Any way to have a ship cycle its weapons/targets?
 

I've got a Base Ship with tons of weapons, but it ends up wasting most of them by overkilling single ships, one at a time. <:/ So every five seconds it takes one down with about 1,000+ damage, when it could be taking down three or four enemies in that space of time if it just used its weapons a bit smarter. Is the only way to get this done to go down into tactical and micromanage every single target? <:\

EDIT:
Likewise, I've got a ton of kamikaze fighters, and they waste a TON of time by all chasing after the same target.
I wish there were something in the "strategy" section - a "Target Deprioritizing List". Like, if a target loses all its weapons, then don't target it anymore, or if it's already the target of an ally, don't target it anymore, or don't fire more than 100%, 150%, 200% projected damage at the target at any time (in that case, switch to another target)...like that.

Re: Any way to have a ship cycle its weapons/targets?
 

Yeah, I've noticed the same thing. Sort of the problem with Point Defense too. There should be a sort of random tiny delay for each weapon, so that they fired miliseconds apart: but enough so that they'd register if the ship/seeker was already destroyed before wasting a shot.

Re: Any way to have a ship cycle its weapons/targets?
 

I had issues with this in se4. The se4 solution was to factor your enemy's average ship defenses into the order which you added weapons to your designs. It probably isn't smart, for example, to add shield depletors after "all damage" weapons because the fire order would lead your ships to take down shields with all damage weapons and then be left with nothing to use the depletors on, basically wasting them. I always thought this was an assinine solution because a much better answer would be to enhance the strategic combat AI. But Malfaydor is but a wee company so enhancements take a long time.

I'm not sure if there's another workaround in se5. If the strategic combat scripts are moddable we can go to town and fix it ourselves! but I have no idea if it is...

Re: Any way to have a ship cycle its weapons/targets?
 

Does it matter what "order" weapons are put in with SE5?

Re: Any way to have a ship cycle its weapons/targe
 

It shouldnt, because with real time combat, all weapons fire the moment they are able (simultaneous fire as opposed to turn-based fire). However, you still have the issue with not being able to control where the fire goes. But then, we also don't need multiplex tracking in SE5.

It occurs to me that if SE5 could somehow be modded to allow ships to spread thier fire more effectively, multiplex tracking modules could be the means to do this - bringing them back in a fun new way.

Re: Any way to have a ship cycle its weapons/targe
 

I believe what you need is multiplex targetting. That should do the trick, I think.

Re: Any way to have a ship cycle its weapons/targe
 

That doesn't exist in SE5.

Re: Any way to have a ship cycle its weapons/targe
 

I really think it should still exist. I still need to really go through all the strategy options but it seems like an overly complicated way to get the weapons to spread out their available attacks. If there are 5 equal types of target all with in range I would hope that they all get an equal amount of weapons fired at them....

Re: Any way to have a ship cycle its weapons/targe
 

That's not really what you want, since you need to breach shields and armor before you reduce the enemy's ability to fight back any.

Instead, try the priorities involving "less than X% damage targetted"
Send enough fire at a ship to crush it, but not too much overkill.

If there aren't any other targets in range, the ships will fire all their guns anyways, just because they can, though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Any way to have a ship cycle its weapons/targe
 

Those priorties don't seem to work very well SJ. People are reporting massive overkill even when <50% is set as the top priority..even when multiple targets are in range.