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.

[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!

[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