Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priority
 

Need a bit of help once more. I looked over the FAQ again and didn't see this, but if it is there I apologize & just let me know that. Thanks.

Question is regarding firing priority: What does strongest and weakest relate to - is strongest gauged by damage points the ship can sustain or the firepower of the ship? My fleets keep hitting my opponents "decoy" ships first - you know, the ones with 25 Crystal Armor plates and 6 shields. I can't afford another big loss. I had strongest as priority, so maybe that seeks the ship with greatest damage resistance. But I tried weakest in the simulator - same thing happened. I tried it with no strongest/weakest priority, and still the ships targeted the decoy first. Hopefully someone can give me a quick answer to this one, or I might as well give up on the game. Thanks again.

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

*Sigh* I wish I knew. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

In the case you're describing, try "nearest" and, in the Damage section, check the box "Damage targets till all weapons gone". It should give better results. I say "should" because the strategies rarely give you what you expect.

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priority
 

I think "Strongest" is (or was, in an earlier version) based on the resource cost, but I'm not sure.

If you are not seeing a difference between strategy settings (esp. weakest and strongest attacking the same ship), or not seeing what you expect, it may be that a different strategy than you expect is actually being used. Ships that break formation use their ship design strategy, while ships in (or trying to be in) formation use their fleet's strategy. All ships with weapons use the fleet strategy on turn one, and all ships without weapons break formation and since they can't target, tend to behave like "don't get hurt".

Grandpa Kim mentioned some good ideas too.

PvK

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

The ship/fleet strategy settings are one of the murkiest aspects of SEIV. I don’t know what Strongest/Weakest refers to (Pretty sure it is not fire power.)

I do known that the Nearest means anything within about 5 squares.

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

It should also be noted that once the ships pick a target, they will stick with it for quite a while.
If those CA decoys are the only thing in range, then they would be the only choice for targetting.

"Most damaged" is probably a good choice, since the Decoys won't take damage.

You might want to try out the targetting priorities in the simulator.
Add a decoy and a warship to player 1, and set your ships to player 2.
Let the AI run your ships, while you take care to keep both decoy and warship side by side. You want them both to be the same distance from your ships so that they come into firing range at the same time.

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priority
 

I think Nearest really means nearest, and not anything within 5. Any exceptions I have seen have been explainable by damage or other strategy rules eliminating nearer candidates.

Most damaged is good for concentrating fire, but in some situations can also lead to some odd behavior, where a whole fleet can end up chasing after one ship and not reacting well to the rest of the enemy fleet.

PvK

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

I’m pretty sure that nearest doesn’t mean “absolute nearest”. I was in a late stage PBW game fighting against an enemy with about a 10% offensive and defensive edge over my ships. At point blank range I had about a 55% chance to hit so I wanted my ships to fire at the absolute nearest enemy ship. Even with a strategy of “nearest nearest nearest nearest” my ships would pick ships up to 5 squares away over closer valid targets.

To force my ships to only target near ships that they had a chance to hit, I switched to ripper beams which have a short range.

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

It should be noted that once they pick their target, they can still move around afterwards to try and move to max range for example.

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priority
 

Glyn, that's interesting. I haven't seen that without being able to figure out why (e.g. previous damage to targets disqualifying them, using fleet vs. ship strategy, type priority, etc). Are you sure the ships were actually using that strategy?

BTW, Ripper Beams are a neat choice in that case, since they get another +15 to hit.

PvK

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

Ripper Beams don't, actually. The Incinerator Beam and the Wave-Motion Gun do, though (+10 and +30 respectively)

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priority
 

Oh, ok, thanks.

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

Well, I could be mistaken. I wasn't testing what the targeting options sorted on. At the time, I was just looking for a set of options that did what I wanted.

If I have time this weekend I'll do some testing on targeting options.

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

Why bother with testing to figure out weapon modifiers when you can go snoop in the data files?

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

I was referring to the Targeting options under strategies. Nearest, Furthest, Strongest, Weakest, most damaged and lest damaged.

Nearest – is it absolute nearest or does it mean within range X?
Furthest – is it absolute furthest, absolute furthest but within weapon range, or beyond range X?
Strongest / Weakest– most structure points (do shields count), ship cost or number of components?
Most or lest damaged - Is it based on structure points (do shields points count?), or number of components?

Do special weapons change the results: Shield only, shield skipping, armor skipping, engine only…

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

What about using type priorities?

It seems to work for fighters. I told them to attack fighters first, and they did.

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

Test results on targeting options under firing strategies.

Strong / Weak is based on shield strength. Strong will select the ship with the most shield points and Weak will select the ship with the least shield points. If there are no shields or all the designs have the same shield strength then both will target the ship with the most structure points. (I appear to use the maximum undamaged shield and structure points, because it will continue to target the same ship despite its damage level.)

Nearest / Furthest is based on range. Nearest will select the closest ship as its target and Furthest will select the most distance ship in range.

Most Damaged / Least Damaged seem to be based on ships current total of shield and structure points. Both seem to target the ships with the Least current total of points. They will select an undamaged ship with a lower total of shield and structure over a damaged ship that still has a higher total of shield and structure. Most and Least would select the same ship target despite the damage level. (Bug?)

