Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priority

[PvK]

Oh, ok, thanks.

[Glyn]

Well, I could be mistaken. I wasn't testing what the targeting options sorted on. At the time, I was just looking for a set of options that did what I wanted.

If I have time this weekend I'll do some testing on targeting options.

[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.

[Parasite]

Awesome! Good report! Now I just need to figure out how to set my ships to max range plus the target's movement speed. (jk Not possible)

[CaptainAL]

THANKS Glyn! I tried the simulator in my game again and used various enemy ship classes. I have been using weapons/largest priorities first and have tried both strongest and weakest as secondary priorities. The simulator still targeted the same "decoy" ship class regardless (the decoy ships did not have the strongest shields in the tests). So I did some more involved simulator testing also; I copied ships from my enemy's designs as my own so I could categorize the variables. My tests showed this:

Largest/Smallest related to damage resistance (apparently only shield generator damage resistance points counted and not points due to the shield generation itself). Interestingly, the ship weight (KT) did not seem to matter; I used baseships with both 1500 KT and 1490 KT. I did not try using smaller ship sizes (i.e. cruiser vs. battlecruiser) so I do not know if that is a preceding factor.

Strongest/Weakest related to resource cost. The higher cost ships were targeted first every time, regardless of damage resistance, shields or weapons. In my tests with strongest priority my highest cost ships had no shields; even so, these were targeted first. Glyn, did you check the ship cost?

Has Weapons seemed to target based upon weapons presence only; it seemed independent of weapon quantity. As far as quantity, the targeting seemed random. I did not do enough testing to see if there was another relationship involved.

In my game I always had largest as my first priority before strongest/weakest (so as to target baseships first) and that is reason my ships always targeted the high damage resistance "decoy”. I assumed that largest applied to size only and that it would target based upon the second priority if all ships in range were the same size. Not so!

I think the info in this thread might be good for the FAQs, if anyone who can edit it agrees and has time.

Thanks all.

[Glyn]

CaptainAl, no I didn’t check the ship cost (Good catch! Thanks for the corrections). Since shields cost more per ton then armor the cost of shielded ships would generally be higher which would support the Strongest/Weakest keying off of ship cost. (Gunner, target their most expensive ship first!)

I didn’t test largest/Smallest, but I would be interested in knowing if the ship class size had any relevance other then maximum KT.

Since Crystalline armor is structurally heavier 150Kt/30kt space 25 Crystalline armor components would add 3000kt of Structure to the ship. So, would Smallest, Strongest work to avoid targeting the decoys?

[CaptainAL]

I will check out the ship size for largest in the next day or two - that should not take long. As far as my remedy for the decoy problem in my game, I'd rather not say right now specifically what I am doing with my firing priority. My opponent in this game is a very good player so I figure he is most likely a student of this Forum and may be browsing here. I'd rather not share my current strategy with him. But I do know how to beat it now. To my worthy opponent: no more freebies from the 39 cyrstal armor plate ships!