Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priority

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

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

[Glyn]

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…

[Yef]

What about using type priorities?

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

[Glyn]

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.