[Suicide Junkie]

destroyed 'right to left' in SE II, NOT III or IV at any time!

Actually, in SE3, the damage from each shot started at a random spot, and from there procceded left-to-right. A good strategy was to space out your weapons so they would not all be destroyed by a single hit.

In SE4, the components are hit randomly every point along the way.
HOWEVER:
- For Armor, the ones with FEWER hitpoints are hit more often, though not exclusively.
- For internals, the ones with MORE hitpoints are hit more often. This seems to approach a "one lottery ticket per hitpoint" type scheme, but the larger components absorb slightly more than their fair share.

And that's probably more than you wanted to know