No Strategy (“Has Weapons” x 4) has an interesting behavior. When presented three ships with varying shield and structure points, but whose total points were equal, It seemed to select a ship with no shields first then alternate targeting on the two shielded ships keeping them equally damaged. There was some further test results in which I was unable to determine a pattern. I was trying to establish a default base line targeting strategy.

I tested using the same ship class size for all my target ships to keep things simple. All testing was done using the simulator (so the results may very from actual combat.) Also, I didn’t use any fleets.

Combo Strategies tested:

Nearest, Strongest – worked as expected. Targeted nearest ship, even if there was a stronger shielded ship one square further distance.
Strongest, Nearest - worked as expected. Targeted the strongest shielded ship that was closest to the attacking ship. (Note: Strongest by itself would sometimes select a more distance ship over a closer equal strong shielded ship.)
Strongest, Least Damaged – Would have expected it to alternate targeting between two equal strong shielded ships, but it continued to fire at a one until destroyed.

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

Awesome! Good report! Now I just need to figure out how to set my ships to max range plus the target's movement speed. (jk Not possible)

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

THANKS Glyn! I tried the simulator in my game again and used various enemy ship classes. I have been using weapons/largest priorities first and have tried both strongest and weakest as secondary priorities. The simulator still targeted the same "decoy" ship class regardless (the decoy ships did not have the strongest shields in the tests). So I did some more involved simulator testing also; I copied ships from my enemy's designs as my own so I could categorize the variables. My tests showed this:

Largest/Smallest related to damage resistance (apparently only shield generator damage resistance points counted and not points due to the shield generation itself). Interestingly, the ship weight (KT) did not seem to matter; I used baseships with both 1500 KT and 1490 KT. I did not try using smaller ship sizes (i.e. cruiser vs. battlecruiser) so I do not know if that is a preceding factor.

Strongest/Weakest related to resource cost. The higher cost ships were targeted first every time, regardless of damage resistance, shields or weapons. In my tests with strongest priority my highest cost ships had no shields; even so, these were targeted first. Glyn, did you check the ship cost?

Has Weapons seemed to target based upon weapons presence only; it seemed independent of weapon quantity. As far as quantity, the targeting seemed random. I did not do enough testing to see if there was another relationship involved.

In my game I always had largest as my first priority before strongest/weakest (so as to target baseships first) and that is reason my ships always targeted the high damage resistance "decoy”. I assumed that largest applied to size only and that it would target based upon the second priority if all ships in range were the same size. Not so!

I think the info in this thread might be good for the FAQs, if anyone who can edit it agrees and has time.

Thanks all.

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

CaptainAl, no I didn’t check the ship cost (Good catch! Thanks for the corrections). Since shields cost more per ton then armor the cost of shielded ships would generally be higher which would support the Strongest/Weakest keying off of ship cost. (Gunner, target their most expensive ship first!)

I didn’t test largest/Smallest, but I would be interested in knowing if the ship class size had any relevance other then maximum KT.

Since Crystalline armor is structurally heavier 150Kt/30kt space 25 Crystalline armor components would add 3000kt of Structure to the ship. So, would Smallest, Strongest work to avoid targeting the decoys?

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priori
 

I will check out the ship size for largest in the next day or two - that should not take long. As far as my remedy for the decoy problem in my game, I'd rather not say right now specifically what I am doing with my firing priority. My opponent in this game is a very good player so I figure he is most likely a student of this Forum and may be browsing here. I'd rather not share my current strategy with him. But I do know how to beat it now. To my worthy opponent: no more freebies from the 39 cyrstal armor plate ships!

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priority
 

Strongest/Weakest being based on resource cost would match my memory from the way it originally worked in beta.

I think smallest/largest is based on the hull size (ship class max kT), so on largest, a baseship with only a Master Computer and no other components will be targetted before a full battleship.

I think each targetting type is a simple test, so that it can fall through to the next category easily, so players have more control over their orders. Imagine if "Has Weapons" were not just a Y/N has weapons test, but sorted based on the number of weapons: If so, it would very often be the only criteria used to choose a target, so Has Weapons, Nearest would result in seeking out the ship with the most weapons, even if it was far away, instead of seeking the nearest ship which has weapons. i.e., if it worked that way, it should be called "most weapons".

PvK

Re: Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priority
 

According to the test I just conducted, "Largest/Smallest" relates to damage resistance only. I used a dreadnought design that had high damage resistance and baseship designs that had both higher and lower damage resistance than the dreadnought, with "Largest" as firing priority. The higher damage resistant baseships were targeted first, followed by the middle range dreadnoughts and the lower damage resistant baseships were targeted LAST.

So this would indicate that damage resistance alone is the basis for the Largest/Weakest firing priority, and not the ship size at all. This was reflected in my actual combat situations where my ships always targeted the decoy first while I had "Largest" as first priority, no matter what I used as secondary priority. This is not what I would have expected either, I had assumed Largest was based on the ship size.

So, if it is one simple test (which seems to be so), then according to my simulation tests the relationships are:

Largest: Targets ships with greatest structural points (damage resistance) first. Shield generation points are not counted and ship size does not matter.

Strongest: Targets ships of highest resource cost first.

Has Weapons: Simple Yes/No test.