Initiative

[Cyclop]

I was wondering how is initiative resolved at a warp point? Does the defender always go first? And is initiative any different at non-warp points?

[spoon]

In SE4 Gold, the defender always goes first on a warp-point. In old SE4, it is determined by player order.

[Suicide Junkie]

For non-warppoint combat the defender still goes first, but since nobody starts out in firing range, its a toss up over formations and engine speed to decide who gets into range and fires first.

[Atrocities]

Also in this situation, as SJ described, weapons range does play an imporant part. If you have longer range weapons then the other guy, then you stand a real chance of tearing his fleet apart before he even gets the change to fire upon yours.

[dogscoff]

This is why you'll often see players load their warp point defences with the lower range/slow reload/heavy hitter weapons while offensive craft and in-system defences are more likely to have long range/ fast reload/ medium damage weapons.

[primitive]

Originally posted by spoon:
In SE4 Gold, the defender always goes first on a warp-point. In old SE4, it is determined by player order.

Not always. There is a bug (or a feature) who makes the attacker fire first once in a while. From my own experience (PBW) I would guess it happens less than 5% of the time. Never been able to figure out what causes it though