Order of weapons fire / damage?

[Atrocities]

A few things factor into how a weapon fires. Strategy for one. If your strategy is set to say max range, then the longer range weapons should fire first. I could be mistaken however as this is not a topic that I know much about.

Good question though.

[Wardad]

When you design a ship, the componants are added from left to right.

With all things being equal, the firing order is from left to right.

Weapons with insufficient ranges may get skipped over and not fired. The same goes for weapons with special damage types that can not be applied to the target.
Of course this is affected by targeting range, target choices, and maybe multiplex targeting.

[Tribble]

Originally posted by Wardad:
When you design a ship, the componants are added from left to right.

With all things being equal, the firing order is from left to right.

Weapons with insufficient ranges may get skipped over and not fired. The same goes for weapons with special damage types that can not be applied to the target.
Of course this is affected by targeting range, target choices, and maybe multiplex targeting.

Okay, that makes things clearer. BTW am I right in thinking, all things being equal, that damage *to* a ship occurs from right to left?

Tribble

[President_Elect_Shang]

Damage to a ship is random given the following:

All components are of equal size and tonnage structure.
No components have the armor (or any variation of the) ability.
Each hit will destroy one component.

So assuming a ship with say ten components and using the above, the order of damage is random. If you notice your ships are getting pounded from right to left (most of the time) than I bet you have mostly armor ability or larger components on the right too.

[Fyron]

Internal components (ie: not armor) tend to be destroyed in the order of most hit points (tonnage structure, NOT size) to fewest hit points. There is some randomization, so your big weapons don't always blow up first, but they are more likely to be hit than, say, a bridge.

For armor components (they have the armor ability), they tend to be destroyed in the opposite order, with those with fewer hit points tending to be destroyed before those with more hit points.

Assuming you put your weapons on Last, then you would tend to see a right to left type progression of damaged components, simply because the comps with the most hit points are on the right.

[hicksz]

I have notice that it's hard to destroy the self-destruct device and the ECM. I would fight the AI and try to damage their ships enough so my boarding parties can try to capture the ship and 7 times out of 10 (for me at least) those would be the Last component left. Very fustrating.

[AMF]

OK, so a related question that I have always puzzled over and never fully answered:

who fires first in a (strategic) combat?

I know that if one side is at a WP and the other side warps in, then the defender goes first...

but I recently had a combat where I was the defender and it really looked like none of my guys fired first, and, well, I lost my entire fleet (and it looks like I am going down in flames becuase of it)...

so...who first first?

thanks,

Alarik