Talk:Initiative/@comment-27673714-20160130122428/@comment-27029853-20160130151321

I'm going to guess you meant PS 3 and PS 2 respectively.

Initiative isn't determined by pilot skill. Initiative is determined by which squad costs the fewest squad points. In the event there's a tie, it's randomly decided (you can do this by rolling an attack die, hits and crits means initiative for one player, blanks and focuses means initiative for the other player).

Suppose the Rebels have two PS1 ships and a PS 8 ship, whereas the Imperials have 4 PS1 ships and one PS9 ship and initiative. Movement is always done in increasing order of PS, regardless of initiative. So all the PS 1 ships would move, then the PS 8 ship, then the PS 9 ship would move. But here, there's PS 1 ships in both squads. Initiative is what breaks the tie. So because the Imperials have initiative, they would move all 4 PS 1 ships first. Then the Rebels move all their PS 1 ships. Next, the Rebel PS 8 ship moves, followed by the Imperial PS 9 ship.

The same thing happens when shooting, but in decreasing order of pilot skill. So the Imperial PS 9 ship shoots first, followed by the Rebel PS 8 ship. But then, there's a tie for PS since both players have PS 1 ships. Because the Imperial player has initiative, all the Imperials PS 1 ships shoot before the Rebel PS 1 ships.

So basically, initiative isn't determined by pilot skill, initiative is the tie breaker when both squads have a ship of the same pilot skill.

The other big way initiative comes into play is when placing asteroids (or debris fields). The players take turn placing the asteroids, with the player who has initiative placing the first, third, and fifth asteroids. The player who doesn't have initiative will place the second, fourth, and last asteroids.

Hope this helps :)