Fighters are tractor beams

[Suicide Junkie]

The main problem with crimson's method is that PDCs will waste all their shots on the first missiles/fighters to move, doing 1 damage. The closer missiles can then thrash your ships with impunity.

[capnq]

What about "Use Type before Targeting Priorities", with fighters near the bottom of the list? Would that make any difference?

[tesco samoa]

who else is seeing this.... and what are the ship configurations and stragety settings ...

Lets see if there is a trend or just an unlucky combination ....

[Q]

I am not sure if I understood this correctly:
You are saying that the strategy "maximum weapons range" is overridden if the ship faces fighters and has PDC. Then it will move into PDC range.

That's something I have never experienced and I made a small test with an attacking ship that has anti proton beam and PDC against a group of ships and fighters. The attacking ship stayed at maximum distance (= range of the anti proton beam) and never came to use its PDC.

[Q]

It seems to be a problem connected to the reload time of the main weapon:
I repeated the test with an attacking ship that has wave motion gun and PDC. The ship fired its WMG at range 8, but during reload of the WMG it attacked the fighters with the PDC at range 5. When the WMG was reloaded it moved again to range 8 and fired! Not very clever, but it obeyed the order of "maximum range" if you consider that during the WMG reload the PDC were its only weapons available.
But if you use an attacking ship with WMG, anti proton beam and PDC? The ship will keep a distance of 8 fire the WMG and anti proton beam but not use the PDC.

Therefore you have two options:
1.) As already suggested don't include PDC's in the design of the ships with high range weapons and maximum range strategy.
2) Include at least one weapon in the design with a reload time of 1 that has a high range.

[PvK]

Yes, I think Q is correct. I think the only reason a ship will close to PDC range rather than max weapon range, is if the longer-ranged weapons can't fire that turn (reloading).

I also suspect (not sure) the "don't fire on fighters" setting also will not prevent a ship from using its main weapons on fighters - I think it only prevents them from moving the ship to attack fighters. If fighters happen to come in range of main weapons, and the main weapons have no other targets that turn, I think they will fire at the fighters.

PvK

[LGM]

For Max Range strategy with the Talisman, a variety of ranges might be useful. Put a Missle III and a Missle V on with your Wave Motion Guns. Each weapon could come into range a different times, setting you up to reload out of phase. Then when you are reloading your WMGs, it will move back to Missle III range. If both the WMG and Missle III are reloading, it will pull back even further. Just in case the reload thing does not work right, put one APB on the ship to establish a Max Range of at least 8 all the time. Then your PDC ranges will never qualify as the max range weapon (unless you take damage).

I shall have to try this in a PBW game I am in.