[dogscoff]

PDC is a special case, it fires by itself It is only order of weapons that matter, other components can be spread to your liking.

However, some mods (proportions & devnullmod in particular, I think) have multiple types of pdc. In these cases you have to decide which PDC you want to fire first- it's usually a good idea to have the short ranged ones first.

Why? Suppose you have four seekers coming at you in a proportions game. 2 of them are at range 1 and the other 2 are at range 5. Your ship has 2 short range PDC cannons and 2 long range ones- enough to take out all four seekers, but only if the short-range cannons target the closer seekers and the long range cannons target the distant ones. If the long range cannons waste their shots on the close seekers, the short range cannons will have be powerless to take out the remaining distant ones.

By putting the short range cannons on the design first, you force them to fire first, leaving the more versatile lang range cannons until Last.

Oh, and I'm surprised no-one's mentioned the old tractor/ripper/repulser combo in this thread yet...