[Atraikius]

I thought the strategies were based off the ships movement, with the ship initially moving for its primary strategy before firing, and then using the secondary strategy afterwards, but there are some combinations that don't make sense at all, or are exceptions to this.

This is easily seen watching ships armed with missiles only early in the game, where the AI will move within range to fire and then attempt to maintain thier secondary strategy while loading. If you watch a ship that has maximum weapons rang for the secondary strategy, the ship will attempt to maintain the maximum range of the missile; if its secondary strategy is Dont Get Hurt, it will continue to move away until it has reloaded.

Where it doesn't make sense is; giving a ship short or point blank for a primary strategy followed by drop troops, the ship should move into range of the planet, fire weapons, and then move next to the planet and drop troops. But with this as a strategy, the ship (and entire fleet if planet has no defenses) will not approch the planet, staying near its deployment zone. Also, if these strategies are flipped, then any ships carring troops will attempt to drop troops on the undefended planet, but will not fire at it, and and other ships in the fleet will remain near thier starting position regardless of their orders.