Do people think initiative is always an advantage? A buddy of mine insists that, not only is not necessarily an advantage, but that the person who wins it ought to instead be given the choice to either move or fire first in PS ties--either at the beginning of the match or each time it occurs in-game. This has also raised the question of whether or not initiative is meant to be considered an advantage or just a built in coin flip mechanic for games with tied PS instances? When I first suggested this, he countered that it was nonetheless a question of advantage/disadvantage since you could build appropriately if you wanted it or not. Thoughts?

It is NOT always an advantage. Fleets with Initiative have a much harder time target-locking for an alpha-strike, and a much harder time placing seismic charges and proton bombs, for instance.

The advantage that comes to Initiative is that you have the opportunity to cause a collision, and completely deny your opponent their action, while their collision will not deny you your action, as you took it before the collision happened.

I think it was designed as a built-in coin-flip, but folks have discovered an advantage in it, and the game has progressed.
"It's not a bug, it's a feature!"

I would argue that it can certainly be an advantage, since you get to shoot first. Yes, your enemy gets to return fire with same PS ships, but that's not always enough. Take for example Howlrunner. If I have my own swarm and I have initiative, I get to attack with all my swarm against the enemy swarm. If I destroy Howlrunner, she is immediately removed from the board. Then, when the enemy swarm attacks, they don't get her bonus. That's huge, albiet in a very specific situation. There are times when having initiative, either using blocking ships or destroying key support craft, can win you the game.

Another example is Turr Phennir. If you have initiative and you attack a PS7 craft, you get to barrel roll or boost before he gets to shoot, meaning that you could well be at a further range bracket or out of arc entirely.

Initiative is often an advantage but can also have its drawbacks when you want to see what your opponent does first. Now allowing the person with initiative to choose who goes first certainly pushed the advantage of initiative up as it potentially removes the few disadvantages which keep it close to that "coin flip" of determining if it is useful or not.

You can build squads with the hopes of gaining initiative but that is surrendering something to your opponent. Perhaps even worse you can run into other squads built with the "goal" of winning init which will make things a toss up again.

I think Sable (Gryphon?) said it best; it can be an advantage, but it's not an unqualified advantage.

For example my current squad is 4x Blue Squadron B-Wings with Advanced Sensors. I run into a lot of other ps2 builds, or builds with some ps2 ships in them, and I don't mind losing initiative at all to most of those squads.

The opponent gets to shoot first, but to me the big advantage is watching the other guy move first, then seeing where all of his ships land before I decide to make use of AdvS. I can often negate some of the advantage of him firing first by simply using my movement shenanigans to arc dodge and deny him as many shots as possible. AdvS is helpful but not 100% necessary in this regard, since I will sometimes execute my move (if I can do so without colliding) and then look for a way to barrel roll out of his fire arc.

But even then - it helps deny blocking squads because I can either barrel roll pre-move, to avoid hitting a blocker, or take a focus/target lock pre-move and have that on me to help my attack or defense against the guys behind the guy who blocked me.

Losing initiative can also be a major advantage right from the set-up. If your pilot skills are matched, you get to see how he sets his ships up, and then set yours up to counter it. This will at worst force him to take a very conservative, noncommittal setup, and at best will leave some weakness exposed that you may be able to capitalize on. He leaves one ship unsupported, and you rush it with everything you have and take it out before he can regroup, for example.

So anyway, long story short, no; winning initiative is not always a huge advantage. In my last tournament game my ps2 B-Wing squad faced a ps2 TIE Bomber squad. He got to shoot first, but he also had to move and drop his proximity mines before I moved, which allowed me to almost entirely negate the effect of a good portion of his offense that game. And, as mentioned, let me focus on arc dodging as much as possible, blunting his advantage of shooting before me. He actually made a 99-point initiative bid squadron, and I think in this case it came back to bite him somewhat.

I usually dislike having initiative unless I am using a lot of PS1 pilots that can block, or otherwise feel it is useful to move first and ensure I get to take an action before the opponent has a chance to block.

I vastly prefer to let my opponent have initiative. PS9 pilots with expert handling are immune to enemy missiles, and barrel roll and boost (ptl for both) are vastly improved if you know exactly where your opponent is before you take the actions.

If you fly PS1 ships you know you will execute maneuvers first and shoot last, so I'm kinda used to that. I play Imperial Squads a lot, and so far there had been only very few occasions where the initiative was important during the game - high PS Rebels against me most of the times