Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priority

[CaptainAL]

Need a bit of help once more. I looked over the FAQ again and didn't see this, but if it is there I apologize & just let me know that. Thanks.

Question is regarding firing priority: What does strongest and weakest relate to - is strongest gauged by damage points the ship can sustain or the firepower of the ship? My fleets keep hitting my opponents "decoy" ships first - you know, the ones with 25 Crystal Armor plates and 6 shields. I can't afford another big loss. I had strongest as priority, so maybe that seeks the ship with greatest damage resistance. But I tried weakest in the simulator - same thing happened. I tried it with no strongest/weakest priority, and still the ships targeted the decoy first. Hopefully someone can give me a quick answer to this one, or I might as well give up on the game. Thanks again.

[Grandpa Kim]

*Sigh* I wish I knew.

In the case you're describing, try "nearest" and, in the Damage section, check the box "Damage targets till all weapons gone". It should give better results. I say "should" because the strategies rarely give you what you expect.

[PvK]

I think "Strongest" is (or was, in an earlier version) based on the resource cost, but I'm not sure.

If you are not seeing a difference between strategy settings (esp. weakest and strongest attacking the same ship), or not seeing what you expect, it may be that a different strategy than you expect is actually being used. Ships that break formation use their ship design strategy, while ships in (or trying to be in) formation use their fleet's strategy. All ships with weapons use the fleet strategy on turn one, and all ships without weapons break formation and since they can't target, tend to behave like "don't get hurt".

Grandpa Kim mentioned some good ideas too.

PvK

[Glyn]

The ship/fleet strategy settings are one of the murkiest aspects of SEIV. I don’t know what Strongest/Weakest refers to (Pretty sure it is not fire power.)

I do known that the Nearest means anything within about 5 squares.

[Suicide Junkie]

It should also be noted that once the ships pick a target, they will stick with it for quite a while.
If those CA decoys are the only thing in range, then they would be the only choice for targetting.

"Most damaged" is probably a good choice, since the Decoys won't take damage.

You might want to try out the targetting priorities in the simulator.
Add a decoy and a warship to player 1, and set your ships to player 2.
Let the AI run your ships, while you take care to keep both decoy and warship side by side. You want them both to be the same distance from your ships so that they come into firing range at the same time.

[PvK]

I think Nearest really means nearest, and not anything within 5. Any exceptions I have seen have been explainable by damage or other strategy rules eliminating nearer candidates.

Most damaged is good for concentrating fire, but in some situations can also lead to some odd behavior, where a whole fleet can end up chasing after one ship and not reacting well to the rest of the enemy fleet.

PvK

[Glyn]

I’m pretty sure that nearest doesn’t mean “absolute nearest”. I was in a late stage PBW game fighting against an enemy with about a 10% offensive and defensive edge over my ships. At point blank range I had about a 55% chance to hit so I wanted my ships to fire at the absolute nearest enemy ship. Even with a strategy of “nearest nearest nearest nearest” my ships would pick ships up to 5 squares away over closer valid targets.

To force my ships to only target near ships that they had a chance to hit, I switched to ripper beams which have a short range.

[Suicide Junkie]

It should be noted that once they pick their target, they can still move around afterwards to try and move to max range for example.

[PvK]

Glyn, that's interesting. I haven't seen that without being able to figure out why (e.g. previous damage to targets disqualifying them, using fleet vs. ship strategy, type priority, etc). Are you sure the ships were actually using that strategy?

BTW, Ripper Beams are a neat choice in that case, since they get another +15 to hit.

PvK

[Phoenix-D]

Ripper Beams don't, actually. The Incinerator Beam and the Wave-Motion Gun do, though (+10 and +30 respectively)