Hi, is it acceptable to pre-measure distance between an attacker and two different targets ?

1. D eclare Target

During this step, the attacker (the active ship) must declare its target (the ship he wishes to attack). The target ship must be inside the attacker’s firing arc and within range . A player may measure to verify that these conditions are met before declaring a target.

However , if a player is concerned that his opponent is abusing the rules to gain an unfair advantage, he can request that his opponent follow the more strict action resolution described below.

When acquiring a target lock, the player must first declare the intended target. Then, he measures range to the declared target to see if the target is within legal range. If the target is in range, the ship performing the action must acquire a target lock on the target. If the target is not in range, the player may declare a different target, or he may declare a different action.

Thank you folks, very helpful responses.

In a friendly game with my buddies, we're fairly loosey-goosey about measuring for range. You should intend to make an attack or get a target lock when you do so. The kind of sort of optional stricter competitive rules complicate things a bit because they're not really enforceable ("he can request") and open to abuse, some people feel. There is an argument that you could more or less immediately declare that your opponent is abusing the privilege and needs to follow the stricter rules, or something.

Anyway yeah generally speaking, the courteous thing to do is have an idea who you're going to attack or target lock, and then just inform him "I'm going to check and see if that ship is in range" and if it is, that's your target or the one you lock onto. The DIScourteous thing to do is basically go "ok, he's in range. Ooh, let's see if THAT guy is in range, I just noticed he has a crit token" or something.

If the first guy isn't in range, it's perfectly legal to measure to a different target. If he IS in range of whatever, it's courteous to then in fact use that ship as your target, rather than then measuring a bunch of other ships to see if any of them are too, as long as you're at it.

The CRA section of the FAQ doesn't actually cover or apply to selecting targets during combat - only to actions which require measuring. A lot of us assumed the same would apply to target selection, but it's been clarified otherwise.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1021546/some-official-rule-query-responses-blinded-pilot

Usual caveats about email responses, official publication, etc etc, but the response doesn't actually contradict anything in the FAQ. So while it may seem odd that actions and combat have different levels of strictness on what you can measure, it does seem to be correct.

That is a little weird, even by FFG standards. Although you could say that measuring actually has a TRIPLE standard, if you measure range for targets, range for actions, and range for movement (since you are forbidden to) all differently.

I stand by what I said, at least mostly, simply because the question as I understood it wasn't so much "what are the rules," as "what is considered proper etiquette." I did drag the CRA thing into it without going back and refreshing itself on it and that's my bad.

From a courtesy point of view I think my own group tries to keep measuring somewhat to a minimum. Pick your most likely target, measure to it. But if you've got one guy close who's maybe a range 1 shot and another guy far off you think is within range 3 but might just be out of range, I'll usually just ask, to be polite "do you care if I check to see if that guy's in range over there quick?" And usually they don't mind, because often that guy will wind up shooting at YOU on his turn anyway.

I specifically asked for clarification on this (and a few other things) a while back and the responses I got are here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/13351917

In short, for attacking, you are allowed to measure freely before you decide what to attack (and with what weapons) with the one caveat that you are only allowed to measure range to targets within your valid firing arc(s). So for normal ships/weapons, your standard firing arc; for the Firespray-31, front and back arcs; and for any ship with a turret weapon, full 360.

Well see - there's another use for blaster turrets right there.

I think there are two logical possibilities for the difference.

First is that the restrictive ones are all pass/fail, whereas weapons range is a more graduated scale. Are you in range for a target lock? Is there room to barrel roll? These are broad questions with simple yes/no, so you can declare what you want to do, and do it if you can. Weapon range is harder, because range matters. It's not just "Is the target in range?" It's "Is the target in range 2, or range 3, where my attack will be worse?" I think it's possible they wanted to preserve the option to select a better shot without getting screwed.

Second possible reason is the timing difference. IMHO, the primary purpose of the CRA is to prevent abusing actions to gain extra information, especially to guide the choices made by later ships. For instance, if you have two ships side-by-side, you move one and try to target lock, which tells you if you'll be in combat range for both. Once you're into the combat phase, a lot of that goes away, so combat is more open to measurement.

<shrug> I was equally surprised that they didn't restrict target selection, but there are at least a few possible reasons that make sense.