of defensive reasons.

I take focus probably 90% of the time over a lock, but it's not better. Those 10% times a lock is far better.

The mindset should not be what is better, it should be evaluated on a case by case basis.

Gotta' say, I dunno'. I mean both are honestly great for different reasons if you ask me.

2 hours ago, Icelom said:

I rolled 3 hits natural... My target lock stays around, my focus is garbage.

If you know, or are fairly sure you won't get shot and not need a focus on defense, then a lock is hands down the better action.

If you roll 3 focuses natural, you immediately regret taking the lock. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Focus is better because you can use it on defence, and can be used for some ordnance.

Lock is better because it can convert blanks, it sticks around if you don't use it, and it slightly increases your crit chance, and can be used for other ordnance.

Neither is actually better than the other in all situations.

Everyone who has played this game for any length of time knows the power of the focus action. The fact that the power of a lock decreases with the number of ships on the board is a good catch. I would however add two more points in favor of the lock:

1) Actually causing damage. When you get a bad roll against a large pool of green dice, it's unlikely that you'll cause damage even with spending your focus/lock. Then it would be nice to have the option to save it for a double modded shot next turn.

2) While disengaging. After the initial emgagement, you might sometimes find yourself with a ship will need a turn to reengage, but most likely will not be shot at. At that point your action will go to waste if you don't lock.

The second point should not be underestimated, and is somethink I often miss when playing imperials.

I think saying you only have a 12.5% chance to keep the target lock ignores the players choice, and any conversation about what you're shooting at.

Flying against a high agility token stacked ship (defenders a prime example) I'll often take the lock action with the sole purpose of saving it for later. (Even if I'm getting shot)

In that turn, I'll only spend it if I roll 2 hits naturally to push for a reasonable chance of 3.

Personally, if I roll 3 blanks I won't spend the lock (unless I need the kill), I don't chase a bad result.